Post by oksaradt on Feb 7, 2009 18:35:20 GMT -5
Last week, one of the dog handlers that I trade email with contacted me for an opinion. She was watching (in email) a discussion on locating human remains at this time of year and how the dog teams would prefer to work in the spring. She sent a link to the temperature differential post to the other list (with my permission). An “expert” in that discussion took affront to my post. I didn’t know if Temperature Differential was the source of the dog team’s frustration with scattered remains. It was just a possibility. One always hangs their butt out over the edge when offering any email/web advice because rarely do you get all the information required. The poster knows what they saw, but most times they don’t convey the required information well enough for the reader to “see” what was going on.
A discussion ensued, apparently heated. I only got glimpses and that was second hand, so I really don’t know all the details. The original issue was dogs working scattered skeletal remains. As the well intentioned dog handler tried to help, the “expert” took affront. Eventually, it came out that “Wellllll, he’s one of those SA followers, ..” and so on.
I just had to laugh because I realized that years after Ms. Anderson went off to prison, insecure dog trainers are using her stupidity and her wrong doing to bolster their own images; Thus, a Scarlet Letter must be hanging upon my chest. . No matter that I went on to study forensic science in grad school or another one of those SA followers went on to get awarded search dog of the year for their work at Katrina.
The “expert” went further and stated that dogs disturbing the bones as they walk over them “knocks the decomp right out of them.” At this point, I suspected what was happening, but my email buddy had wisely walked away as the “expert” was now yelling in large font.
Again, I can only surmise with too little information second-hand from the ”expert”, but I’d say most likely the skeletal remains were in the state called “greasy bones” where they still retain adipose tissue and the propensity for adipocere sealing develops in moist conditions. If dogs are not trained to work on adipocere, tripping over the bones could rub the adipocere coating off and expose the odiferous adipose tissue underneath causing the effect the expert had often observed, but had no explanation as to why “the dogs suddenly get all excited over the bones once they are disturbed.”
The expert went on to debunk my Temperature Differential post by saying my dog, Murphy was working on “scent memory”. This is where dogs remember where they are rewarded and go back to those locations hoping to be rewarded again. Dogs that do this are normally the result of poor timing on the handler’s part in their rewards in training and poor proofing on the locations. Dogs are like the kids in all of us, if they can get an easy win, they’ll try; Thus, it is up to handlers/trainers to teach the dog that the location is not the key, but the scent it might find there. Historic bones and teeth are great for teaching this as they leave no tissue residue if you don’t place them in wet conditions where skeletal/dental molecules could wash into soil, wood, etc. You can set up a program of problems where the dog has to go over where it was rewarded last time, let it check where sources were, and tell it to move on if it tries the easy win where nothing is there. I tend to ask the dog to “check” if it tries and let the dog convince itself that nothing is there now. This has to be done for those searches where there are just lots of scattered sources that can be found, documented, and picked up, but they want you to go back to find more in the same area.
Sooooo, being the engineer, I had to get Murphy to prove to me if he was using scent memory on the buried or not. Oklahoma being the diverse environment it is, where we had ice and snow last week, we now have temperatures in the upper 60s, strong winds, and fire danger…(never a dull moment here). Yesterday, I set out historic teeth and bones to work surrounding the 12-14 inch cemetery forcing Murphy to work over the area to find the scent sources. Soil temperature was 57’F and Air Temperature was a comfortable 67’F. Murphy checked the burial spots thoroughly as he thought something should be there, but no scent and he moved on. This is as it should be. No scent, no reward.
This morning I picked up most of the sources from last night, but there was one bone I couldn’t find….got a dog, put him to work….. Murphy located my bone and chasing his ball through the cemetery, stops and nose goes to ground. He makes a find. As documented in a previous post, this cemetery is loaded with blanks and animal remains as well as human remains. I did not have the map, so I took it on faith (possibly screwing up my dog) and rewarded him with a lot of praise and a food reward, plus throwing that ball he’d dropped for scent. I noted the location via the outside border flags and came back to check the results. Turns out he’d located properly buried teeth with a blank hole on one side and a Armadillo tail on the other side. Oh yes, soil temperature had dropped to 55’F and Air Temp with my thermometer measured 49F, the weather station reported it as 51F. Last night the scent was pushed down into the ground due to higher air temperature and cooler soil temperature. This morning, the reverse was true, the warmer soil and cooler air temperature gave up the scent bounty to my intrepid Airedale explorer.
So, in regards to scent memory being the key to working in the ice…….without setting up a blind, I’d say that wasn’t the case. I do try to train an honest dog, perhaps the expert doesn’t go to these extremes with their dogs.
