Raising the IQ

[oksaradt]

One of the reasons I push for getting a puppy as close to 5 weeks of age as possible is it gives me the opportunity to raise the dog's IQ via problem solving at an early age. Some breeders are going with a program they labeled as "Head Start". Who knew what I was doing for years had such a cool name. It's always cool when someone coins common sense with a new title. For SAR dogs, this has to be stepped up as they are expected to not only deal with the woods, but the best and the worst of human creation.

In SAR work, some handlers prefer a dog that's "all nose", i.e. it thinks more with its nose than its head. Most men that grew up in life thinking with the "other head" can attest to you that this is not all it's cracked up to be.

My favorite example of a dog team thinking with its nose was when I got to go hide for a "live find" team. A really nice malinois and experienced handler that had moved from Michigan to Oklahoma. We were experiencing a heavy snow that day (rare in Oklahoma) and the handler made the mistake of telling me "Jim, Suprise me." I just get goosebumps when handler lays down a scent challenge to me. I was in my winter coveralls, head gear, etc. ,....so I was set to get comfortable in most temperatures. I found a gully in the woods with a bank of snow on the upwind side and we were getting a heavy snowfall at the time. I slipped into the snowbank with my back to a comfortable tree and a bush to hide in, buried myself with snow, and waited for 30 minutes before radioing them while the snow covered my tracks and the marks of my hiding. I put the ear piece in so my radio couldn't be heard and told him to go for it. As chance would have it, he had some newbies coming along to watch (he's sold himself as this big northern search dog team....just how bad could Oklahoma be..?)

To the dog's credit, it got within 50 feet of me within 10 minutes...way cool to watch. It came to the downwind edge of the gully, dropped down into the gully, and promptly lost my scent. It returned back up to the gully. Handler shows up as his wunderhund hadn't come back to him with an alert. He watches his dog and proclaims, "I've seen this before." He hooks his dog up on lead and takes it to the upwind side of the gully (did I mention I was very careful to go just along the edge of the upwind gully, had found a tree branch to cross over on...........hey, he wanted to be surprised). He releases his dog on the upwind side of the gully about 40 feet upwind of me. To the dog's credit, it grids from side to side but never approaches the gully on the upwind side. It gives it's handler the finger and runs back over to the downwind side where it had scent, proceeeds to go up and down the gully, in scent and out. The dog was never challenged to pursue scent to where "IT MIGHT BE"...this is a mental leap for many dogs, a must have for cadaver dogs as cadaver scent ( ignore Rebman's book) just doesn't act the same as live scent unless the body is in active decomposition and producing more heat than ambient.

I watched them struggle for 15 minutes longer along the edge of the gully. The newbies had lost interest while the handler (again to his credit) was trying to reason out what was going on so he could help his dog out. Finally, he gets on the radio (that all team members are tuned into) and asks, "Jim, can you see me? Are we close?" I waited because he was five feet below me until he walked on down the gully around a turn and then whispered, "I've been watching you and your dog for a good 30 minutes now, very impressive." He doesn't reply, but then starts walking down the gully looking up into the trees as he surmises I've climbed a tree on the downwind side of the gully. His dog had begun pacing (for the past 20 minutes) a 20 foot path from side to side straight across from me, telling me exactly where my scent was going...way cool.
When he went around the opposite turn of the gully, still looking up into the trees (because he's decided he's going to beat me), I whispered, "pay attention to your dog, man." I almost got into mals instead of ADTs, another misunderstood breed and his was tenacious, great nose.

He climbs up the gully, stares at this dog who is oblivious to him and now whining as it continues on its now slushy red-brown trek from side-to-side. The handler moves about 10 feet back, stares across the gully, and I wave to him. He nearly wizzed his pants. I then rolled over onto my stomach, inched to the edge of the gully, and blew my breath down into the gully. It took three breaths and the mal jumps down into the gully and climbs up to me where I patted his head. The dog's eyes never connected with me, it's nose brought it to me.....my kind of dog.


