Post by oksaradt on Jan 10, 2009 11:23:37 GMT -5
Ok, I know I've posted too much here when I have to go through the other posts to see if I'm repeating myself. I didn't see this subject in the list. That's probably because I try to address this from day one of the dog's training. On another list three handlers that I'm all familiar with have pontificated on this subject and if I interjected there, they would feel it was personal.
Soooo, for the benefit of everyone else, I'll lay out what I do to prevent "snacking".
"Snacking" is my term for the dog tasting or taking in it's mouth human remains. This can be as innocent as the dog taking a bone back to the handler, but it still went into the mouth.
First, why is this a bad thing? I'd been into HRD for a couple of years when I had an email debate with a Canadian handler. That handler told me it was accepted by the RCMP for the dog to bring bones back to the handler as part of the refind. My response was I considered this "shoddy police work." Ummm, it's never been the same with that handler which is a shame as part of the reason I felt Airedales would work out at this was because of that handler's experiences. Oh well...
As a Death Investigator, having MY REMAINS disturbed by anything can cloud the facts of my investigation. My job is not to find guilt or innocence, but to present to my pathologist the facts such that cause and manner of death can be determined. What the local District Attorney wants to do with those facts is beyond the scope of my job. Yes, coyotes can spread my remains all over the world. I can't control that. As the native americans would say, "Nature takes its own course." BUT, I can control dogs working for us in the discovery not adding to the problem. Where the bones or otherwise lie can sometimes tell us volumes as to what happened once life left my charge. If a dog comes out of the bush with a human bone in its mouth, it's a good chance that this bone was all by itself and we have no idea where to look for the others. If this is the case, how can the dog take us back to where the bone had lain as ....well....it's not there anymore....seems simple to me. The handler may take the bone from the dog and say, "show me!" The dog looks at the handler with a look of stupification suggesting, "it's in your hand stupid, what more do I have to do for you?"
So, at the very start when I train a dog, I try to instill that it needs to leave the Human Remains alone.
Hmmm, for the dog this can create a contradiction as well........the best HRD dogs love the stuff...that's why they are in the job they are in (Or the handler dubbed them to be ...that's another story).
Using Murphy as an example, we started off where he'd have possessed (grabbed) the bones he found if he could. When he was working teeth and I was too blind to see what he'd found, there were times he'd pick the tooth up and spit it at me. Tempe was the same way. This issue was all on me. The dogs had lost patience with me. And, I take the blame.
So, point 1: What ever a handler's dog does in a search that's inappropriate.....THE HANDLER IS TO BLAME. We are our dogs' mentor and also our dogs' biggest handicap. By ignoring something that is "cute" when the puppy is training, we reward what can become a bad habit when the adult dog is working.
It is up to the handler to cover all the bases in a search (and we add bases routinely as we become more experienced).
Point 2: Dogs mark or defecate near or on a source. Well, pooping or peeing on a source just ruins it. When I've had other dogs do this to my bones, I either destroy the bone or cut off the offending area if it's a long bone and toss that. There's no point keeping it as you'd be training the dog on the canine waste scent, not the bone or otherwise.
It's common for a dog to mark near a source as this is a canine hunting trait. The dog is putting its own flag out to find this later for further investigation. The point is the handler needs to instill in the dog "let's find it now, not later. I have a great reward waiting for you if we finish this now."
I had the agonizing experience of failing 8 other dog teams in a certification in another state because the first dog marked two feet from the source (shallow buried). The source was fine, so we could go on. That dog found that source, but missed the other so it failed as well. The other 8 dogs that came in all checked the urine and added their own marker. The aghast handlers all called their dogs away from the area; Thus, depriving them of finding that source. As an evaluator, my hands were tied as the source had not been tainted AND this could easily happen in the real world.
Whenever my dogs linger at canine scent or mark, I verbally correct it and tell them to get back to work. I don't yank them out of the area....for the very reason above. A coyote could have easily marked the area to find the "possible bones" near by. My dogs routinely want to defecate when we start searching. It's a hunting trait of "empty the bowels so I can move faster if I need to." I've yet to convince my dogs that the human remains aren't going anywhere. But, when I'm on a real search, I run the dog through a negative area first to try to get the bladder and bowels empty.
