Post by oksaradt on Mar 20, 2010 11:38:08 GMT -5
This was a seminar of highs and lows for me. The instructor I usually tag team with had to be in Washington, DC. The last-minute replacement instructor was a fine gentleman set in his ways. We'd never worked together and I believe that was part of the lack of flow. We looked at scent in many different ways yet the end results we expect from handlers were the same. It was a prime example of there are lots of ways to train a dog (and handlers). My philosophy as an instructor is to try to see training from the handler and the dog's point of view. Working with that mindset then I can attempt to continue them down a positive path. Other instructors believe there is only their tried and true method and they only feel comfortable teaching that method. As a result, I had to give the other instructor his head and see what resulted in each student, positive or negative, then try to create a positive result at the end. Usually I walk away with a very positive feeling that we did some good for all. This time I just I just don't know for all. Time will tell.
I had some great advanced students. Each had to suffer through their own trials and through such suffering they tend to become a better handler. An advanced student implies the dog team is ready to work on their own or nearly ready. Many dog teams train under the illusion that they are ready and it's my job to let them work out if that's true or not. I know many dog teams that blow smoke to their Law Enforcement. Such teams make the rest of us look bad as sometimes that's the only time law enforcement will use HRD dogs as the experience can be so disconcerting that they never try one again. Worse, such teams can severely impact a search by pulling a search away from a possible find to go explore a snipe hunt the teams create due to poor or very little training.
I can describe some of what the advanced dog teams went through, but reading it never does it justice. This is the way I was trained for years with every problem set my dog and I worked. I set up scent problems where it is very rare for the handler to see a scent source. The search where you get to see the body your dog has brought you to is more the exception than the rule. The norm is you have to trust the training in your dog EXPLICITYLY to be able to read your dog and plant your flags precisely such that law enforcement can recover remains and evidence. I've worked cases where your dog being off by six inches means the difference between the Evidence Recovery Team making a find or coming to the conclusion that you and your dog suck.
All of my problem sets are timed for multiple reasons. First it applies pressure upon the handler just knowing time is limited. It forces the handler to become very aware of their area and how they need to work it to maximize their dog's coverage of the area.
Second, it applies pressure by the handler knowing it runs out.
Third, when a dog handler declares they are done before the time runs out, they are given the opportunity to utilize the rest of what is left to mull over where they've placed their flags via working with their dog. This tends to be the cruelest part of any test because this gives the handler time to mull over their decisions. Handlers are given the opportunity to move their flags. The test they ran this seminar stated they could be within two feet of the scent source. ......two feet...oi vey...such a luxury...I don't think I saw one handler consider that distance. They all placed their flags much closer, didn't place one at all, or talked themselves into something not there at all. This last one sounds ludicrous, but it happens a lot. It can happen if there is a strong scent source elsewhere in the area and the right conditions move scent somewhere else. Usually though, it happens because the handler starts to question their dog and then their dog becomes confused and tries to please the handler. That happening is a fear of all dog handlers....that we talk our dog into telling us something is there by our behavior rather than the scent itself.
When running these tests, there are at least two evaluators. I got asked to be one because I set up the problems. To their credit, subsequent dog teams testing allowed previous dog teams to watch them. Each was asked if they wanted all but the evaluators to leave. I can attest from lots of prior experience that once you start working your dog that you forget everyone else is there. A crowd still adds a little more pressure. I've had 60 dog handlers watch me test in the past. You just have to develop a thick skin that will help you afterwards with all your searches.
All of the tests were run first by experienced dogs to make sure they were fair to those being tested and to make sure the tests are workable in the time alloted. The testing is set up in levels with increasing difficulty with a failure in one means you can not progress further. Unlike many certifications out there, a dog team that completes the series can feel confident that they are prepared for what law enforcement will ask of them. They can feel confident that they will be an asset rather than a liability.
In previous seminars, we succeeded in all the students having plenty of work through out the seminar except for building searches. This seminar had more down time for the students than I prefer. My advanced students stepped up for me and took many of the intermediate and beginner students through their problems after I explained to them what the scent was doing and they got the benefit of their dogs doing the same prior to this. Our dogs allow us to see scent. An experienced handler gradually develops a fluid image of where the scent travels from watching their dog. An experienced handler also learns to see how scent movement changes as the enviroment changes due to sun, shade, wind, temperature, and humidity levels.
