I was put on an air scent team with 5 golden labs, one German Shepherd, one chocolate lab and the Pyr/Anatolian who began his SAR career as an avalanche dog up at the Alpental Ski area and where he still primarily works. We began the day working on runaways where the dogs are allowed to watch the runner run down a path and duck into the woods and hide. (The hardest part of this was me, pretending there were no spiders in there. lalalalalala) They are then released with the command "Go Find!" The dogs rush off down the trail where they find the hider and they are then required to return to their handler to alert them to the fact the they have located the "lost" person. For some dogs the alert is a tug on a toy hanging from the handler's belt, for some it's a bark, for some it's literally leaping off the ground and jumping kamikaze fashion on the owner and for Glacier, the Pyr/Anatolian, it was to run between his handler Scott's legs. Poor Suzanne - she was covered in bruises from her lab Keb's over enthusiastic launching of herself at full speed at Suzanne to let her know she had found the hider.
One of the things the handlers have to train early is the alert and this is a critical decision. The alert has to be unmistakable and rock solid. It can't be something that might occur naturally and if it is, it has to be so definitive so as to differentiate between for instance, barking because I'm having fun and excited vs. one single purposeful bark while I stand in front of you and look at you intently. It also has to be something the dog is willing to do and comes to naturally. So for instance Glacier is trained to dig for avalanche survivors but it would not be useful for him to dig once he's found a missing hiker so Scott has trained him to run between his legs as his alert because Glacier is used to skiing down slope between his legs. It was easy to teach him that and it came naturally. Keb, the jumping lab, is a jumper in general and Suzanne found it easiest to channel that into something useful so for now, she is a human punching bag! However, the handler has to take into account the fallout from a certain alert. Keb jumping on Suzanne isn't such a great idea if Suzanne is on a ridge trail looking for a lost hiker. Keb will knock her right off the ledge so Suzanne is trying to figure out how to modify Keb's current alert. Cross trained dogs who are also HRD dogs (human remains detection) must be trained NOT to dig if that is their usual alert because digging might destroy a crime scene. There are many considerations that aren't immediately obvious. One of our team member's dog is HRD cross trained and his command to his dog to let the dog know he wants him to find a dead person and not a live person in a certain area, is "Bones". Evidently this is a common command but of course if a loved one of the person who is possibly deceased hears that, it will have the wrong connotation, even if they know their loved one is dead.
After we worked on runaways for awhile, we changed to pop ups where the dog is not allowed to see where the runner went but once released, the person pops up and yells very briefly and then hides again. The dog then has to track the person down and run back and forth between handler and lost person, giving the alert until the dog leads the handler to the hider. These are called "refinds".
Because I was working on an air scent team, the dogs all work off leash as opposed to tracking teams who look for a specific person on leash. Tracking teams are given a scent article that contains the scent of the person they are looking for and are given a command to find a specific person, usually "Find that!". These dogs will run through a crowd of people and ignore everyone except the person they are looking for by following scent "rafts" which are the tiny particles of skin etc. that we all shed and are unique to us. This is kind of like a specific form of air scenting. The other version of tracking is to actually ground track a person by means of the changes in chemicals that are released when brush and the environment is disturbed using the foot prints of the person etc. Even our air scent dogs resorted to ground tracking at times but the prevailing belief is "Who cares? If that's the easiest and fastest way for the dog to find the person, so be it". Of course this does not hold true for tracking dogs as it would be useless for them to find every random person.
Our team was trained specifically to range off leash through a large area and look for any person in that area. One of our team members was from Yakima where it's far less densely wooded and his dog can work for hours and cover a huge amount of territory since the landscape is pretty open. We were working in fairly dense woods with brush, obstacles, streams and a lot of elevation gain and loss. It was all bushwhacking as there were no trails except game trails and I learned a lot about what scent does depending on the topography, the weather, water etc. It was absolutely fascinating to watch the dogs work once we graduated to having someone hide in 10 acres of forest and unleashed the dog to find that person.
I also learned a lot about the dogs, the motivation levels, the focus and the breeds - all of great importance in making a decision about the type of dog I would want to work. The labs were typical labs - bouncy, happy, motivated but prone to distraction. For instance, one super ADHD highly motivated field lab found me while I was hiding for her but true to lab form, she wanted to hang out with me for a bit, snuffle around, lick my face and..."Oh crap! I'm supposed to tell my handler I found the lost person!!!" You could almost see the sudden remembrance on her face and off she went. In real life, this is a flaw that needs to be corrected because time may be of the absolute essence if someone has been lost for a long time, is injured etc. The dog needs to immediately alert the handler they have found the person and bring the handler to them ASAP. The German Shepherd on the other hand was phenomenal. He was a guided missile with the utmost laser focus. He went straight to the hider at mach 4, returned straight to the handler at mach 5, tugged on his bumper toy to alert and ran directly back and forth for the refinds until his handler found the person.
Alas, Glacier the LGD, was well....an LGD. He watched the person runaway. He yawned. He sat. He ignored the treats. He loped when he went to find the person, he loped back. Etc. There is no question the mellow nature of the LGD pales in comparison to the drive of the GS's and the labs. But in his defense, he is very new to air scent and I would guess he is far more excited about people buried under snow.