Sooooo, with that story, yesterday's Murphy IQ puzzle is below. These are heavy equipment pallets stacked outside of my business.. We considered using them as boat docks, but they've become a permanent fixture and I've enjoyed torturing/teaching multiple dogs on them. The wind literally swirls in and out of these pallets, so many different scent puzzles can be created. Up to yesterday, I've protected my sources from Murphy's mouth with various containers. As I'd observed two days before that he just wasn't quite big enough to climb them yet, I could safely put sources there without container scent to confuse the scent picture. Murphy demonstrated to me that his nose drives him to places he'd never go before. Once Murphy figured out how to use his rear legs (as disaster dog handlers can tell you, the hardest part in getting a dog to climb a ladder is teaching it that it has rear legs. Going down, now that's a whole different type of problem.....you try crawling down a ladder, let me know your visual image....scares the pee out of me.)...Anyway, once he realized he has rear legs his climbing skills have taken off. He climbed up my legs last night to demonstrate he can be a lap dog and and we passed out together to the nightly news.

I have photos of the work on the pallets, but apparently I don't have photo insertion permission yet. The pallets are around 25 feet long, 7 feet wide, 8 inch gaps underneath with various items placed there for convenience. Murphy climbed up onto the first pallet and worked his way in, under, over the underside to find the three sources placed inside. He also decided to tunnel underneath the bottom ballet not once but a total of five laps as it was just fun. Underneath the pallets is asphalt which Murphy face planted on his first time jumping down, but this didn't stop him from going back up several other times. I wasn't coaxing him up or down any of this time and I was concerned about joints, but he appears very resilient. I'll try to keep him from jumping down too far till he's 18 months of age to protect his joints.

Hope this helps people

Jim

[hicntry]

oksaradt said:

One of the reasons I push for getting a puppy as close to 5 weeks of age as possible is it gives me the opportunity to raise the dog's IQ via problem solving at an early age. Some breeders are going with a program they labeled as "Head Start". Who knew what I was doing for years had such a cool name. It's always cool when someone coins common sense with a new title. For SAR dogs, this has to be stepped up as they are expected to not only deal with the woods, but the best and the worst of human creation.

In SAR work, some handlers prefer a dog that's "all nose", i.e. it thinks more with its nose than its head. Most men that grew up in life thinking with the "other head" can attest to you that this is not all it's cracked up to be.
My favorite example of a dog team thinking with its nose was when I got to go hide for a "live find" team. A really nice malinois and experienced handler that had moved from Michigan to Oklahoma. We were experiencing a heavy snow that day (rare in Oklahoma) and the handler made the mistake of telling me "Jim, Suprise me." I just get goosebumps when handler lays down a scent challenge to me. I was in my winter coveralls, head gear, etc. ,....so I was set to get comfortable in most temperatures. I found a gully in the woods with a bank of snow on the upwind side and we were getting a heavy snowfall at the time. I slipped into the snowbank with my back to a comfortable tree and a bush to hide in, buried myself with snow, and waited for 30 minutes before radioing them while the snow covered my tracks and the marks of my hiding. I put the ear piece in so my radio couldn't be heard and told him to go for it. As chance would have it, he had some newbies coming along to watch (he's sold himself as this big northern search dog team....just how bad could Oklahoma be..?)

To the dog's credit, it got within 50 feet of me within 10 minutes...way cool to watch. It came to the downwind edge of the gully, dropped down into the gully, and promptly lost my scent. It returned back up to the gully. Handler shows up as his wunderhund hadn't come back to him with an alert. He watches his dog and proclaims, "I've seen this before." He hooks his dog up on lead and takes it to the upwind side of the gully (did I mention I was very careful to go just along the edge of the upwind gully, had found a tree branch to cross over on...........hey, he wanted to be surprised). He releases his dog on the upwind side of the gully about 40 feet upwind of me. To the dog's credit, it grids from side to side but never approaches the gully on the upwind side. It gives it's handler the finger and runs back over to the downwind side where it had scent, proceeeds to go up and down the gully, in scent and out. The dog was never challenged to pursue scent to where "IT MIGHT BE"...this is a mental leap for many dogs, a must have for cadaver dogs as cadaver scent ( ignore Rebman's book) just doesn't act the same as live scent unless the body is in active decomposition and producing more heat than ambient.

