Post by oksaradt on May 24, 2010 10:42:41 GMT -5
Nope, I'm not discussing those perfumed mixes found in candle stores. Those make both the wife and me tear up within 20 feet, so I avoid them.
Since the last post, a lot has gone on. So, rather than make a bunch of posts, I thought I'd do the shotgun effect. If any one wants to talk about any one thing in particular then we can start another thread.
Murphy and I were going to test with NAPWDA a couple of weeks ago, but the host group had to cancel at the last minute. So, now we're looking at a September testing. As I'd already scheduled vacation time off, I took the opportunity to go train elsewhere.
Training Problems
Part 1:
Recently several handlers got together to work an impound lot. Each handler was to set up blinds for the others. It seemed simple enough, but making assumptions will get you every time.
I chose opposing aisles of vehicles in various states of disarray and damage. I walked down both aisles first to look for gotchas. The purpose of doing this is to have a good idea of which cars might have human remains in them by calamity and which ones are most likely clean. You can never be sure if a vehicle in an impound lot is clean of human remains, but it's best to try such that the one or two vehicles in your selected group are the only ones with human remains in them.
I set up five problem sets, each one with one source (this time). One of those sources was a dead squirrel I'd found on my morning walk, so that problem would be a negative with a distraction. Negatives like this are designed to see either the dog needs to be proofed off of animal remains OR if the handler talks their dog into something because they've come up with zilch so far, i.e. the dog does a minor nose turn towards the animal remains but continues searching. The handler sees this and pushes the dog on that vehicle......which is ok for an extra pass...the dog does another head turn, but continues on....the handler gets nervous as that's all they've found so far, so they open the door and see the dead rigored squirrel waving a hello at them. It tends to be a impression that sticks with handlers for some time.....so, it served it's purpose.
Still on vehicle searches, Murphy and I went to work a blind. The problem setter showed us the vehicles in question. Murphy starts moving between vehicles and hits on one. I open the door, he targets. The problem setter "ahems" and says, "I didn't put anything in that vehicle......" I look at the deployed air bag that Murphy likes and grin, "maybe not, but Murphy definitely likes the dried blood on this air bag." Murphy and I continued to find remains in the crushed vehicles from front-end collisions and T-bones. I suggested another handler work them blind and we'd let the other dog tell us if I needed to take Murphy back to square one or if we were working a "target-rich" environment. The other dog team working blind supported Murphy's targets.
Soooooo, two valuable lessons:
1) When settting up training problems for other dog teams, try to be sure you know either the area is clean of other human remains OR you know where all the natually occuring human remains are (this means if you are law enforcement that you do your homework before working dogs on those vehicles.)
2) Probably one of the biggest caveats I have to give up front on searches like this, "If there are human remains there and conditions are good for scent, the dog will find them. BUT, realize the dog will find all the human remains and possibly not the ones you are hoping for." I've been on multiple searches for clandestine graves only to have the area negative EXCEPT for the family graves from the land owners from the "old days".
This is also why I don't think HRD dogs should be utilized to get search warrants. We could run a dog around a house and have it hit for human remains. There's no way we can tell you that the remains there didn't show up innocently (such as the handi-man cutting his hand on the lawnmower, a menstruating woman changes her clothes in a car, on and on.).
Part 2 (Training Problems):
I had a student come up to me and request, "Give me a hard problem for my dog to work."
....oi vey.....
If this was an area search dog handler that thought their dog could do no wrong, I've been known to rub my hands in glee and create search scenarios that produces a dog handler that comes away from the search totally covered in muck and their clothes in shreads.....If they found me. Such a request to me is like handing a twelve year old a case of M-80s and say, "go blow something up." It only serves to bring the handler's ego down a notch and rarely does the dog team improve.
Soooo, these days such a request gets 20 questions from me as my main goal is always to help the dog improve. If the handler learns along the way, so much the better.
So, my questions will include:
1) Hard how?
If a handler makes this request, they should have an inkling now of a specific scent goal they have in mind they wish to test themselves and their dog on. Usually though this question spurs many more......
2) Subtle scent or explosive diffusion, i.e. historic teeth in a nasty location or ten bloodly placentas clumped in such a way where scent goes out in a hundred yards in every direction?
3) Environmental? do you want to work your dog on the limits of scent conditions, i.e. 95 degrees where the dog is panting to stay cool and not working its nose, some historic teeth in full sun where the dog will have a hard time targeting, changing scent picture due to the environment? (we ended up doing this last choice).
