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K-9 Record Keeping Articles-'Training and Usage Records…An Overview' |
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Written By: Bob Ives
Author/ KANINE Records Software
Entering Training Record Data Into KANINE 2006: Part I
This entry is intended to be a walkthrough aimed at teaching the ins and outs of Training Record entry in the KANINE 2006 Software. Whether your a beginner or a KANINE 2006 veteran, this article will provide some insight into this process. We will present this in a two part series.
First of all, lets create a scenario for our Training Record entry walkthrough. Ok, let's say that we went to the local junk yard for some vehicle based narcotics hides. One hide will be a Heroin hide that is inside a toolbox in the trunk of a vehicle. A second hide is in the center console of another vehicle.
But, lets pretend that this is not all of the training that we performed in this session. Let's also say that we performed 15 minutes of obedience (or one session) and that we had our partner set a track for our dog to follow. Now, how do we enter this information into the KANINE 2006 software? Well, let's walk through the process step by step. Follow along in your software, creating a fake temporary record, if you like. You can always delete it when you are finished.
First, open the software and click the 'Training Reports' button to enter the 'Listing of K-9 Training Reports'. Now, click the 'New Training Record' button. You'll see the screen below.
General overview: In general, consider that your Training record has two parts. The first part covers, in general, common aspects of the entire training session. This part of the record includes the General Information, Classroom Information Compensation/mileage, Weather and the Narrative. All of these things are usually common to all of the actual activities performed during the overall training session, whether it is an hour long, or an entire day.
The second part are the 'Training Activities'. Training activities allow the handler to record the actual work performed. For instance, in any one training session a handler may actually perform several training activities such as narcotics searches, apprehensions, etc. KANINE 2006 allows the user to enter an unlimited number of these training activities for each training record.
General Information: The fields in the 'General Information' area should be completed first. The first of the fields on this tab is the 'Ref. #' or reference number field. This is simply a case number or reference number that identifies this particular session. Here, you can enter your own unique training session number or you can click the button directly to the right of this field to have the system create a unique number for you.
Dates and Times: The dates and times concerning your training session are obviously important. And, as in other areas of the KANINE 2006 software, the training record dates can by either typed in manually or can be set by clicking the button directly to the right of each respective date field.
When entering or altering any of the date/time sequences, be sure to enter a proper date format followed by a space and a proper time like so"09-12-07 05:15 PM" or 02-13-07 17: 15". Either normal or military time can be used here. The 'Start' and 'Finish' fields cannot be blank as they are used to calculate the sessions total time.
When entering your dates and times via the date selection panels (shown below), you can click on a date on the calendar, or type the date in directly. You must then type the time in military time. KANINE 2006 will automatically convert the time to normal time. Click the 'Insert' button when you have the desired values entered.
Tng. Type field- The Training type field is meant to display a general description of the type of training performed. So, if you only trained on obedience, you could select 'Obedience TNG' from the selection list. Many times, however, a handler will perform many types of training in one session. In that case, as in our example scenario, you can select 'Multi-Purpose' as the training type. Remember, we are actually going to specify the exact types of activities performed in our 'Training Activities' section.
Remember, any field such as this one that has an asterisk to the right of the fields label is a selection list field. The selection list will be displayed automatically when the text entry area of the field is first entered. You can also re-open the selection list by double clicking inside of the text entry area of the field itself.
Officer/ K-9- The officer and K-9 fields should have been auto completed when the record was initially created. However, if the K9 field is blank, entering the text entry portion of the field will display the selection list, allowing the user to select a K-9 from the list. You should also note that if this field is blank after creating a new record that you should set the handler's 'Default K-9' in the User Profile form. This will ensure that the K-9 field is auto completed the next time you create a new Training record.
Location- the location field normally indicates the general location where the training session was performed. However, if training occurred in different places during a single session of single day, you could simply enter the location where the training session began. Once you have entered a location in this field, the location will automatically appear in the drop down list the next time you create a training record.
City and District- The city field list, like the location field, will display any past city's that have been entered into the system in previous records. So, after you enter a city name once, you can simply type the first letter of two and the city should be displayed. You can then simply hit the 'Tab' key to select that city and continue to the next field. The district field is selected by means of a selection list.
Basic explanation of training- This field simply explains, at a glance, what occurred during training. This should be short and to the point. An example would be like so: "Trained with Officer Jimson on narcotics work, tracking and obedience." It is recommended that you limit the length of this field to a single sentence or two.
Compensation/Mileage- The compensation field basically helps the handler track time that is uncompensated. If all or part of your training session was not compensated, you should select 'Off duty uncompensated'. Selecting this will also allow you to record part of the training time as compensated and part as uncompensated.
The mileage field is fairly self explanatory. Simply enter the starting mileage and the ending mileage and KANINE 2006 will calculate the total mileage automatically for you.
Weather information- For these fields, simply select or type the appropriate weather information as closely as it was when you performed the training. If the weather varied throughout your training session, you might want to note these changes in the narrative itself.
Narrative- This obviously is a narrative outlining the specific details of the entire training session. Be specific and be sure to list any behavioral corrections that were made during the session. The narrative may be particularly important during court procedures when attempting to show that you have made behavioral modifications and maintained the dogs apprehension and release skills.
Once you have entered your narrative you can send the entire narrative to the 'clipboard' so that you can paste it into another program such as Microsoft Word. Simply click the 'Copy To Clipboard' button, open the destination program, navigate to the location where you would like to paste the narrative to and either click 'control-v' or right click and select 'paste'. Spell-check and Grammar check are also available if you have Microsoft Word installed on your computer.
In the next installment we will cover the 'Training Activities' portion of the training record in depth.
Bob Ives
Code Blue Designs
2269 240th St- Stanton IA 51573
Copyright 2007. Code Blue Designs
