Jobs That Dogs Can Do
The great character of dogs means that, in addition to being great life companions, they can prove to be valid allies for us humans. Dogs not only like to work, but with the right training, they are capable of doing it quite well too. Here are some examples of jobs dogs can do.
Jobs that dogs can do
The cooperative spirit of the dogs, together with their complacent character, mean that most of these animals can carry out work activities. There is a wide variety of jobs that dogs are able to do : for some it is necessary to have an important physique, innate skills and specific training, while others are simpler.
With a little training, almost any dog can work. Some can even help with housework! If the dog is not too young or too old, and is in good physical shape, he is more than prepared to learn new skills and competences.
What we have no doubts about is that all dogs work with us every day, consoling us at the end of a bad day, helping us to relax when we get back from work or pushing us to take them for a walk and abandon our sedentary life. Even if they don’t receive a salary, they work hard every day to make us feel better. And in its own way, this is in effect a job.
1. Finding of drugs
One of the best known jobs dogs can do, but also one of the hardest to train them, is finding drugs. Drug training for dogs begins when they are puppies and accompanies them throughout their lives.
Drug dogs can work on the street, in airports, or in customs. These are dogs employed by government institutions, such as the police or the army: they are not domestic animals. Their domestic life begins only with the arrival of retirement age.
2. Finding of missing persons
Both in the event of natural disasters or collapses that have seen people trapped, as well as in real cases of disappearance. Rescue dogs are able to locate a missing person in a wide range of action. Whether in the middle of the woods or in the ruins of an earthquake landscape, these dogs use their sense of smell and hearing to find victims.
Like anti-drug dogs, these dogs also begin their training when they are very young and carry it out for life. In addition to training their sense of smell, they learn to work in exhausting conditions; day and night, alone or in a group, with many variables.
This is not a job suitable for all dogs: the training of the animal is as important as that of its human guidance. In case of critical situations, only dogs are allowed to enter places where help is requested.
3. Anticipating epileptic and hypoglycemic attacks
Dogs can be very helpful in the health problems of people with epilepsy or diabetes. Some hospitals are beginning to train dogs to detect cancers and other health problems.
In the home, dogs that help people with epilepsy can alert them when a seizure is about to occur, as well as help them when the seizure occurs. How? Keeping calm and positioning the body in such a way as to avoid the person getting hurt during the attack.
Dogs capable of intercepting hypoglycemic cases are able to sense, by smell, the levels in the blood of people with diabetes. This way, they warn them when the level drops or rises too much. Patients therefore know when to measure sugars, take medicine or eat, as appropriate.
4. Protection of battered women
In a pilot program a few years ago, some dogs were trained to accompany and defend abused women. Although the former partners of these women had a restraining order against them, the police felt that the women might need more protection.
The function of these dogs is to accompany these women in their daily life. They are trained to defend and guard, and only interested women know the signals to activate them in case of danger. Fortunately, there have been few cases in which the intervention of these dogs has been necessary. At the end of the experiment, it was possible to see how, for these women, the real advantage of having a dog next to them consisted in regaining the desire to leave the house without fear.
5. Moral support in the hospital
Of all the jobs a dog can do, moral support in hospitals is one of the simplest. It does not require particular requirements, since to work together with sick people in hospitals it is enough to be very sociable and tolerant towards human beings.
Some dogs are trained for this purpose since they were puppies, but there are also many others who arrive taken from shelters, but which due to their qualities have been fully employed by hospitals. Their main function is to make patients happy with their presence.
Let’s not forget that the simple fact of having a dog at home that you can pet, watch and interact with reduces stress, increases calm and happiness and lowers blood pressure. Living with a dog brings tremendous health benefits. But a dog, as we have seen in this article, can also be useful to society in many other ways.