Point 3: How do we get our dog to leave the remains alone and tell us about it?
3a ) Two essential commands that I start training as early as I can and use ALL THE TIME is EASY and WAIT. I use EASY with anything the dog is considering digging at to get closer or obtain whether that is cat poo, gophers, buried food, human remains, anything. It is to convey to the dog to "back off with the paw and go in with the nose." To use this only for human remains causes it to become a cue to the dog. The dog learns that in training you tend to say EASY if it's close and then becomes confused in a real search when you don't say it, so this must not be a good thing....."I just won't alert to the human as I'm not sure" So, it has to be used both when working HRs and not. It becomes part of your routine communication with the dog.
The WAIT starts out as a gate command to convince the dog it must wait until I open the gate, enter, and close the gate before it can greet me or otherwise. This migrates into a "WAIT (for your food bowl)" as all of my dogs must do sit-waits at dinner time until I allow each or all the dogs to eat (at my whim). This is useful in passively declaring dominant status as the boss (in the dog world) dictates eating order. But, in HRD work, the WAIT is essential if your dog comes upon a great bloody mess that it simply wants to taste. The dog respects the WAIT command as it implies that the wait will be over eventually. In that time you can reward the dog as you direct it away from the scent source. You have your find. The dog has a great party and the "tasting" is forgotten (BETTER make it a damn good party in the dog's eyes).
Point 4: "Soo, Jim, you still haven't told me how to keep the dog from mouthing in the first place...?"
As I train first skeletal/dental till the puppy is a year old and then add decomp/tissue, I have to go through this twice. And, if I see the dog wavering in training, I'll do some remedial training. (There should never be any shame in doing remedial training with your dog. Ignoring a problem is shameful. Trying to fix it is pro-active.)
Part of imprinting and later indication training has the sources in locations of physical unavailability, i.e. the dog can get the scent just fine, but it can't get to the stuff. At first, we can use containers such as suet cages, mason jars with serrated lids, baskets, mesh wraps, etc. Next we need to get away from containers, so we have to get creative with rocks, bricks, wood debris, fencing, loose bricks in walls, whatever is available.
What is critical is the handler's timing in reward. Having the source inaccesible to the dog gives the handler a little breathing room in learning the dog's behaviors at a find. If the dog is trying to mouth your source.....well, by gosh I think the dog found it, either cue the alert or reward! Don't stand there and watch the dog! (This would seem obvious, but it's very common to watch handlers become stupified in wonder and joy at their dog's behavior at a source. That's what trainers are there for to slap them on the back of the head and yell, "REWARD YOUR DOG!!"
Everybody goes through this at times, so it's one of those "cute handler moments" that the trainer can not allow to propogate.)
The point is that we want the dog to become accustomed to the fact that it can't posses the remains and to ANTICIPATE a "Really GOOD Experience is coming".....from the handler or (for the poof trainers) out of the blue. I personally want my dogs to know I hold the paycheck.
Once the dog gets used to the fact that locating the scent source means great things are coming, the idea of self-rewarding loses importance. At this point, the handler can begin introducing problems where the sources have no containers with the attitude that they may have to back track.
With Murphy skeletal/dental is not an issue. With tissue/decomp, we are going through this all over again and I expected that. It's part of the dog's training. Unlike humans working in a candy store, dogs never get tired of eating steak tartar. So, we again convince them the training reward is better than self-rewarding....and it takes a good sell on the handlers part. A low key, "good dawg" just isn't going to do it.
Unfortunately, web-based or email training is limited at best, so what I see in my head is not always easily conveyed in words. This issue is something all HRD dog handlers have to address at one time or another. As with all we do, it's better to set the dog up in training so we can fix it rather than be surprised on a real search.
Oh, one more point,
Guess that makes it.....
Point 5: The handlers that reward with food at the source WILL have the most difficulty overcoming this hurdle. Why? Dog learns the find means food and there is food right in front of it. WHO KNEW! Happy Days!
