Dogs in action – the tasks performed by cold-nosed friends

Rescue dogs are deployed in crisis situations. For example, they help find people who have been buried after an earthquake. Once the rescue dog has found something or someone, it must signal this to its handler. These dogs must have an extremely good sense of smell and be very stable in character. They must not show any fear or aggression towards humans or animals. These dogs need strong nerves in their work, whether searching through rubble, searching large areas, mantrailing, water rescue, or avalanche search.

These dogs mostly support people with physical or mental disabilities. An assistance dog is trained to perform minor tasks for humans. These include, for example: opening and closing doors, transporting laundry to the basket, turning lights on and off, "calling" the elevator, getting help in an emergency, and picking up and fetching objects. When working with deaf people, they are trained to alert them to important sounds. Assistance dogs include signal dogs (for deaf people), service dogs, epilepsy dogs, and diabetic alert dogs.

These dogs help people to cope with various tasks, including those of an emotional nature. They help children, mentally ill people, and the elderly. This requires the animal to have a high stimulus threshold and tolerance level. Training includes basic obedience training and is designed to enable the dog to carry out certain commands at any time. Before starting work, such dogs must pass certain tests.

Docile but also stress-resistant dogs are trained with special tricks for working in front of the camera. Not only do they have to be able to do certain things on command, they also have to get along well with lots of people so that they are compatible with a wide variety of actors and actresses.

These dogs undergo special training and are trained for a wide variety of events and situations. Drug detection dogs must also have an exceptionally keen sense of smell so that they can sniff out things that humans cannot find. In fact, there are also dogs that are trained to sniff out endangered species in suitcases or to find hidden data storage devices, such as hard drives or USB sticks, containing information that is relevant to criminal investigations.

Hunting dogs – actually called working dogs – must pass an appropriate working dog test before they can be used. These dogs are often tasked with searching for wounded or killed game. They have a variety of roles: some are used in hunting packs, others in burrows, for flushing game, or for retrieving. In all cases, the hunter is responsible for their dog, which is not allowed to simply run through the forest and chase game.

These assistance dogs are specially trained to support blind or severely visually impaired people. They learn to recognize obstacles and guide their owners safely from A to B. Guide dogs even have to master a kind of independent thinking. This can be seen, for example, when the blind person wants to cross the street with the dog, but the dog does not do so because a car is approaching. These dogs are raised in foster families from the age of one until they begin their training, which allows them to build trust in humans.

Sled dogs are athletes. In a team of dogs and with their musher, they perform at the highest level of competitive sport. The work is particularly physically and mentally demanding for the leader—the lead dog, who bears full responsibility for his team of up to eleven dogs. This dog communicates with his musher, carries out his commands, and motivates the entire team.

When humans began to engage in agriculture and livestock farming on a larger scale, dogs took on a key role in working with grazing animals. From then on, their task was to keep the herds together and drive them.

The valuable livestock on the pastures also needed to be protected from predators such as wolves and bears. Since herding dogs were usually too small for this task, livestock guardian dogs were bred. These courageous and imposing dogs live with the herd from an early age and are used to working independently of the shepherd. With the return of the wolf, livestock guardian dogs are once again being used more frequently to protect herds, including from livestock thieves.

The task of a guard dog is to guard its territory or a herd of livestock. How exactly it should react to an intruder or danger depends on the dog handler. The guard dog's repertoire ranges from barking and scaring off intruders to actively defending its territory.