I watched them struggle for 15 minutes longer along the edge of the gully. The newbies had lost interest while the handler (again to his credit) was trying to reason out what was going on so he could help his dog out. Finally, he gets on the radio (that all team members are tuned into) and asks, "Jim, can you see me? Are we close?" I waited because he was five feet below me until he walked on down the gully around a turn and then whispered, "I've been watching you and your dog for a good 30 minutes now, very impressive." He doesn't reply, but then starts walking down the gully looking up into the trees as he surmises I've climbed a tree on the downwind side of the gully. His dog had begun pacing (for the past 20 minutes) a 20 foot path from side to side straight across from me, telling me exactly where my scent was going...way cool.
When he went around the opposite turn of the gully, still looking up into the trees (because he's decided he's going to beat me), I whispered, "pay attention to your dog, man." I almost got into mals instead of ADTs, another misunderstood breed and his was tenacious, great nose.

He climbs up the gully, stares at this dog who is oblivious to him and now whining as it continues on its now slushy red-brown trek from side-to-side. The handler moves about 10 feet back, stares across the gully, and I wave to him. He nearly wizzed his pants. I then rolled over onto my stomach, inched to the edge of the gully, and blew my breath down into the gully. It took three breaths and the mal jumps down into the gully and climbs up to me where I patted his head. The dog's eyes never connected with me, it's nose brought it to me.....my kind of dog.


Sooooo, with that story, yesterday's Murphy IQ puzzle is below. These are heavy equipment pallets stacked outside of my business.. We considered using them as boat docks, but they've become a permanent fixture and I've enjoyed torturing/teaching multiple dogs on them. The wind literally swirls in and out of these pallets, so many different scent puzzles can be created. Up to yesterday, I've protected my sources from Murphy's mouth with various containers. As I'd observed two days before that he just wasn't quite big enough to climb them yet, I could safely put sources there without container scent to confuse the scent picture. Murphy demonstrated to me that his nose drives him to places he'd never go before. Once Murphy figured out how to use his rear legs (as disaster dog handlers can tell you, the hardest part in getting a dog to climb a ladder is teaching it that it has rear legs. Going down, now that's a whole different type of problem.....you try crawling down a ladder, let me know your visual image....scares the pee out of me.)...Anyway, once he realized he has rear legs his climbing skills have taken off. He climbed up my legs last night to demonstrate he can be a lap dog and and we passed out together to the nightly news.

I have photos of the work on the pallets, but apparently I don't have photo insertion permission yet. The pallets are around 25 feet long, 7 feet wide, 8 inch gaps underneath with various items placed there for convenience. Murphy climbed up onto the first pallet and worked his way in, under, over the underside to find the three sources placed inside. He also decided to tunnel underneath the bottom ballet not once but a total of five laps as it was just fun. Underneath the pallets is asphalt which Murphy face planted on his first time jumping down, but this didn't stop him from going back up several other times. I wasn't coaxing him up or down any of this time and I was concerned about joints, but he appears very resilient. I'll try to keep him from jumping down too far till he's 18 months of age to protect his joints.

Hope this helps people

Jim

Interesting Jim. I don't know if this coincides with this, but, people are always trying to teach a young pup to man track. They push them and pull them this way and that on a leash. I tell them to lay a track and go sit in a chair and watch the dog and pay attention to the air currents. They will learn more about how a dog scents, and the dog learns how to use his nose better, and faster, if they just keep thier butt in that chair for a few sessions. A good cold tracking, older dog can teach a person alot about how it all works.....only if they sit back, watch and pay attention to the wind and how the dog is working it. It sounds like you are letting the pup learn to use his nose on his own.

[oksaradt]

Interesting Jim. I don't know if this coincides with this, but, people are always trying to teach a young pup to man track. They push them and pull them this way and that on a leash. I tell them to lay a track and go sit in a chair and watch the dog and pay attention to the air currents. They will learn more about how a dog scents, and the dog learns how to use his nose better, and faster, if they just keep thier butt in that chair for a few sessions. A good cold tracking, older dog can teach a person alot about how it all works.....only if they sit back, watch and pay attention to the wind and how the dog is working it. It sounds like you are letting the pup learn to use his nose on his own.

Don,
You are exactly right. One of the reasons I took such pains in selecting a puppy is I must start with a puppy( that has conveyed to me in the auditioning process) that loves the scent of human remains. With that sort of dog, my job is now one of being the coach to improve the skills of the dog in finding what we've already determined it does love. I set up series of problems on a very scripted training program to sharpen the dog's scenting abilities, searching abilities, and problem solving abilities.