Running other students through previous problems (for me) also gave the advanced dog handlers the benefit of seeing how other dogs (and handlers) solve (or don't) the scent problems. I know I learned a lot by often working up to 30 different dog teams through the same problem through out a day when I was in the same position.
Handler Hell:
I set this up this year with two valid decomp sources, adipose tissue in a red plastic ketchup dispenser under a fallen tree AND a scent source from a two-month old semi-mummified and decomposed body high in a bird feeder at 7 feet. (I know a lot of certifications set the criteria of a high at a maximum of six feet. For me, high means high, anything off the ground from six inches to ....well, the sky is the limit. I've yet worked a search where the deceased knew they had to be no higher than six feet up.)
There was also lots of deer legs in various stages of decomposition, a plastic mustard dispenser in a trunk with rancid beef fat (a popular find for many). There was some fresh beef tongue wrapped in a white towel then placed in a suet cage the root ball of an overturned tree. There was a mason jar with a decomposed centipede in it. The point of this distraction was to see if anyone fixated on the jar. What it contained (as long as not human) was inconsequential. A frisbee was hung on a tree. A puppy tennis ball was hung in a suet cage for those dogs fixated on tennis balls. There was a PVC device covered in mud from a result of a poor well repair on my part, but no one flagged it which is fine as there were no remains on it.
The point of this exercise was to allow each dog team, regardless of experise level, to find out what their dog or what they talked their dog into. Each dog team was given two flags and were told their were two valid sources to find.
Oh, I also put cooked bacon and breakfast sausage in four places around the garbage dumpster in the area. There was also a pork bone in a doll, a turtle shell, multiple beef bones in depressions, multiple blank containers of various sorts.
I was asked by a handler as to what to do if their dog ate something in the search area and it wasn't human remains. My response was, "how do you know it wasn't human remains until you yank it out of their mouth and even then how do you know?" End conclusion, don't let your dog eat anything in a search area that wasn't brought in by you.....you just don't know.
Handlers were allowed to watch each other and see where the other flags were placed. If they moved their flags without asking me if the previous spot was valid that's on them. The point of this exercise was not to see how sharp your dog was but to provide the handler with information as to whether they need to proof off of non-human scent sources.
One handler I got to work with on this had a dog that loves deer....so much so that it dragged a bag of bones into the woods and shook it out. We got the most of the deer bones back, put them in their original spot, and put the dog back to work. The dog, normally obedient, didn't respond to a recall so I calmly walked back around to where the deer bones had been shook out. The dog was there munching. The handler learned a great lesson and can now start setting up the dog for failure when it self-rewards out in the field.
Another dog team flagged beef tongue. The handler took this as it was intended and knows where he can get beef tongue to proof his dog. Why'd I choose beef tongue? Because it is similar to placenta in that it is a blood-rich muscle tissue.
This is a good place to mention that placenta is highly over-rated. For many teams it has now become highly accessible and is the only tissue we can legally own to train on. Realize that in it's fresh state that it is very blood-rich and only two components of human remains. Dog teams should not feel confident that they can find any human remains if this is the only source they have to train on. We need to train on bone, teeth, muscle, blood, adipose tissue (body fat), adipocere (grave wax), and neural tissue if it can be obtained. Combinations of all of these are required as well. Cavity wipes from a medical examiner or funeral home are often the best solution for this. All must be legally obtained in your area with full knowledge of the authorities.
Multiple training stations were left out for students to work on their leisure including concrete sources with various strengths of human remains as well as negative blocks that were clearly marked. "Boxed-in" was set up.
An example of the properties of human remains in concrete was demonstrated. Many dog handlers create small concrete sources with a source inside. I have one that I created in a sterile urine speciment cup. Dogs can find it all the time. I also leave it with my decomp sources, so it soaks up other decomp scent.
I also made some more realistic concrete sources in buckets where the HRs are at least 4 inches from any surface area. I have some that are six inches from any surface area. I know from running lots of dogs past them that when they become dried out, the scent becomes inaccessible. This is an important concept. The source is there. Scent is in the concrete, but it is not escaping. I ran some of the advanced dogs over a large block plus some large blank concrete sources on arrival when they were dry. The dogs couldn't pick up scent. On the second day of the seminar, I placed the loaded concrete on a muddy beach and two blanks about 20-30 feet away. I had all the dogs, advanced, intermediate, and beginning past these and all the dogs correctly identified the concrete block with the HRs in it. The lesson to learn here is that dried thick concrete can be tough for dogs to work, possibly due to lime dust sealing off the surface. Moistening the concrete provices a scent carrier through the porous concrete that allows the scent to come out. A lesson for any of us asked to work dogs on concrete should take in consideration.