4) Terrain: Rubble, heavy debris, brambles, below ground in culverts....this can go on and on
To the handler's credit, they were really trying to define what a "hard problem" was.
My point to this is that to set up a booger problem for your dog before it is ready only serves to frustrate the dog and, most likely, create bad habits in the handler.
I was taught a long time ago that if you wish to make one part of the training scenario hard, then you make the rest easy. As the dog becomes comfortable with that difficulty, then you raise the difficulty in the other factors until the dog really can work the hard problem. Eventually, the hard problem of today should become the easy problem down the road.
So, what we did (the handler was invited to watch me set up the problem....didn't matter as I'd make sure the handler couldn't help the dog) was walk into thick woods and locate a large tree surrounded by debris, some easy and some brambles. On the tree was a large vine. The tree was in sun and shade which changed as the clouds overhead moved (this turned out to be very illuminating on scent work). Area size was originally five acres, but as the dog did not get presented into an area with scent on it's first pass I advised the handler limit the area to an acre as we were now in problem solving/teaching mode.
While the wind was up to 30 mph out in the fields, it varied from 0 to 5 mph in the woods, more 1-2 mph than anything. The direction of air flow in the woods was more dependent on the sun/shade than outside winds.
We worked both the other dog and then Murphy on this problem to define the scent mechanics. Murphy has become very methodical in how he works scent, so watching him work tells pretty much what the scent is doing.
The source was a six-inch bone with the ends off. This bone had adipose tissue rubbed into about six months ago and has gotten gradually harder as the oils have leached out. I keep it separate from all my other bones as I consider it a decomp source with varying levels of difficulty. The bone was placed sideways under the vine such that it was readily visible to handler. To the dogs' credit, visual finds were not a concern. If the dog didn't smell the source, it didn't find it by looking. Once each dog did locate the source by scent, it got a nice visual confirmation.
When sun was on this side of the tree, the scent shot up and moved out into the area such that both dogs knew there was a source somewhere. If the source got into shade, the scent would drop down the tree and spread through out the undergrowth such that the dog could work towards the source with nose down.
With Murphy, we saw multiple times where he would get within a couple of feet of the source only to have the sun lift the scent and his head. You could see the surprise on his face of "where'd it go?" I'd just say, "keep workin'" and make him solve it because that's what would happen in a real search. Finally on his third pass towards the source a large cloud came overhead maintaining a scent leader down into the underbrush and he was able to locate the source. What seemed like hours of torture was really 9 minutes and 42 seconds, most of that in the one acre limitation.
What most novice handlers will do which burns both them and their dogs is they will walk their dogs into the source. Some handlers will even point towards the source and say, "check here!" The dog locates it. The handler pats themselves on the back. The dog has just realized that if it can't find the source then the handler will...........
Cemetery Chapter Two
Since I had this extra training time, I took advantage and got some great cemetery work in. The first one was a reclamation for a small town. My host's dog had worked parts of it a few times. My goal was to get it mostly completed in the one day.
Cemeteries are the best training a dog team can get for clandestine graves as ....well....you know there are graves out there. Even better, GPR mapping of this cemetery is in the works, so we'll get graded on our performance. I know some handlers that would inwardly shiver at this thought, but I personally want to know what Murphy and I miss, if I talk him into anything, how close we are to the grave, etc. A previous dog of mine and I worked a native american nation's graves at their request. After we'd done part of it, my host told me we worked graves already GPR'd and the dog passed. I consider this pretty darn smart to run me and my dog over an area they already know for sure. Scarey thing was they told me that one grave we targeted was very old (four centuries plus) as the grounds had been used by the previous nomadic owners. Don't cha know that you give your dog an extra milkbone after hearing that.
What made this cemetery unique was that when we arrived conditions were fair, but steadily degrading due to sun and air temperature. The dogs were going from rocking along targeting graves to struggling. We eventually broke off to go do some water work at a nearby lake. While there, I got to talk to the current caretaker of the cemetery to learn history of the cemetery. I always reccomend this because one of the facts I learned was there were epidemic mass baby graves somewhere there. Baby graves are tough because they are small. Infant graves are really tough because there is very little bone mass for the dog to work off of.
