What was the original purpose of the medium to large sized German police dog?
Police dog A police dog, known in some English-speaking countries as a "K-9" or "K9" (a homophone of "canine"), is a dog that is specifically trained to assist police and other law-enforcement personnel. Their duties include: searching for drugs and explosives, locating missing people, finding crime scene evidence, and protecting their handlers. Police dogs must remember several verbal cues and hand gestures. The most commonly used breeds are the German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois and Rottweiler.
Italian Shepherd The Italian Shepherd, or Pastore Italiano, is a breed of dog. The existence of this breed can be traced back to 1975, when Piero Accettella, of the Little Ranch Kennels, in Cepagatti, in the province of Pescara, in Italy, noticed that, in the surrounding Italian regions of Abruzzo, Umbria, Tuscany, Marche and Northern Lazio, there existed mid-sized dogs with wolf-like features used as livestock herders and known locally as Cane Toccatore. Accettella acquired some of these dogs and crossbred them with Abruzzese Mastiffs, a breed of molosser, to increase their size. The result of this cross was a dog of great intelligence, wary of strangers and a tenacious guardian of property and livestock. The dogs have been found to be ideally suited to the role of guard dog and are easily trained for this task.