Finally, the last day is really a travel day and the one day I get to work my dogs. Some of my students did set me up a blind skeletal and Murphy to play one evening of the week. Both Murphy and Thorpe got to work my teeth and bone problems one night while the students were at dinner. (The instructor's dogs get the short end of the stick. That's just the way it is. And, yes, anyone could watch my dogs work if they wished. I don't care. I don't advertise I'm training my dogs though as I don't want it to come off as arrogance. The puppy does rock.)
The last day some of us stayed late and worked our dogs in the adjacent cemetery. A dog handler watching us asked if she could go get her dog. She commented that she'd had a bad experience in a cemetery with her dog. A major key in working a cemetery to train your dog for clandestine graves is to be very aware of the environment. Like the concrete, there are good times to work scent and times where NO SCENT IS AVAILABLE. We as handlers can either give our dogs great training opportunities or we can teach our dogs to false alert because we expect them to indicate when we think there is scent there (for whatever reason). We worked this cemetery in the early morning where the soil temperature was going to be warmer than the air. We had lots of shade from the trees. The ground was moist from dew. From previous years, I knew the easy graves to work. Before this dog handler worked these graves, multiple other dog teams had already shown us that scent was available to find.
Upon entering, one handler asked me, "We've been told that we shouldn't allow our dog to leave a scent source." I agree if the dog can smell the scent source. My personal rule is if I see my dog do any sort of head turn on HRs scent then we'll finish the problem before he can leave. On working cemeteries, one has to realize that we are bringing our dog into a massive scent overlap environment. We're expecting our dogs to be able to distinguish one grave ( a six foot by three foot wide, variable depth box of source) from the one two feet away from it. For this dog team, I instructed the dog handler to just walk her dog back and forth over the two rows of graves until I started seeing the dog's nose begin to dip just perceptively over various graves as it passed over them. Only then did I instruct the handler to tell her dog to go to work. The dog she said had struggled before began picking out graves quickly. The handler had obviously done a great job of building a nice foundation on her dog. I simply made sure the dog had scent available for it to work through.
More harm is done by dog handlers that assume they know where the scent is and force/train their dog into telling them its there regardless of whether it is or not.
I ran Thorpe over the graves last. I got to watch him slow way down over the graves and saw nose dips. I didn't ask him to tell me about it yet, this was just his first introduction to buried to plant a scent seed in his head. With luck and lots of training, that seed will bear lots of fruit. As he hasn't worked any buried yet, it would have been foolish to push him.
Hopes this helps,
Jim
I had some great advanced students. Each had to suffer through their own trials and through such suffering they tend to become a better handler. An advanced student implies the dog team is ready to work on their own or nearly ready. Many dog teams train under the illusion that they are ready and it's my job to let them work out if that's true or not. I know many dog teams that blow smoke to their Law Enforcement. Such teams make the rest of us look bad as sometimes that's the only time law enforcement will use HRD dogs as the experience can be so disconcerting that they never try one again. Worse, such teams can severely impact a search by pulling a search away from a possible find to go explore a snipe hunt the teams create due to poor or very little training.
I can describe some of what the advanced dog teams went through, but reading it never does it justice. This is the way I was trained for years with every problem set my dog and I worked. I set up scent problems where it is very rare for the handler to see a scent source. The search where you get to see the body your dog has brought you to is more the exception than the rule. The norm is you have to trust the training in your dog EXPLICITYLY to be able to read your dog and plant your flags precisely such that law enforcement can recover remains and evidence. I've worked cases where your dog being off by six inches means the difference between the Evidence Recovery Team making a find or coming to the conclusion that you and your dog suck.
All of my problem sets are timed for multiple reasons. First it applies pressure upon the handler just knowing time is limited. It forces the handler to become very aware of their area and how they need to work it to maximize their dog's coverage of the area.
Second, it applies pressure by the handler knowing it runs out.
Third, when a dog handler declares they are done before the time runs out, they are given the opportunity to utilize the rest of what is left to mull over where they've placed their flags via working with their dog. This tends to be the cruelest part of any test because this gives the handler time to mull over their decisions. Handlers are given the opportunity to move their flags. The test they ran this seminar stated they could be within two feet of the scent source. ......two feet...oi vey...such a luxury...I don't think I saw one handler consider that distance. They all placed their flags much closer, didn't place one at all, or talked themselves into something not there at all. This last one sounds ludicrous, but it happens a lot. It can happen if there is a strong scent source elsewhere in the area and the right conditions move scent somewhere else. Usually though, it happens because the handler starts to question their dog and then their dog becomes confused and tries to please the handler. That happening is a fear of all dog handlers....that we talk our dog into telling us something is there by our behavior rather than the scent itself.
