Origin and Development of Service Cynology in Modern Ukraine

Abstract

The history of the origin and formation of service cynology in Ukraine has quite interesting aspects. First of all, at the time when the territory of modern Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire, and eventually the Soviet Union, the police service cynology was originated in Ukraine. Thus, the beginning of the XX century was marked by the activities of H. M. Rudyi, who being a part of the detective police in 1904 organized the breeding station and began to use dogs to search for criminals. Besides, H. M. Rudyi organized training of a cynologist O. Erhant, who was objectively considered the first certified cynologist in Ukraine, and who graduated training in Schwelm. Heorhii Mykhailovych also developed an Instruction for the officials of Kyiv Detective Police, which defined the procedure and methods of involving dogs in the fight against crime.

Further development of service police cynology throughout the Empire took place with the support and admiration of V. I. Lebediev, an official from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire, who contributed to the creation of the All-Russian Society for the Promotion of Dogs in Police and Guard Service, as well as certain associations within the Empire.

The author of the article has also studied the historical stages of the development of cynology, which are offered to be divided according to the criteria of methods of using dogs, as well as new turning points in training. Thus, the next stage has offered to allocate the time, when the process of dog training began to be based on the results of research accomplished by I. P. Pavlov, who described the reflexes in general (conditioned and unconditioned); indicative reactions and their nature; stimuli and their types; types and principles of higher nervous activity of dogs; processes of inhibition and excitation; deviations in the activity of the dog’s brain. All this has increased the arsenal of human abilities in the process of preparing dogs for service.

Particular attention has been paid to the fact that police cynology during the wars is somewhat re-profiled, but does not lose its relevance. Unfortunately, the development of cynology after the Second World War underwent significant regression due to the changes in public attitudes and the post-war situation, but this did not prevent further use and improvement of the use of dogs.

The emphasis has been placed on the peculiarities of the next stage in the development of cynology, which is associated with the development of odor methods of selection and preservation of odors, as well as the emergence of dogs-detectors who are further used in odor examination.

It has been also noted that the current stage of development of cynology is very diverse, i.e. service dogs are used in almost all areas of law enforcement activity.