As we were talking a storm front began moving into the area. The temperature dropped at least 20 degrees. We raced back over the cemetery. What had been drudgery for the dogs became easy pickens because suddenly the ground temperature was very warm in comparison to the air temperature. All the scent trapped in the graves in the ground was puffing out to be found.
Realize that a grave is like a large scent container. The tissue remains will eventually wash out in most graves. If there is a high clay content or high soil moisture content, the tissue remains can stay in the grave for centuries. We train on bone and teeth though to be able to locate what remains in most graves, the bones.
When a grave is dug, the soil can never be put back as compact as the soil around it. For all intents and purposes, the grave becomes the inside of a bowl that holds our contents to be found.
Sometimes vermin put tunnels through our bowl. Sometimes tree roots push through our bowl. Both situations can make the scent work challenging.
When a concrete cap is placed over the top of a grave, it can stall the scent diffusion for a time. Such caps can get cracked or the scent will eventually move around and up. With such graves, targeting the head is nearly impossible, but you can still locate the grave.
Realize that most christian based cemeteries are laid out in rows and columns. Find a row. Locate a column through it. Now you have spacing and grid lines to work your dog. The cemetery stops becoming a mystery and becomes a massive graph where you simply had to walk your dogs over the intersections to see which intersections have a grave (or not).
Realize that many of the old-time cemeteries had their unique customs where it helps to talk to the locals. A lot of times criminals, poor folks, and cultures (that were looked down upon at the time of burial) may be buried outside the perimeter or off in a remote spot so as not to offend the "high and mighty of the time". If people didn't like you then they might bury you backwards to other folks where they were buried to rise up to face east. If they really didn't like you, then they might bury you north-south. All these little facts are good to know to explain why your dog targets in a location that just doesn't make sense. The dog doesn't care about cultures, just scent.
We did get to go back to my favorite cemetery, a large jewish cemetery where no one embalms and the coffins have open bottoms. We got there at the best time when the air was cool and the soil was warm. Murphy was rocking, doing 40 graves in 15 minutes, so I put him up and got out the puppy (just now six months) to just see what we'd see. Thorpe found a depression in a grave, put his nose down, took a big whiff, looked up at me with big eyes and gave a bark. To me this was a rush because we've been working on his trained bark for some time. He has a great touch, but I need to know he has a find when he's in the underbrush and I can't see the touch. The bark is my trained alert. While a lot of groups don't like the bark because many will end up training their dog to bark in pool rather than at source, I prefer it to a sit or down. I had one dog that downed beautifully at the source. Her committment was rock solid. If she made a find and I didn't see it happen, then our quest became "find the downed dog"...... As long as I have a rock-solid targeting tool in the natural touch (not a dig) then the bark is best for me.
So, when Thorpe gave me a bark at the lowest point in the depressed grave I was a happy camper indeed. For me, the 12-hour drive each way to train was just paid for in full.
The Kooks
(soapboxing warning, stop reading now if you wish)
I don't know why, but dog searching can bring out the kooks. I routinely get besieged by someone that believes it is my honor bound duty to teach them what I know, to give them scent sources, and to drop the rest of my life to devote it to their quest.
I take on students from time to time that I feel will make a contribution to society with their dogs. I don't take money for what I teach, so I can turn away those that become annoying or those with obvious hidden agendas. Lately, I've had to deal with a plethera of multiple kooks.
My intent when I take on students is to teach someone to fish rather than hand them fish to eat. My intent is to ultimately have a compatriot that I can learn from as well. If after so many years I realize the student has not progressed, I tend to cut them loose and wish them well. They obviously need to go to someone else to further their education.
With breeders that want to get their dogs "certified", my atttitude is I don't believe an HRD dog can be bred for. You can take hunting lines for your breeding program and if you are lucky then one-out-of-ten might be a decent candidate to train. When a breeder comes to me and wants to be spoon fed on how to get one of their stock to the point my dog is....heck, train one in HRD and one in live find....all my alarm bells go off. I wish them well and send them down the road. I have no problem with an HRD handler that happens to breed as well. By the time they get a decent dog to where it can work effectively they know all the handler investment that is required and they should know all the gotchas.
Heck, I chose Thorpe with very tight criteria and I wasn't sure he had all the right stuff till I saw the look on his face and he barked in that cemetery. I still have a long time where I can screw him up and that's on me. I'm not going to promote some yahoo that wishes to tell the world they can breed HRD dogs.
