It’s not uncommon to feel that you have an extraordinary dog that can do more than play in your yard and beg for treats. This intuition often comes with a sense that you and your dog can go above and beyond the life of the dog park and provide a significant service to others. At Black Creek K-9 Pipeline Leak Detection, we understand this more than you know. If you want to get your dog involved with something besides dog shows and competitions, look into leak detection training. This is an excellent way that you can give your dog something to do besides chase a disc around the park. However, you must understand that not all dogs are cut out for the job. To help you decide if yours is, we’ve put together a short list of five qualities your dog needs to be successful.

Sociability

When dogs go out on leak detection jobs, there are often going to be a lot of people there who they’re not familiar with. For some dogs, this can lead to over-excitement or anxiety. Dogs that perform leak detection need to be sociable so they can interact with people at the job site without becoming nervous or anxious. This will help them perform their duties more effectively without being distracted by others.

Confidence

While it might seem strange to say that a dog needs the confidence to do a job, it can be the difference between a dog that regularly identifies leaks and one that fails to lead you to a specific location. Your dog needs to be confident in its ability to locate scents and identify them. Timid dogs aren’t going to confidently lead you on the trail of a scent. Rather, they might have a personality that requires you to lead them in the right direction, which can be problematic as you likely don’t know where the problem is to start.

Drive

Along with confidence, your dog needs to have a certain level of drive. When we’re talking about the drive in humans, it means that you have the desire to go after what you want or need. This is similar with dogs. Drive in dogs means that they’re driven to reaching the end goal of a trail. A dog with a strong drive can focus singularly on the trail in which they’re tracking until it reaches the end. Dogs that don’t have drive might be easily distracted by an object or an animal as they track the scent, then lose the trail as they wander off.

Energy

Leak detection jobs are not often short walks. Your dog needs to have a certain level of energy and stamina to be able to handle the rigors that come with working leak detection. Because of this, medium to large sport dogs like German shepherds or labradors are often preferred as they don’t carry the extra weight of extra large dogs like an English Mastiff. It’s also easier for them to cover more ground with less effort than small dogs because their legs are much longer.

Playful

When you’re working to identify a leak detection with dogs, it can feel like a serious job that’s being done. After all, leak detection is a crucial job in potentially saving companies from millions of dollars in lost profits and damaging the environment. Although, for a dog, it’s all a game. All detection dogs are trained with toys that are given a specific scent, so a dog that’s working on leak detection thinks it’s not doing anything more than trying to find its toy. So, if your dog has a playful nature and enjoys the toys that you buy for it, you could have a detection dog on your hands.

Contact us to get started

You can learn more about leak detection training by getting in touch with our team at Black Creek K-9 Pipeline Leak Detection. Reach out by calling 817-771-0008 or 253-444-8089. You can also send a message with any inquiries using our contact form. We look forward to working with you and your dog.