 Military working dog handlers assigned to the 901st Military Police Detachment landed at Sagami General Depot to kick off a recent field training exercise. Overall goal is to ensure that these handlers are proficient at their job, that they're the subject matter experts that can be able to go out there by themselves and be able to take charge of a situation or be able to assess and come up with a solution instead of just driving forward. I really want to ensure that these handlers without any NCO support know exactly what to do and be able to operate at that next level to be senior handlers. Their mission for this exercise was to find and apprehend a high value target while engaging in a small arms ambush. They were also evaluated on their detection capability in their ability to provide proper medical treatment in the unfortunate situation of a canine being injured on duty. For this training they used a lifelike training dummy dog for medical treatment. Handlers then carried their actual canines to the evacuation point. One of the key things that I learned yesterday was how to more utilize my partners, not just my canine partners but my spotters as well. So going out on the two man patrols we're used to kind of when we train we do things on our own with just us and our dog but having the extra element is always a great tool that we have to kind of adapt to and when things get tough put half of our workload on them so that we can split the team work evenly and it usually makes for better mission success. The second day the dog handlers worked on aggression capability training during simulated felony traffic stops. The training offered the teams the chance to react to unique and complex scenarios they could possibly face as law enforcement officers. I would say from a law enforcement perspective being able to approach a car confidently and being able to positively assess if there is something going on in the car that's not supposed to be or if everything's just day okay. You need to be able to think on the fly and adapt very quickly so I would say today's training is highlighting that. Overall it was really good. It's good to see the soldiers undertake a mission that is not what they do for their normal jobs as they're patrolling about the installation so very good to see them in their tactical role. The field training exercise gave the soldiers the chance to train on their skills in techniques. More importantly it gave them an opportunity to strengthen the bond with their four legged partners. The bond that me and my dog have he's a really young dog so he's really handler interactive he loves being near me so kind of just being able to spend time out here together and you know not have to leave him every day to go back home to my family but just to spend time out here with him he's a lot more calm he's a lot less stressed out and I can just tell that he's I get to be around dad for a whole week straight this is awesome and it definitely helped build our bond together. My dog's name is Kaya I train with Kaya every day and this was a lane yesterday that was the longest one that she's ever done it was a very long ruck and there was a lot of exciting things such as enemy combatants along the way and then going into a very dark room with a lot of scary noises and fighting bad guys is not something that we do unfortunately all the time so it was a lot for her and I think that we kind of overcame a lot of interpersonal struggles during that training mission and I think I got closer with my dog as well I think we can function better as a team. The takeaway from this training is to be able to say think outside the box don't get stuck in your day-to-day training proficiency think how I can advance and improve with my dog how can I get better how can I make something easier on just simple tasks that can lean into bigger problems that we can already negotiate that obstacle with no issues. For the US Army Garrison Japan Public Affairs Office this is Tim Flack.