Ok, soapboxing done for now.
Hope you are having a great summer and this rambling helped someone.
Jim
Since the last post, a lot has gone on. So, rather than make a bunch of posts, I thought I'd do the shotgun effect. If any one wants to talk about any one thing in particular then we can start another thread.
Murphy and I were going to test with NAPWDA a couple of weeks ago, but the host group had to cancel at the last minute. So, now we're looking at a September testing. As I'd already scheduled vacation time off, I took the opportunity to go train elsewhere.
Training Problems
Part 1:
Recently several handlers got together to work an impound lot. Each handler was to set up blinds for the others. It seemed simple enough, but making assumptions will get you every time.
I chose opposing aisles of vehicles in various states of disarray and damage. I walked down both aisles first to look for gotchas. The purpose of doing this is to have a good idea of which cars might have human remains in them by calamity and which ones are most likely clean. You can never be sure if a vehicle in an impound lot is clean of human remains, but it's best to try such that the one or two vehicles in your selected group are the only ones with human remains in them.
I set up five problem sets, each one with one source (this time). One of those sources was a dead squirrel I'd found on my morning walk, so that problem would be a negative with a distraction. Negatives like this are designed to see either the dog needs to be proofed off of animal remains OR if the handler talks their dog into something because they've come up with zilch so far, i.e. the dog does a minor nose turn towards the animal remains but continues searching. The handler sees this and pushes the dog on that vehicle......which is ok for an extra pass...the dog does another head turn, but continues on....the handler gets nervous as that's all they've found so far, so they open the door and see the dead rigored squirrel waving a hello at them. It tends to be a impression that sticks with handlers for some time.....so, it served it's purpose.
Still on vehicle searches, Murphy and I went to work a blind. The problem setter showed us the vehicles in question. Murphy starts moving between vehicles and hits on one. I open the door, he targets. The problem setter "ahems" and says, "I didn't put anything in that vehicle......" I look at the deployed air bag that Murphy likes and grin, "maybe not, but Murphy definitely likes the dried blood on this air bag." Murphy and I continued to find remains in the crushed vehicles from front-end collisions and T-bones. I suggested another handler work them blind and we'd let the other dog tell us if I needed to take Murphy back to square one or if we were working a "target-rich" environment. The other dog team working blind supported Murphy's targets.
Soooooo, two valuable lessons:
1) When settting up training problems for other dog teams, try to be sure you know either the area is clean of other human remains OR you know where all the natually occuring human remains are (this means if you are law enforcement that you do your homework before working dogs on those vehicles.)
2) Probably one of the biggest caveats I have to give up front on searches like this, "If there are human remains there and conditions are good for scent, the dog will find them. BUT, realize the dog will find all the human remains and possibly not the ones you are hoping for." I've been on multiple searches for clandestine graves only to have the area negative EXCEPT for the family graves from the land owners from the "old days".
This is also why I don't think HRD dogs should be utilized to get search warrants. We could run a dog around a house and have it hit for human remains. There's no way we can tell you that the remains there didn't show up innocently (such as the handi-man cutting his hand on the lawnmower, a menstruating woman changes her clothes in a car, on and on.).
Part 2 (Training Problems):
I had a student come up to me and request, "Give me a hard problem for my dog to work."
....oi vey.....
If this was an area search dog handler that thought their dog could do no wrong, I've been known to rub my hands in glee and create search scenarios that produces a dog handler that comes away from the search totally covered in muck and their clothes in shreads.....If they found me. Such a request to me is like handing a twelve year old a case of M-80s and say, "go blow something up." It only serves to bring the handler's ego down a notch and rarely does the dog team improve.
Soooo, these days such a request gets 20 questions from me as my main goal is always to help the dog improve. If the handler learns along the way, so much the better.
So, my questions will include:
1) Hard how?
If a handler makes this request, they should have an inkling now of a specific scent goal they have in mind they wish to test themselves and their dog on. Usually though this question spurs many more......
2) Subtle scent or explosive diffusion, i.e. historic teeth in a nasty location or ten bloodly placentas clumped in such a way where scent goes out in a hundred yards in every direction?
3) Environmental? do you want to work your dog on the limits of scent conditions, i.e. 95 degrees where the dog is panting to stay cool and not working its nose, some historic teeth in full sun where the dog will have a hard time targeting, changing scent picture due to the environment? (we ended up doing this last choice).
