working with large sources

[rthonor]

With my puppies, I am going to try to stick with teeth for the begining work like you suggest in one of your other threads
.
However, on the other 2 ( that you saw at the seminar), I have been working with a larger source than before you met me- I have found this to be challenging. I have it buried and they seem to not be able to pin point it. Its been buried for about 5 days. You told me in training that was fairly normal, but what do I do when I am training? thanks,rt

[oksaradt]

Buried:
1) What's the source?

2) How deep is it and in what medium? I've seen some people say a buried is 12 inches deep and when we excavate the bottom of the hole is 12 inches and the container is 8 inches, so for me it was 4 inches deep?

3)Is the source in a container or just dropped in the hole?

4) How did you dig the hole and how'd you put it all back?

5) When you worked the buried, what was the air temperature and what was the soil temperature?

6) Being where you live and breath, what was the humidity when you worked it? Did you bury it in water saturated soil?


A lot of questions, aye? Most people just dig a hole, drop a placenta in, and then scratch their heads when the dog can't find it or the dog knows it's there and can't target it. From my years in the oil field, I got very familiar with these terms:

1) Permeability - How easy a fluid moves through a medium.
2) Porosity - How big are the voids between the medium.
Styrofoam coffee cups have great porosity and crappy permeability which is why they keep the coffee warm and in the cup.
On the other hand, sand has great porosity and great permeabilty such that fluids travel a long way through it making it hard to target in at times......especially with a water table moving through it. I've worked some buried sand problems near waterways exactly the same way I work water.
3) Soil moisture content - this is a big deal if you place something in fairly dry soil and you enjoy 100% relative humidity all the time.

I know of a group that set up a buried to test their team's dogs with. It then rained four inches over two hours. The dogs were allowed to dig around the buried site which allowed the bloody source scent to be spread further out on their feet. It was no big surprise that none of the dogs could target accurately.

Better define the problem you set up and we can probably determine why the dogs couldn't work it. Either the dogs don't know to work with their noses down close to the ground OR there wasn't scent to be had when you worked the problem OR the diffusion rate of the soil was beyond the dogs' expertise to target.

Had the dogs worked buried before?
If so, how deep with a similar source or did you just decide to do buried, go dig a deep hole, drop the source in it, and hope for the best? (A lot of handlers do this and then talk their dog into a find when the dog doesn't have a clue what's going on and learns to lie if that's what the handler wants.)


Jim

[rthonor]

I am probably guilty of all the errors mentioned above.

The soil was dry, but its humid where I live.
It was not buried deep-just under the surface.
Source in a suet cage.
I just lifted the ground about a shovel full and put the stuff in that way. In other words, I have a seam in the ground rather than a true hole.

Dog has worked buried before, but only with salt shakers sized stuff with blood or teeth.

This was much bigger source and in a suet cage- if you remember what you had told me to do with the suet cage and hair. The source was part of that which you gave me.

Oh, they worked it close. Just seemed to not know exactly where it was. I am assuming it dispersed. They did eventually find it. And I stayed back and let them work. It just took forever for them. They made several sweeps across the area. It was a different look for me.

Ok, fire away !
rt

[oksaradt]

]I am probably guilty of all the errors mentioned above.

The soil was dry, but its humid where I live.
< Your tracker/trailers can tell you that high humidity holds scent down. For trailing a live person, this is a good thing. If your humidity is off-the-scale (say like Houston where I’d come out of my apartment with a fresh dry cotton shirt, step two feet out and have this soaked garment clinging to my skin….) then you have that to deal with it. It’s not a major obstacle, just something you have to become aware of. Learn your humidity cycles where you work and attempt to work your dogs on buried when the air is as dry as you are going to get….improve your dog’s chances for a find.>>>

It was not buried deep-just under the surface.


Source in a suet cage.
I just lifted the ground about a shovel full and put the stuff in that way. In other words, I have a seam in the ground rather than a true hole.

