LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The good thing about being a police dog is that your job is to play, all the time. And you spend hours learning how to do it well, with your buddy, whom others call your “handler”.
“They don’t work, they play. That’s what dogs do, and police dogs are no different,” Jean-Christophe Sauteral, press officer for Vaud Police told GenevaLunch during a demonstration of police dog training Wednesday 25 April high in the Jura hills near Sainte-Croix.
Police from four countries come together once a year in this area for a week of intensive specialty training for dog handlers and their animals.
The dogs play hard, and their level of discipline is striking.
Each country’s police dog teams have particular skills that they share with the others, says Sauterel. They also simply get to know each other and work together, useful because the police forces call on each other when highly specialized teams are needed.
The Austrian police dog teams are particularly known for their searches for bodies and tracing human blood, says Sauterel. “And the Belgians are the best at working with fires,” he adds. Paris teams have drug-search expertise.
Swiss pioneered Sokks method for training dogs with pure molecules
The Swiss are known for their dogs’ work searching pure molecules, a relatively new field called the Sokks method, where dogs are trained to search for pure molecules, for example those in drug odours, rather than the less reliable training in specific odours. With cocaine, for example, it can become contaminated with other odours and as it degrades, the odours shift. But the underlying molecules remain the same. Switzerland adopted the Sokks method in 2004. Dogs trained with it have shown a 28 percent increase in successful detection, according to Vaud Police.
Canton Vaud has 13 dog handlers, with 5 of them and their dogs on rotating duty, 24 hours a day. The dog teams are used in Vaud on average 5-6 times a day and throughout Switzerland about 40 times a day. The handlers use down time to continue their dogs’ training.
Once a week the dogs and their trainers meet for a day of joint exercises and continuing education for the handlers.
The dogs belong to the police force, but the handlers pick out their own dogs at the kennels when they are two and a half months old, and the dogs are then assigned to the families where they spend the rest of their lives. They train until they are two years old before they are put on duty with their handlers, but they join the police patrols as early as possible, to get them used to unusual situations and noise, for example in stations, markets, restaurants.
Vaud Police’s dog unit (K9) has one Labrador, but the rest are German or Belgian shepherds (Malinois). They are all trained to perform all police dog tasks: tracking, looking for lost objects, defending their masters, searching for explosives, and looking for drugs, for example. One dog has been trained specially to work with special intervention forces, learning to remain completely calm, quiet and still for hours, but ready to instantly move into attack mode.
Skiing in Switzerland: waiting for the bus near Lake Geneva, to head up to the slopes
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Schools in Vaud are on vacation starting this afternoon, and the weather forecast promises us some of the warmest temperatures since early January. Expect the slopes to be busy.
Snow cover is still excellent everywhere, so no matter where you head, you can’t go wrong, but don’t sleep in: the best snow will be waiting for you in the mornings.
This is a shaping up to be a big and busy weekend in the Swiss Alps, with the men’s World Cup downhill races on in Crans-Montana.
Weather and avalanche risk forecast
MeteoSwiss is telling us to get out the sun cream. Temperatures in the Alps will be 1-3C on the low end with highs of 7 to 11C. Geneva and Lausanne can expect sunny skies initially but with some cloud cover as the weekend wears on, and the sharp cold bise wind blowing by Monday. Mountain areas will have only light winds.
The wet avalanche risk will rise as the temperatures climb. The danger of dry snow avalanches is 2/5 but for wet snow avalanches it rises to 3, throughout the Alps, for Friday.
Alpine resorts
The Norwegian (shown here) and Swiss ski teams trained in Anzeres this week, in the run-up to the World Cup races in Crans-Montana
The Crans-Montana men’s downhill World Cup ski races are the big weekend event. It is the last time that Didier Cuchewill race in Switzerland before his retirement, and Saturday night at the ice rink in Montana he will be given the trophy for “Swiss man of the year”, an honor he was given last month.
The races are open to the public. Tickets are CHF20-60 and the two towns of Crans and Montana have plenty of activities lined up.
Zermatt For those who would rather be racing themselves, Zermatt has a great event Saturday 25 February, a nighttime race from 17:00-22:00 that ends with a spaghetti dinner at Sunnegga.
Verbier A wild ride for anyone who loves sledding: Sunday 26 February the resort is hosting the final of the Valais Sled Trophy, “the legendary 10km La Tzoumaz ski run,” it says on its site. “Over a 4km long stretch, between pastures and forests, the 540 m drop will get everyone’s skates on! Families, amateurs, and USO (Unidentified sliding object) owners alike are invited to take part in this popular event – it’s a veritable sled party!” Take along some medical gel for bruises, for afterwards.
Jura report
by Shirley Curran
Slightly warmer weather has arrived but snow conditions remain excellent in the resorts in the Jura mountains.All are boasting over a metre and a half of snow at the higher levels. At the moment, with the French holidays continuing, crowds are developing from 10:00 onwards, but our large capacity lifts seem to cope and all runs have been open this week.
Ghetto-blasting snowboards and other things you might find on the slopes
And now a word about the people on the slopes you might want to avoid, if you’re not part of their group: Signal Snowboards, a US company, makes snowboards that do more than just move you on the snow and in the air, reports Wired. Take, for instance, their snowboards that shoot paintballs. Or blast music.