4) Terrain: Rubble, heavy debris, brambles, below ground in culverts....this can go on and on
To the handler's credit, they were really trying to define what a "hard problem" was.
My point to this is that to set up a booger problem for your dog before it is ready only serves to frustrate the dog and, most likely, create bad habits in the handler.
I was taught a long time ago that if you wish to make one part of the training scenario hard, then you make the rest easy. As the dog becomes comfortable with that difficulty, then you raise the difficulty in the other factors until the dog really can work the hard problem. Eventually, the hard problem of today should become the easy problem down the road.
So, what we did (the handler was invited to watch me set up the problem....didn't matter as I'd make sure the handler couldn't help the dog) was walk into thick woods and locate a large tree surrounded by debris, some easy and some brambles. On the tree was a large vine. The tree was in sun and shade which changed as the clouds overhead moved (this turned out to be very illuminating on scent work). Area size was originally five acres, but as the dog did not get presented into an area with scent on it's first pass I advised the handler limit the area to an acre as we were now in problem solving/teaching mode.
While the wind was up to 30 mph out in the fields, it varied from 0 to 5 mph in the woods, more 1-2 mph than anything. The direction of air flow in the woods was more dependent on the sun/shade than outside winds.
We worked both the other dog and then Murphy on this problem to define the scent mechanics. Murphy has become very methodical in how he works scent, so watching him work tells pretty much what the scent is doing.
The source was a six-inch bone with the ends off. This bone had adipose tissue rubbed into about six months ago and has gotten gradually harder as the oils have leached out. I keep it separate from all my other bones as I consider it a decomp source with varying levels of difficulty. The bone was placed sideways under the vine such that it was readily visible to handler. To the dogs' credit, visual finds were not a concern. If the dog didn't smell the source, it didn't find it by looking. Once each dog did locate the source by scent, it got a nice visual confirmation.
When sun was on this side of the tree, the scent shot up and moved out into the area such that both dogs knew there was a source somewhere. If the source got into shade, the scent would drop down the tree and spread through out the undergrowth such that the dog could work towards the source with nose down.
With Murphy, we saw multiple times where he would get within a couple of feet of the source only to have the sun lift the scent and his head. You could see the surprise on his face of "where'd it go?" I'd just say, "keep workin'" and make him solve it because that's what would happen in a real search. Finally on his third pass towards the source a large cloud came overhead maintaining a scent leader down into the underbrush and he was able to locate the source. What seemed like hours of torture was really 9 minutes and 42 seconds, most of that in the one acre limitation.
What most novice handlers will do which burns both them and their dogs is they will walk their dogs into the source. Some handlers will even point towards the source and say, "check here!" The dog locates it. The handler pats themselves on the back. The dog has just realized that if it can't find the source then the handler will...........
Cemetery Chapter Two
Since I had this extra training time, I took advantage and got some great cemetery work in. The first one was a reclamation for a small town. My host's dog had worked parts of it a few times. My goal was to get it mostly completed in the one day.
Cemeteries are the best training a dog team can get for clandestine graves as ....well....you know there are graves out there. Even better, GPR mapping of this cemetery is in the works, so we'll get graded on our performance. I know some handlers that would inwardly shiver at this thought, but I personally want to know what Murphy and I miss, if I talk him into anything, how close we are to the grave, etc. A previous dog of mine and I worked a native american nation's graves at their request. After we'd done part of it, my host told me we worked graves already GPR'd and the dog passed. I consider this pretty darn smart to run me and my dog over an area they already know for sure. Scarey thing was they told me that one grave we targeted was very old (four centuries plus) as the grounds had been used by the previous nomadic owners. Don't cha know that you give your dog an extra milkbone after hearing that.
What made this cemetery unique was that when we arrived conditions were fair, but steadily degrading due to sun and air temperature. The dogs were going from rocking along targeting graves to struggling. We eventually broke off to go do some water work at a nearby lake. While there, I got to talk to the current caretaker of the cemetery to learn history of the cemetery. I always reccomend this because one of the facts I learned was there were epidemic mass baby graves somewhere there. Baby graves are tough because they are small. Infant graves are really tough because there is very little bone mass for the dog to work off of.
As we were talking a storm front began moving into the area. The temperature dropped at least 20 degrees. We raced back over the cemetery. What had been drudgery for the dogs became easy pickens because suddenly the ground temperature was very warm in comparison to the air temperature. All the scent trapped in the graves in the ground was puffing out to be found.