(one of my biggest critiques of the military style of scent work is they start with a dog with high ball drive and assume they can attain transference to scent. The end result is they wash a lot of dogs out because while the dog loves a ball, it has no interest in finding cocaine, or gun powder, fruit, or whatever.)
When I set up bone problems for Murphy, I prefer to run Dax on them first to show me exactly what the scent is doing so I can observe how Murphy deals with it. People give me strange looks when I say this, but I consider scent dogs my teachers when it comes to scent. They are the creatures with scenting abilities over a thousand times more accurate than ours. Haag and Shook determined that dogs' nasal receptors tend to replace themselves every 3-4 months and that it's been determined that an increase in nasal receptors tuned to items the dog has worked most will occur. So, if I work a lot of bone and teeth with my puppy, its nose will get even better for these items. Tissue and decomposition materials are a breeze in comparison.

As for tracking, I learned from Schutzhund people how to teach a dog to track....... this is great if you want the dog to define exact footsteps where the person walked. For SAR work....it is less than acceptable. I prefer a trailing dog that works the person's scent that has migrated with the wind off the track. This type of dog works very well in cooperation with human man-trackers as the trackers can hang back and laboriously work the track while the dog can race ahead working scent (most often) to the side of the track.

The main positive trick I did learn from the Schutzhund people is using the wienie pieces in the track to teach the dog to put its head down. I use the command "suuk" to simply suggest to my dog that it will be able to find scent close to the ground in the cases where we are working clandestine graves or old scattered skeletal remains.

This part of Murphy's training is basically setting up scent problems for him to walk up upon and then acting oh so happy when he decides to work it. He is currently going through the phase that he really wants to possess the bones he finds, so I'll be going to suet cages for a while till I can convince him that I provide a better paycheck when he includes me in on the find.

The process you are eluding to where the handler feels they must dictate how the dog works tends to create a dog that develops a crutch in the handler. The handler comes to feel useful, but the dog's abilities are severely limited. Once my dogs have the basic gist of what I need them to do, I slowly convince them that when it comes to scent that I am a complete and total moron that they must convince that there is something there. People that have worked with me will readily agree I do moron quite well (I'm not quite sure if this is a compliment.....) I have to reach this relationship with my dogs because many many times what they find blends totally in with the surroundings.

One of my main joys when I teach at seminars is creating problems where the handlers have no visual aids as to where the scent sources are. They are forced to rely upon their dogs. I have been known to go to the other extreme as well when a handler makes the claim that they don't "look". I've set up problems with lots of visible containers where one container may have a source in it, there may be no source at all, or the source is there, but not in a container. Then I sit back and feel their pain. These are all lessons I had to learn as well. Unfortunately, many handlers live vicariously through their dogs and take it personally when you set up learning situations where they must struggle through to grow. such is life.

Jim

[Wolfer]

Don do you remeber the Post where We Had the Scent debate...... On human tracking Who was the guy that said secent revitalizes........

Srry Jim this thread IS great info We had a guy here awhile back that was trien to convine us that scent renews itself and the advantages of SCH Type tracking.

The way I Look at it IS My victim could be dead or dieng ( so you know your victim is dead) I want My dog to Pull out all stops and Push the track, Drift the track, Nose into the wind, But Always move the track the fastest way possible.

[oksaradt]

I got the treat (a couple of years back) to go along with a Michigan search team's mock search. This team used three dogs in cooperation to find "live." They would use a trailing dog to acquire scent and give direction of travel then deploy to area search dogs on either side of the trailing dog, in parallel paths with the attitude that the area search dogs would eventually lock onto the scent cone and pass up the trailing dog.
I had to convince the trailing dog handler that I could keep up in the woods. We literally did a steeplechase through the woods following behind her bloodhound while the handlers scout/flanker is on the radio giving direction-of-travel changes over the radio on the fly. This team thinks nothing of working a sq mile wilderness problem using this method.
To my credit I was told that I move pretty good for a bald fat man.

Jim

[Maverick]

Jim -

I really appreciate your insights! With a little thought, it is easy to translate your training techniques and scent insights into game hunting. Please keep it up!

Cheers, Pete