The day was gorgeous, it was long but a ton of fun and I learned so much. Everyone is a volunteer so you have to be passionate about SAR and dogs and they all were. Everyone was fantastic about answering my bajillion questions, teaching me things, giving me suggestions etc. This is definitely something I will pursue and I was far more impressed with the level of training as well as the non-aversive methods used than I am with the police K9's we use. It's one thing to not be able to find the bad guy or have the dog fail at tracking the suspect. It's a whole other thing to have your SAR dog not find a missing child, a missing elderly person or an injured hiker. There is far less room for error and these dogs were absolutely amazing in their ability to hone in on a person in the middle of nowhere.
Speaking of low drive dogs: I furminated the Polar Bear today as he has been undergoing a massive coat blowout for winter and I am tired of it snowing polar bear hair in my house. This is him sitting proudly next to the snow drifts on the deck (and this was AFTER I cleaned up most of it!):
Whew. That was exhausting.
Polar Bear finds the whole brushing/furmination business blissful and will fall asleep on all fours while I brush him. He loves it. If only I had a loom, I could weave the insane amount of hair that came off of him into something useful.
PB has had some stressful days for reasons unknown and he is back to freezing on his walks again. We have worked through that and I have come to realize that he is far more advanced than I give him credit for when it comes to dogs, men and other trigger happy events. So instead of just having him sit and clicking and treating, we have been utilizing our touch, find it and watch me commands so he is actively engaged in doing something and focusing on me. He has done very well.
In fact, because he has now associated treats and looking at me with scary events, I have inadvertently trained him to tell me when something is scary even when I didn't know it scared him. Today, I took him for a walk along the river trail and two rollerbladers rolled by. Because bikers don't bother him, I assumed rollerbladers didn't either. However, he nudged my leg and looked up at me with his "This is scary mom. Treat please" look and I realized that rollerbladers probably bother him because they are upright, look much more like normal people that hunched over bikers but they come at him a lot faster than a walker or runner. So he is now able to "tell" me when something is making him nervous by asking for a treat to calm himself. Very handy for me.
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?
Someday I will figure out how to get rid of the devil eyes but for now, he is practicing for Halloween. This pose does however, remind me of my surprise to see Glacier, the LGD mix, lie in exactly this pose, with legs crossed just like PB does. I have never seen any other dog except an LGD cross their legs in this manner and it was absolutely uncanny how alike Glacier and PB were in their mannerisms. Alas, I didn't get any photos from our SAR training.
PB has also been very excited by the increase in fall squirrel hoarding in our backyard. They run along the fence line driving all three of my monsters berserk.
Did you see it mom? Did you? Squirrel alert!!!
The weather has been rainy lately so I put one of our mutt mats that I use for Control Unleashed training out on the deck under the eave so PB will have somewhere comfy to lie out of the rain. Do you think he uses it? Absolutely not. He would like me to point out that he is a REAL MAN. Thus Stabitha, ignoring the clear dog symbol on the mat, has made it her new home.
Why does he get all the good stuff?
He does indeed, consume most of the pet budget. One of the things I have struggled with is whether or not to get him one of the working dog vests that say something to the effect of working dog/dog in training, do not pet. I used to think these vests attract even more attention to the dog, make people want to approach and ask what the dog is training for etc. and the vest, combined with the Gentle Leader, may make people think PB is vicious and I don't want their unconscious fear or concern about him to be something he picks up on.
However, since we have begun going to local coffee shops etc. and sitting outside, clicking and treating as people come and go for socialization, I have come to realize that nothing I put on the PB will attract more attention than he already gets. The big white fluffy polar bear is a crowd pleaser and a show stopper. Every person wants to pet him, every kid wants to hug him and people even ask me if I will let him play with their dogs. It's gotten to the point where I can't even get a sip of coffee in (this is the real problem) because I am so busy saying please don't approach him, please don't pet him and explaining why. SO - I finally bought him a vest. He modelled it for the first time today after we worked up to an introduction to it with the clicker and some cheese.
You don't have to say it. I know I'm stunningly handsome.
So off we went to the new soccer fields nearby where, every Sunday, approximately half the kid population of Washington and all their parents go to play and watch a gazillion soccer games. Wearing his new vest, PB sat in a relatively unpopulated area with me and got tasty liver treats while people screamed, men walked by, dogs barked etc. He did fabulously well and seemed very calm. I actually think the vest works a little like his T Touch tee shirt and gives him a sense of security. People looked at him curiously and smiled but no one approached. Amen. Problem solved and PB seems to think the vest is like a tux or something. He positively struts when I put it on him as you can see from the above photo!
Finally, the last two recently read and recommended dog books. I have to read these books in small batches so I have time to absorb everything otherwise it's just checking books off a list without really understanding and thinking about what was said.
Jen Bidner's Dog Heroes book is a great book - basic but very useful info' and lots of fantastic pictures. Bidner traces the history of working dogs all the way back to their first uses in the 18th century and there are all sorts of interesting anecdotes and facts in here.
The Dog Who Loved Too Much I really enjoyed because of the research aspect and Dodman's addressing both common behavioral issues as well as other dog behaviors that get far less attention. For instance, the work he and his colleagues have done at Tufts in attempting to find out exactly why thunderstorms cause such distress in dogs and why so many jump in the bathtub, hide in the bathroom etc. is really thought provoking. He also has a fascinating chapter on OCD issues in dogs and the genetic background to these disorders. Definitely worth reading.
PB and I are off to get some things done so we can head over to Leavenworth on Tuesday for a day in the fall sunshine and the outdoors. Photos will be forthcoming.
No comments:
Post a Comment