Realize that a grave is like a large scent container. The tissue remains will eventually wash out in most graves. If there is a high clay content or high soil moisture content, the tissue remains can stay in the grave for centuries. We train on bone and teeth though to be able to locate what remains in most graves, the bones.
When a grave is dug, the soil can never be put back as compact as the soil around it. For all intents and purposes, the grave becomes the inside of a bowl that holds our contents to be found.
Sometimes vermin put tunnels through our bowl. Sometimes tree roots push through our bowl. Both situations can make the scent work challenging.
When a concrete cap is placed over the top of a grave, it can stall the scent diffusion for a time. Such caps can get cracked or the scent will eventually move around and up. With such graves, targeting the head is nearly impossible, but you can still locate the grave.
Realize that most christian based cemeteries are laid out in rows and columns. Find a row. Locate a column through it. Now you have spacing and grid lines to work your dog. The cemetery stops becoming a mystery and becomes a massive graph where you simply had to walk your dogs over the intersections to see which intersections have a grave (or not).
Realize that many of the old-time cemeteries had their unique customs where it helps to talk to the locals. A lot of times criminals, poor folks, and cultures (that were looked down upon at the time of burial) may be buried outside the perimeter or off in a remote spot so as not to offend the "high and mighty of the time". If people didn't like you then they might bury you backwards to other folks where they were buried to rise up to face east. If they really didn't like you, then they might bury you north-south. All these little facts are good to know to explain why your dog targets in a location that just doesn't make sense. The dog doesn't care about cultures, just scent.
We did get to go back to my favorite cemetery, a large jewish cemetery where no one embalms and the coffins have open bottoms. We got there at the best time when the air was cool and the soil was warm. Murphy was rocking, doing 40 graves in 15 minutes, so I put him up and got out the puppy (just now six months) to just see what we'd see. Thorpe found a depression in a grave, put his nose down, took a big whiff, looked up at me with big eyes and gave a bark. To me this was a rush because we've been working on his trained bark for some time. He has a great touch, but I need to know he has a find when he's in the underbrush and I can't see the touch. The bark is my trained alert. While a lot of groups don't like the bark because many will end up training their dog to bark in pool rather than at source, I prefer it to a sit or down. I had one dog that downed beautifully at the source. Her committment was rock solid. If she made a find and I didn't see it happen, then our quest became "find the downed dog"...... As long as I have a rock-solid targeting tool in the natural touch (not a dig) then the bark is best for me.
So, when Thorpe gave me a bark at the lowest point in the depressed grave I was a happy camper indeed. For me, the 12-hour drive each way to train was just paid for in full.
The Kooks
(soapboxing warning, stop reading now if you wish)
I don't know why, but dog searching can bring out the kooks. I routinely get besieged by someone that believes it is my honor bound duty to teach them what I know, to give them scent sources, and to drop the rest of my life to devote it to their quest.
I take on students from time to time that I feel will make a contribution to society with their dogs. I don't take money for what I teach, so I can turn away those that become annoying or those with obvious hidden agendas. Lately, I've had to deal with a plethera of multiple kooks.
My intent when I take on students is to teach someone to fish rather than hand them fish to eat. My intent is to ultimately have a compatriot that I can learn from as well. If after so many years I realize the student has not progressed, I tend to cut them loose and wish them well. They obviously need to go to someone else to further their education.
With breeders that want to get their dogs "certified", my atttitude is I don't believe an HRD dog can be bred for. You can take hunting lines for your breeding program and if you are lucky then one-out-of-ten might be a decent candidate to train. When a breeder comes to me and wants to be spoon fed on how to get one of their stock to the point my dog is....heck, train one in HRD and one in live find....all my alarm bells go off. I wish them well and send them down the road. I have no problem with an HRD handler that happens to breed as well. By the time they get a decent dog to where it can work effectively they know all the handler investment that is required and they should know all the gotchas.
Heck, I chose Thorpe with very tight criteria and I wasn't sure he had all the right stuff till I saw the look on his face and he barked in that cemetery. I still have a long time where I can screw him up and that's on me. I'm not going to promote some yahoo that wishes to tell the world they can breed HRD dogs.
Ok, soapboxing done for now.
Hope you are having a great summer and this rambling helped someone.
Jim