<< The lazy-tree-planter’s method, …not a big deal and a nice way to transition to real buried. No where do I see :
Time of day worked, Sun/versus shade, Soil temperature versus Air Temperature, wind speed.
Working buried human remains is a developed skill for both the dog AND YOU. Your part is knowing when scent will be available to work, i.e. coming up out of the ground. The dog’s part is developing the physical and mental skills to work buried. Several of the students got to watch my dog Murphy work a blind skeletal , 4 sources (they were nice telling me how many), with three sources buried under leaves in various terrains and one hidden in an outside A/C unit’s frame. I told Murphy to go to work and controlled his boundaries. I didn’t tell him to slow down when he hit skeletal scent, he did that all on his own. I didn’t tell him to turn his head to use his nostrils to better pin point. With both buried and skeletal remains, Murphy becomes extremely methodical. With decomp, it’s a fun day and he just gets it done unless there are overlaps and then he again slows down to work the problem out. These were skills he developed because I let him struggle through problems.
The bulk of cadaver dog handlers choose to ignore Scent Theory and simply expect the dog to develop all the skills necessary. Without knowing scent theory, a handler/trainer really can’t set up gradually more difficult problems to build a dog’s skills. It’s basically the shotgun method of dog training, put something out there and expect the dog to find it. Many handlers then help their dog find the sources when there really isn’t any scent there, but the handler knows the source is there. This creates iffy dogs (in my opinion) where the handler just sometimes shrugs his shoulders and tells L.E. they better tear the building apart to find the stinky source everyone can smell, but no one seems to be able to target….just an example from the seminar.>>


Dog has worked buried before, but only with salt shakers sized stuff with blood or teeth.

<< The best burieds are with no containers at all. Sometimes when I’m reclaiming buried teeth it might take me an hour a hole with a sifter to get them all back, but I think it’s worth it to know my dog was hitting only on teeth and not what I put them in. That way I don’t have to create blank holes with clean containers.>

< So, do we know the dogs will find the source you used if utilized in a surface or elevated problem? That’s the first step.
Second step, if you have dry ground is to assist diffusion by pouring some distilled water over the source while in the hole and before covering. If you leave the source for a week, the water isn’t cheating, it’s helping to move scent in the ground. A week is still a very short time relative to most burieds in the real world where you may be asked to locate clandestine graves from last year to several decades ago. The week does get your scent out of the picture and does give the source some diffusion time.
Third, try to work the buried when the ground temperature is higher than the air temperature so that you can be sure that scent movement will be up out of the soil rather than higher pressure air pushing the scent back down. Buy a digital meat thermometer at Wally World for $12.98. You can wave it in the air for a while to get air temperature and then shove it in the ground to the depth of your source to figure out soil temperature. Higher soil temperature than air is a good thing. I’ve actually called searches in summer by the criteria of when the air temperature rises above the soil temperature than we’re going to stop. I have no problem working at pre-dawn hours when the reverse is true.
Fourth, since this is starting out, try to work the area when it’s in shade so that the sun isn’t creating thermals lifting your scent up and away from the source. As the dogs get more versed, your expectations of what they can do rises.>

This was much bigger source and in a suet cage- if you remember what you had told me to do with the suet cage and hair. The source was part of that which you gave me.

<The hair helps with diffusion and holding in the source.>

Oh, they worked it close. Just seemed to not know exactly where it was. I am assuming it dispersed. They did eventually find it. And I stayed back and let them work. It just took forever for them. They made several sweeps across the area. It was a different look for me.
<What this soil that was mostly Sand? In Oklahoma, we have what’s called Sandi-Loam which can be sand with composted vegetation TO sand with high clay content (i.e. clay with a little sand in it)….remember we had that Dust Bowl thing, so feet of mulch/rich top soil/etc is rare.>

<So, your challenge as a dog trainer/handler is to determine why it was difficult for them. That makes you a better trainer and can be proved or disproved by replicating conditions later on when you think their skill level is to that level.

