the National Dog Training Center from Gendarmerie is a training center for dog officers located since 1945 in Gramat in the Lot.
The center has two distinct missions, one of formation and the other operational. This specialized unit is engaged within the framework of search for human remains and of arson accelerator products.
The gendarmerie dog-friendly device is constantly counting 480 owners and 550 dogs with different technicalities such as:
– the search for avalanche victims;
– tracking and person search;
– guard and patrol in private areas;
– the assault (GIGN) for lightning arrests;
– the search for human remains;
– the search for weapons and ammunition;
– research into narcotic products;
– the search for explosives;
– research into fire accelerator products;
– the search for banknotes;
– the “SAMBI” search: simultaneous search for Narcotics, Weapons, Ammunition and Banknotes;
– the search for explosives on moving people.
What are the missions of the CNICG?
The National Cynophile Training Center of the Gendarmerie has 80 workers, among them, civil servants or workers of the State as well as two vets provided by the Army health service.
Its mission is to:
– recruit, condition and to follow from a medical point of view all the dogs that enter training;
– to assure technical watch of all that relates to the cynotechnie;
– former, in theory et en convenient, dog handlers;
– to exploit feedback ground ;
– provide continuing education military and civilian instructors from the center;
Before training the teachers, the center has the heavy task of recruit dogs. Per year, more than 500 dogs passing through the kennel doors. These dogs come from private individuals as well as from breeding kennels. Instructors are looking for dogs sociable with men, having a strong attraction for the game, balanced and stables in their behavior, having a low sensitivity to noise and external elements with an aptitude for biting.
For years, recruitment mainly concerned the German shepherd. Today, this is no longer the case. the Belgian Shepherd Malinois represents 75% of the herd. This dog has the advantage of being polyvalent and adapts very easily to the specificities sought. At his side, there are also dutch shepherds.
Once selected, the dog will follow a breaking in for three months before being assigned a master. All training is game based. The dog does not work, he plays. For example, in the context of training for the search for explosives, the idea is to associate a toy with explosive material, without there being any danger for the dog. This method will allow him to assimilate this smell so that he can, during an operational research, act instinctively in order to transcribe this phase of the game.
The history of CNICG
The national gendarmerie set up the central kennel of the gendarmerie in Gramat in the Lot on December 19, 1945, thus becoming in the years 1980 l’ESOG-CFMC (School of Non-Commissioned Officers of the Gendarmerie – Training Center for Dog Masters) before evolving into National Cynophile Instruction Center of the Gendarmerie on October 1, 1996.
It is attached to command of the national gendarmerie schools from the January 1, 1972.
Over the years, new specialties are emerging :
– 1956: The training of dogs of avalanche search ;
– 1975: The training of dogs of drug research ;
– 1976: The training of dogs assault for the GIGN ;
– 1988: The training of dogs of search for explosives ;
– 2006: The training of dogs of search for fire accelerator products ;
– 2008: The training of dogs of search for banknotes, weapon and ammunition ;
– 2016: The training of dogs of search for explosives on moving people.
the January 24, 2002, the national cynophile investigation group is created. This unit brings together teams of canine enthusiasts specializing in the search for human remains, used during the disappearance of people or delicate criminal proceedings.
On Monday, May 17, 2021, the CNICG signed a partnership agreement with the Animal protection Society with the aim of facilitating the adoption by the institution of boarding dogs of the SPA.
Dogs proposed to the gendarmerie for adoption must meet a certain number of criteria. They must be between 10 and 24 months old and demonstrate very specific character traits: balanced, stable, sociable, playful, not very sensitive to the environment, resistant, enduring and receptive and should not be the subject of a judicial or administrative procedure.
The dogs will be subjected, like all their congeners, to a entrance test. At the end, there will be be discarded, be adopted fully by the gendarmerie to join the canine ranks. After one breaking out period, it will be awarded to a trainee to follow a course of formation, upstream of an assignment within an operational cynotechnical unit.
In addition to the participation of these new recruits at work indispensable and inestimable police dog teams, this partnership also tends, and above all, to allow these abandoned animals to find a new and big family, that of the gendarmerie, within which they evolve in pairs with a master who will offer them the attention they need.