When running these tests, there are at least two evaluators. I got asked to be one because I set up the problems. To their credit, subsequent dog teams testing allowed previous dog teams to watch them. Each was asked if they wanted all but the evaluators to leave. I can attest from lots of prior experience that once you start working your dog that you forget everyone else is there. A crowd still adds a little more pressure. I've had 60 dog handlers watch me test in the past. You just have to develop a thick skin that will help you afterwards with all your searches.
All of the tests were run first by experienced dogs to make sure they were fair to those being tested and to make sure the tests are workable in the time alloted. The testing is set up in levels with increasing difficulty with a failure in one means you can not progress further. Unlike many certifications out there, a dog team that completes the series can feel confident that they are prepared for what law enforcement will ask of them. They can feel confident that they will be an asset rather than a liability.
In previous seminars, we succeeded in all the students having plenty of work through out the seminar except for building searches. This seminar had more down time for the students than I prefer. My advanced students stepped up for me and took many of the intermediate and beginner students through their problems after I explained to them what the scent was doing and they got the benefit of their dogs doing the same prior to this. Our dogs allow us to see scent. An experienced handler gradually develops a fluid image of where the scent travels from watching their dog. An experienced handler also learns to see how scent movement changes as the enviroment changes due to sun, shade, wind, temperature, and humidity levels.
Running other students through previous problems (for me) also gave the advanced dog handlers the benefit of seeing how other dogs (and handlers) solve (or don't) the scent problems. I know I learned a lot by often working up to 30 different dog teams through the same problem through out a day when I was in the same position.
Handler Hell:
I set this up this year with two valid decomp sources, adipose tissue in a red plastic ketchup dispenser under a fallen tree AND a scent source from a two-month old semi-mummified and decomposed body high in a bird feeder at 7 feet. (I know a lot of certifications set the criteria of a high at a maximum of six feet. For me, high means high, anything off the ground from six inches to ....well, the sky is the limit. I've yet worked a search where the deceased knew they had to be no higher than six feet up.)
There was also lots of deer legs in various stages of decomposition, a plastic mustard dispenser in a trunk with rancid beef fat (a popular find for many). There was some fresh beef tongue wrapped in a white towel then placed in a suet cage the root ball of an overturned tree. There was a mason jar with a decomposed centipede in it. The point of this distraction was to see if anyone fixated on the jar. What it contained (as long as not human) was inconsequential. A frisbee was hung on a tree. A puppy tennis ball was hung in a suet cage for those dogs fixated on tennis balls. There was a PVC device covered in mud from a result of a poor well repair on my part, but no one flagged it which is fine as there were no remains on it.
The point of this exercise was to allow each dog team, regardless of experise level, to find out what their dog or what they talked their dog into. Each dog team was given two flags and were told their were two valid sources to find.
Oh, I also put cooked bacon and breakfast sausage in four places around the garbage dumpster in the area. There was also a pork bone in a doll, a turtle shell, multiple beef bones in depressions, multiple blank containers of various sorts.
I was asked by a handler as to what to do if their dog ate something in the search area and it wasn't human remains. My response was, "how do you know it wasn't human remains until you yank it out of their mouth and even then how do you know?" End conclusion, don't let your dog eat anything in a search area that wasn't brought in by you.....you just don't know.
Handlers were allowed to watch each other and see where the other flags were placed. If they moved their flags without asking me if the previous spot was valid that's on them. The point of this exercise was not to see how sharp your dog was but to provide the handler with information as to whether they need to proof off of non-human scent sources.
One handler I got to work with on this had a dog that loves deer....so much so that it dragged a bag of bones into the woods and shook it out. We got the most of the deer bones back, put them in their original spot, and put the dog back to work. The dog, normally obedient, didn't respond to a recall so I calmly walked back around to where the deer bones had been shook out. The dog was there munching. The handler learned a great lesson and can now start setting up the dog for failure when it self-rewards out in the field.
Another dog team flagged beef tongue. The handler took this as it was intended and knows where he can get beef tongue to proof his dog. Why'd I choose beef tongue? Because it is similar to placenta in that it is a blood-rich muscle tissue.