There’s nothing more humbling than walking away with your “crackerjack dog” after you witnessed it walking over a 36-inch buried bone six times with never a head turn, dip, etc. The good handler does walk away and work it another day when conditions are better. The average handler goes through a whole litany of cues, hints, etc. to talk their dog into alerting at the spot “they just know” the scent should be.
I buried such a bone, historic level femur, with no water to help, soil that had lots of clay in it, meticulous care in placing the soil back as best I found it. It took three months for the dogs to start hitting on it. As soon as they got scent, they targeted accurately. Oh, clay can actually shift and cover your source. In the hot months it can almost become like pottery. In the wet months, it swells. Oklahoma has lots of clay, so I learned to deal with it. Would the problem have been workable sooner with tissue? Most likely. I wanted to work historic level bone so that I could help locate native American graves hundreds of years old. Three months was nothing compared to their time in the earth.>

Ok, fire away !
<Hope that helps,

Jim>

[rthonor]

I live in a very humid place- Louisiana. So, I know it was humid. I have no idea the soil or air temp. I will get a thermometer. I did hide it in the shade. The soil is not sand- its more like clay. It gets very hard in dry weather. So, the way I understand what you write is that I need to be more purposeful and systematic in my training rather than randomly placing things in the land. I think I understand that humidity works against me in HR situations while it is my friend in tracking/trailing. Is this correct?
And, in order to not create "lying" in the dog, I should let them work.....and if they dont locate it- work it another day? How do you end a session when that happens?

[oksaradt]

Ummm, to produce a solid dog we must be purposeful and systematic in any dog's training. For me that means lots of baby steps with an intended result. When a dog reaches that goal, then I set a new goal and begin a new series of baby steps.
Humidity doesn't work for or against you unless the moisture level in the air is higher than the soil Since you live where you do, you must become versed in your humidity conditions.
www.wunderground.com is a great resource if there are personal weather stations around where you train.
Dogs don't know the concept of lying, BUT they will give a handler what they think the handler expects to get a paycheck. Lying dogs or false alerts are created by the handlers. A false alert either means the dog hasn't been proofed off of remains from non-human sources OR it means the dog has learned what the handler expects despite the dog not having any scent. This is why it needs to be routine that you place distractions out with HRs in training AND, YES, it means you have to be able to walk away from a problem if the dog is not getting scent. My rule is I'll bring a dog in from three different directions to give the dog the opportunity to find scent. If the dog doesn't get scent, then we move on. I do this on real searches as well. It's why I no longer state an area is clear, but state my dog got no scent. It means that I must know what level of HRs and under what conditions my dog is skilled in finding. The more searches you do, the more you realize how your training must continue to evolve.

Without seeing the problem you set up and knowing all the environmental factors that were in account, I would do this. I'd first set up the source in a surface scenario. If the dogs locate it easily, then I'd migrate to buring the source above ground either in dry mulch, loose rocks, wood debris such that the scent can flow down and the dog can work up to the buried. If the dog was ok with that, then I'd migrate to placing the source in a depression below ground with mulch covering it. If the dogs found it ok, then I'd go to burying the source starting with a medium that was high in porosity, but medium permeability. This means I wouldn't bury the source in sand where the scent will go everywhere, but I also won't bury in high clay content. A sand/mulch/gravel mix would be a good start with a hole dug with post-hole diggers about 4 inches to start and a seam for the scent to work up. As the dog continues to demonstrate it can solve the scent problems, I continue adding difficulty.
Don't make the mistake that my dogs only get harder and harder problems. What was a hard problem last month or three months ago might be easy now, so I'll throw those in. The difficulty level should gradually go up with regular easier problems thrown in; otherwise, the dog stops having fun.

When I'm setting up what I expect to be a difficult problem that the dog might not get right now, I always have back up problems set up to end on a win. If I go work a negative search, I will have a problem back home for the dog to work so that it can end the day on a win. I don't carry remains with me on searches because that can lead to accusations.

Hope that gave you a workable to plan to start with.

Jim