This is why I reward a ball/toy at the source and the dog trades me the ball for food AWAY FROM THE SCENT SOURCE. The ball/toy is the marker (click click click)
Gotta a death call, so gotta cut this short.
Regards,
Jim
Soooo, for the benefit of everyone else, I'll lay out what I do to prevent "snacking".
"Snacking" is my term for the dog tasting or taking in it's mouth human remains. This can be as innocent as the dog taking a bone back to the handler, but it still went into the mouth.
First, why is this a bad thing? I'd been into HRD for a couple of years when I had an email debate with a Canadian handler. That handler told me it was accepted by the RCMP for the dog to bring bones back to the handler as part of the refind. My response was I considered this "shoddy police work." Ummm, it's never been the same with that handler which is a shame as part of the reason I felt Airedales would work out at this was because of that handler's experiences. Oh well...
As a Death Investigator, having MY REMAINS disturbed by anything can cloud the facts of my investigation. My job is not to find guilt or innocence, but to present to my pathologist the facts such that cause and manner of death can be determined. What the local District Attorney wants to do with those facts is beyond the scope of my job. Yes, coyotes can spread my remains all over the world. I can't control that. As the native americans would say, "Nature takes its own course." BUT, I can control dogs working for us in the discovery not adding to the problem. Where the bones or otherwise lie can sometimes tell us volumes as to what happened once life left my charge. If a dog comes out of the bush with a human bone in its mouth, it's a good chance that this bone was all by itself and we have no idea where to look for the others. If this is the case, how can the dog take us back to where the bone had lain as ....well....it's not there anymore....seems simple to me. The handler may take the bone from the dog and say, "show me!" The dog looks at the handler with a look of stupification suggesting, "it's in your hand stupid, what more do I have to do for you?"
So, at the very start when I train a dog, I try to instill that it needs to leave the Human Remains alone.
Hmmm, for the dog this can create a contradiction as well........the best HRD dogs love the stuff...that's why they are in the job they are in (Or the handler dubbed them to be ...that's another story).
Using Murphy as an example, we started off where he'd have possessed (grabbed) the bones he found if he could. When he was working teeth and I was too blind to see what he'd found, there were times he'd pick the tooth up and spit it at me. Tempe was the same way. This issue was all on me. The dogs had lost patience with me. And, I take the blame.
So, point 1: What ever a handler's dog does in a search that's inappropriate.....THE HANDLER IS TO BLAME. We are our dogs' mentor and also our dogs' biggest handicap. By ignoring something that is "cute" when the puppy is training, we reward what can become a bad habit when the adult dog is working.
It is up to the handler to cover all the bases in a search (and we add bases routinely as we become more experienced).
Point 2: Dogs mark or defecate near or on a source. Well, pooping or peeing on a source just ruins it. When I've had other dogs do this to my bones, I either destroy the bone or cut off the offending area if it's a long bone and toss that. There's no point keeping it as you'd be training the dog on the canine waste scent, not the bone or otherwise.
It's common for a dog to mark near a source as this is a canine hunting trait. The dog is putting its own flag out to find this later for further investigation. The point is the handler needs to instill in the dog "let's find it now, not later. I have a great reward waiting for you if we finish this now."
I had the agonizing experience of failing 8 other dog teams in a certification in another state because the first dog marked two feet from the source (shallow buried). The source was fine, so we could go on. That dog found that source, but missed the other so it failed as well. The other 8 dogs that came in all checked the urine and added their own marker. The aghast handlers all called their dogs away from the area; Thus, depriving them of finding that source. As an evaluator, my hands were tied as the source had not been tainted AND this could easily happen in the real world.
Whenever my dogs linger at canine scent or mark, I verbally correct it and tell them to get back to work. I don't yank them out of the area....for the very reason above. A coyote could have easily marked the area to find the "possible bones" near by. My dogs routinely want to defecate when we start searching. It's a hunting trait of "empty the bowels so I can move faster if I need to." I've yet to convince my dogs that the human remains aren't going anywhere. But, when I'm on a real search, I run the dog through a negative area first to try to get the bladder and bowels empty.
Point 3: How do we get our dog to leave the remains alone and tell us about it?