What you’re more likely to find on Swiss slopes this weekend is strange creatures, skiers in costume as they prepare to head off for Carnival.
Carnival time!
Basel Fasnacht
If you’re willing to go down from the mountains for a bit, Bern’s Carnival is on this weekend, worth a detour en route to the Bernese Alps resorts.
And one of Switzerland’s best shows starts Monday in Basel, the city’s famed Fasnacht, which starts in the wee hours and goes until late for three days and nights. The entire city turns out, well disguised and ready for some serious play, while the 30,000 visitors who pour into the city for the fun enjoy the show.
Samedan / Engadin airport near St Moritz, canton Graubuenden (photo: wikipedia)
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Samedan Airport, just 5 km from the resort of St Moritz in canton Graubuenden, will have stricter rules for pilots landing their small planes there after a series of accidents in recent years, including a deadly one Sunday 19 December.
Two men flying in from Zagreb were killed and their plane destroyed at Bever, near the airport, during a difficult landing. Two planes, one from Warsaw and the other from Vienna, crashed in February 2010 after hitting snowbanks near the airstrip, with no injuries in one of the accidents but two deaths and one person injured in the other.
Swiss federal civil aviation (OFAC) authorities say pilots planning to land at Samedan, also known as Engadin Airport, will be given permission only if they have been on an initiation flight to familiarize them with the special conditions at the airport. Samedan sits at 1,707 metres altitude and is the highest airport in Europe. It is nestled among mountains with several high peaks, and landing there is more complicated than in an airport on the plains, OFAC officials note. The pre-flight training requirement goes into effect at the start of the new year.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has confirmed that many pilots in China lack the required training to fly the planes they fly, but it points out that media reports on this fail to mention that no new cases have been found in the past two years. Media reports on the problem followed an investigation into a fatal aircrash 24 August in northeastern China that killed 42 people. The CAAC says an investigation in 2008 into airline pilots’ experience showed that almost 200 pilots did not have the requisite training. Most are flying again after remedial training, according to the CAAC.
China’s domestic air travel has boomed in recent years, and the demand for pilots with it. In 2006 Chinese airlines carried 160 million passengers. Foreign pilots are not allowed to fly in China and the gap has been filled by former military pilots whose experience is more easily concealed.
Links to other sites: BusinessWeek, Xinhua
The Swiss national team
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss football team is down one man due to injury. The Swiss football federation announced Christoph Spycher’s knee injury is preventing him from playing at the World Cup.
Spycher had planned to retire after the world championship but his injury is forcing him into early retirement.
The defender will be replaced by Ludovic Magnin who is recuperating from a broken hand. According to the Swiss coach, Magnin will wear a cast during training camp which begins on 25 May.
Switzerland will play Costa Rica on 1 June in Sion, and Italy in Geneva on 5 June as part of its pre-World Cup training.
Medtronic in Tolochenaz, Switzerland
Tolochenaz, canton Vaud (Switzerland) – Medical device maker Medtronic has reported fiscal year third quarter (period ending 29 January 2010) revenue of $3.851 billion, a 10 percent increase over third quarter revenue reported a year earlier, the company said Tuesday 23 February. Revenue from outside the US rose by 22 percent in the same period compared to the previous year and accounted for 42 percent of the total.
Medtronic’s head office for Europe and Asia is in Tolochenaz, which is also home to its European training centre.
The company employs 950 people in Switzerland.
Elderly people in the United States are increasingly coming out of retirement to look for work because of the recession. The need to pay for housing, medical bills and even food is forcing older workers back into the labour market, according to a study by the non-governmental organization Experience Works. Almost half of the 2,000 low-income survey participants over 55 years old need to work to keep their homes, the study says. Experience Works is the “nation’s largest nonprofit provider of community service, training and employment opportunities for older workers,” according to Reuters.
The news agency reports US Department of Labor data as showing that in August 2009 two million people over the age of 55 were looking for work, an increase of 69 percent over August 2008. US News reports a glimmer of hope, however, in noting that the unemployment rate for workers over 55 decreased slightly from June 2009 to July. Unemployment figures do not include people out of the work force, for example retired people, who have decided to look for jobs again. US Bureau of Labor Statistics spotlight on older workers, July 2008
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government is offering a hand to dog owners who need to find trainers for themselves and their pets, by listing online at www.monanimaljenprendssoin.ch some 400 qualified trainers, listed by region. A new law that went into effect in September 2008 requires future dog owners to pass theory and practical courses, under approved trainers. A transition period gives owners until 2010 to complete their training. The law affects anyone who has bought a dog since 1 September 2008.
STEP is a practical approach to raising children, used for over 30 years in North America, and internationally in four languages. The focus is on learning new parenting skills to achieve several objectives: understand the goals of your child’s misbehaviour, encourage your child and yourself, listen and talk with your child, give choices and set appropriate limits, develop meaningful consequences, help children cooperate. Telephone +41 22 361 6958 or contact Sarah.Keyser@stepinfo.ch for workshop details. Next series starts in January 2009.