This is a good place to mention that placenta is highly over-rated. For many teams it has now become highly accessible and is the only tissue we can legally own to train on. Realize that in it's fresh state that it is very blood-rich and only two components of human remains. Dog teams should not feel confident that they can find any human remains if this is the only source they have to train on. We need to train on bone, teeth, muscle, blood, adipose tissue (body fat), adipocere (grave wax), and neural tissue if it can be obtained. Combinations of all of these are required as well. Cavity wipes from a medical examiner or funeral home are often the best solution for this. All must be legally obtained in your area with full knowledge of the authorities.
Multiple training stations were left out for students to work on their leisure including concrete sources with various strengths of human remains as well as negative blocks that were clearly marked. "Boxed-in" was set up.
An example of the properties of human remains in concrete was demonstrated. Many dog handlers create small concrete sources with a source inside. I have one that I created in a sterile urine speciment cup. Dogs can find it all the time. I also leave it with my decomp sources, so it soaks up other decomp scent.
I also made some more realistic concrete sources in buckets where the HRs are at least 4 inches from any surface area. I have some that are six inches from any surface area. I know from running lots of dogs past them that when they become dried out, the scent becomes inaccessible. This is an important concept. The source is there. Scent is in the concrete, but it is not escaping. I ran some of the advanced dogs over a large block plus some large blank concrete sources on arrival when they were dry. The dogs couldn't pick up scent. On the second day of the seminar, I placed the loaded concrete on a muddy beach and two blanks about 20-30 feet away. I had all the dogs, advanced, intermediate, and beginning past these and all the dogs correctly identified the concrete block with the HRs in it. The lesson to learn here is that dried thick concrete can be tough for dogs to work, possibly due to lime dust sealing off the surface. Moistening the concrete provices a scent carrier through the porous concrete that allows the scent to come out. A lesson for any of us asked to work dogs on concrete should take in consideration.
Finally, the last day is really a travel day and the one day I get to work my dogs. Some of my students did set me up a blind skeletal and Murphy to play one evening of the week. Both Murphy and Thorpe got to work my teeth and bone problems one night while the students were at dinner. (The instructor's dogs get the short end of the stick. That's just the way it is. And, yes, anyone could watch my dogs work if they wished. I don't care. I don't advertise I'm training my dogs though as I don't want it to come off as arrogance. The puppy does rock.)
The last day some of us stayed late and worked our dogs in the adjacent cemetery. A dog handler watching us asked if she could go get her dog. She commented that she'd had a bad experience in a cemetery with her dog. A major key in working a cemetery to train your dog for clandestine graves is to be very aware of the environment. Like the concrete, there are good times to work scent and times where NO SCENT IS AVAILABLE. We as handlers can either give our dogs great training opportunities or we can teach our dogs to false alert because we expect them to indicate when we think there is scent there (for whatever reason). We worked this cemetery in the early morning where the soil temperature was going to be warmer than the air. We had lots of shade from the trees. The ground was moist from dew. From previous years, I knew the easy graves to work. Before this dog handler worked these graves, multiple other dog teams had already shown us that scent was available to find.
Upon entering, one handler asked me, "We've been told that we shouldn't allow our dog to leave a scent source." I agree if the dog can smell the scent source. My personal rule is if I see my dog do any sort of head turn on HRs scent then we'll finish the problem before he can leave. On working cemeteries, one has to realize that we are bringing our dog into a massive scent overlap environment. We're expecting our dogs to be able to distinguish one grave ( a six foot by three foot wide, variable depth box of source) from the one two feet away from it. For this dog team, I instructed the dog handler to just walk her dog back and forth over the two rows of graves until I started seeing the dog's nose begin to dip just perceptively over various graves as it passed over them. Only then did I instruct the handler to tell her dog to go to work. The dog she said had struggled before began picking out graves quickly. The handler had obviously done a great job of building a nice foundation on her dog. I simply made sure the dog had scent available for it to work through.
More harm is done by dog handlers that assume they know where the scent is and force/train their dog into telling them its there regardless of whether it is or not.
I ran Thorpe over the graves last. I got to watch him slow way down over the graves and saw nose dips. I didn't ask him to tell me about it yet, this was just his first introduction to buried to plant a scent seed in his head. With luck and lots of training, that seed will bear lots of fruit. As he hasn't worked any buried yet, it would have been foolish to push him.
Hopes this helps,
Jim