3a ) Two essential commands that I start training as early as I can and use ALL THE TIME is EASY and WAIT. I use EASY with anything the dog is considering digging at to get closer or obtain whether that is cat poo, gophers, buried food, human remains, anything. It is to convey to the dog to "back off with the paw and go in with the nose." To use this only for human remains causes it to become a cue to the dog. The dog learns that in training you tend to say EASY if it's close and then becomes confused in a real search when you don't say it, so this must not be a good thing....."I just won't alert to the human as I'm not sure" So, it has to be used both when working HRs and not. It becomes part of your routine communication with the dog.
The WAIT starts out as a gate command to convince the dog it must wait until I open the gate, enter, and close the gate before it can greet me or otherwise. This migrates into a "WAIT (for your food bowl)" as all of my dogs must do sit-waits at dinner time until I allow each or all the dogs to eat (at my whim). This is useful in passively declaring dominant status as the boss (in the dog world) dictates eating order. But, in HRD work, the WAIT is essential if your dog comes upon a great bloody mess that it simply wants to taste. The dog respects the WAIT command as it implies that the wait will be over eventually. In that time you can reward the dog as you direct it away from the scent source. You have your find. The dog has a great party and the "tasting" is forgotten (BETTER make it a damn good party in the dog's eyes).
Point 4: "Soo, Jim, you still haven't told me how to keep the dog from mouthing in the first place...?"
As I train first skeletal/dental till the puppy is a year old and then add decomp/tissue, I have to go through this twice. And, if I see the dog wavering in training, I'll do some remedial training. (There should never be any shame in doing remedial training with your dog. Ignoring a problem is shameful. Trying to fix it is pro-active.)
Part of imprinting and later indication training has the sources in locations of physical unavailability, i.e. the dog can get the scent just fine, but it can't get to the stuff. At first, we can use containers such as suet cages, mason jars with serrated lids, baskets, mesh wraps, etc. Next we need to get away from containers, so we have to get creative with rocks, bricks, wood debris, fencing, loose bricks in walls, whatever is available.
What is critical is the handler's timing in reward. Having the source inaccesible to the dog gives the handler a little breathing room in learning the dog's behaviors at a find. If the dog is trying to mouth your source.....well, by gosh I think the dog found it, either cue the alert or reward! Don't stand there and watch the dog! (This would seem obvious, but it's very common to watch handlers become stupified in wonder and joy at their dog's behavior at a source. That's what trainers are there for to slap them on the back of the head and yell, "REWARD YOUR DOG!!"
Everybody goes through this at times, so it's one of those "cute handler moments" that the trainer can not allow to propogate.)
The point is that we want the dog to become accustomed to the fact that it can't posses the remains and to ANTICIPATE a "Really GOOD Experience is coming".....from the handler or (for the poof trainers) out of the blue. I personally want my dogs to know I hold the paycheck.
Once the dog gets used to the fact that locating the scent source means great things are coming, the idea of self-rewarding loses importance. At this point, the handler can begin introducing problems where the sources have no containers with the attitude that they may have to back track.
With Murphy skeletal/dental is not an issue. With tissue/decomp, we are going through this all over again and I expected that. It's part of the dog's training. Unlike humans working in a candy store, dogs never get tired of eating steak tartar. So, we again convince them the training reward is better than self-rewarding....and it takes a good sell on the handlers part. A low key, "good dawg" just isn't going to do it.
Unfortunately, web-based or email training is limited at best, so what I see in my head is not always easily conveyed in words. This issue is something all HRD dog handlers have to address at one time or another. As with all we do, it's better to set the dog up in training so we can fix it rather than be surprised on a real search.
Oh, one more point,
Guess that makes it.....
Point 5: The handlers that reward with food at the source WILL have the most difficulty overcoming this hurdle. Why? Dog learns the find means food and there is food right in front of it. WHO KNEW! Happy Days!
This is why I reward a ball/toy at the source and the dog trades me the ball for food AWAY FROM THE SCENT SOURCE. The ball/toy is the marker (click click click)
Gotta a death call, so gotta cut this short.
Regards,
Jim