So, beware of my scarlet letter if you wish to quote me. As always remember my disclaimer that there are no experts in HRD work….INCLUDING ME. These posts are an attempt to share information for those dog handlers that don’t wish to or can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars to learn what should be shared, discussed, disproved or proved to be accurate in training and working search dogs. Our common quest should be to get at the core of what our dogs do such that we can train them to be better and MORE IMPORTANTLY, so we, as dog handlers, can become better at what we do to serve the dead and their families.
A discussion ensued, apparently heated. I only got glimpses and that was second hand, so I really don’t know all the details. The original issue was dogs working scattered skeletal remains. As the well intentioned dog handler tried to help, the “expert” took affront. Eventually, it came out that “Wellllll, he’s one of those SA followers, ..” and so on.
I just had to laugh because I realized that years after Ms. Anderson went off to prison, insecure dog trainers are using her stupidity and her wrong doing to bolster their own images; Thus, a Scarlet Letter must be hanging upon my chest. . No matter that I went on to study forensic science in grad school or another one of those SA followers went on to get awarded search dog of the year for their work at Katrina.
The “expert” went further and stated that dogs disturbing the bones as they walk over them “knocks the decomp right out of them.” At this point, I suspected what was happening, but my email buddy had wisely walked away as the “expert” was now yelling in large font.
Again, I can only surmise with too little information second-hand from the ”expert”, but I’d say most likely the skeletal remains were in the state called “greasy bones” where they still retain adipose tissue and the propensity for adipocere sealing develops in moist conditions. If dogs are not trained to work on adipocere, tripping over the bones could rub the adipocere coating off and expose the odiferous adipose tissue underneath causing the effect the expert had often observed, but had no explanation as to why “the dogs suddenly get all excited over the bones once they are disturbed.”
The expert went on to debunk my Temperature Differential post by saying my dog, Murphy was working on “scent memory”. This is where dogs remember where they are rewarded and go back to those locations hoping to be rewarded again. Dogs that do this are normally the result of poor timing on the handler’s part in their rewards in training and poor proofing on the locations. Dogs are like the kids in all of us, if they can get an easy win, they’ll try; Thus, it is up to handlers/trainers to teach the dog that the location is not the key, but the scent it might find there. Historic bones and teeth are great for teaching this as they leave no tissue residue if you don’t place them in wet conditions where skeletal/dental molecules could wash into soil, wood, etc. You can set up a program of problems where the dog has to go over where it was rewarded last time, let it check where sources were, and tell it to move on if it tries the easy win where nothing is there. I tend to ask the dog to “check” if it tries and let the dog convince itself that nothing is there now. This has to be done for those searches where there are just lots of scattered sources that can be found, documented, and picked up, but they want you to go back to find more in the same area.
Sooooo, being the engineer, I had to get Murphy to prove to me if he was using scent memory on the buried or not. Oklahoma being the diverse environment it is, where we had ice and snow last week, we now have temperatures in the upper 60s, strong winds, and fire danger…(never a dull moment here). Yesterday, I set out historic teeth and bones to work surrounding the 12-14 inch cemetery forcing Murphy to work over the area to find the scent sources. Soil temperature was 57’F and Air Temperature was a comfortable 67’F. Murphy checked the burial spots thoroughly as he thought something should be there, but no scent and he moved on. This is as it should be. No scent, no reward.
This morning I picked up most of the sources from last night, but there was one bone I couldn’t find….got a dog, put him to work….. Murphy located my bone and chasing his ball through the cemetery, stops and nose goes to ground. He makes a find. As documented in a previous post, this cemetery is loaded with blanks and animal remains as well as human remains. I did not have the map, so I took it on faith (possibly screwing up my dog) and rewarded him with a lot of praise and a food reward, plus throwing that ball he’d dropped for scent. I noted the location via the outside border flags and came back to check the results. Turns out he’d located properly buried teeth with a blank hole on one side and a Armadillo tail on the other side. Oh yes, soil temperature had dropped to 55’F and Air Temp with my thermometer measured 49F, the weather station reported it as 51F. Last night the scent was pushed down into the ground due to higher air temperature and cooler soil temperature. This morning, the reverse was true, the warmer soil and cooler air temperature gave up the scent bounty to my intrepid Airedale explorer.
So, in regards to scent memory being the key to working in the ice…….without setting up a blind, I’d say that wasn’t the case. I do try to train an honest dog, perhaps the expert doesn’t go to these extremes with their dogs.
So, beware of my scarlet letter if you wish to quote me. As always remember my disclaimer that there are no experts in HRD work….INCLUDING ME. These posts are an attempt to share information for those dog handlers that don’t wish to or can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars to learn what should be shared, discussed, disproved or proved to be accurate in training and working search dogs. Our common quest should be to get at the core of what our dogs do such that we can train them to be better and MORE IMPORTANTLY, so we, as dog handlers, can become better at what we do to serve the dead and their families.