Needles In Haystacks

[bonefinder]

Today was meant to be a simple proofing day but it sure didn't turn out that way. I placed four sources out; cremains in a small glass jar buried in a fire pit camp area, a small glass jar with adipocere stuck in a thicket of brush, a patella lodged under a large log ( not visual) and my one and only jaw bone was placed in a three foot high by 8 foot wide pile of brush, branches, thicket. I stuck it way in the middle of the thicket/pile
Near the human cremains, I placed dog cremains in an adjoining fire pit. Near the adipocere, I placed a deer vertebrae, near the jaw bone- I wedged another deer vertebrae under a long fallen tree which was about 12 feet away. This was just follow up proofing off animal bones and indication work for my dog.
Rick and I headed off to town to shop, and the plan was to work the bones about six hours later.
When we returned from town, I had a shudder because a wood chipper ( it's a variation of a wood chipper but a stump grinder/tree grinder) was in "full swing" across the road from where we were staying. Mind you.......we are at 9,500 altitude in a NFS campground. We are the ONLY residents here.
No big deal. He was far enough away.
We started working the area and Porter did well. Found the patella first, the adiopocere next and then the cremains last, although not in any grid search order. I was pleased that he ignored the dog cremains and vertebrae. Only one source left to find so we gravitated towards the northern grid area. Oh oh. Where did the wood pile go??? Was I seeing things or was that wood pile gone? Yup. Ground up to nearly nothing.
I was so ticked, ticked at MYSELF for leaving that darned bone there when I saw that wood chipper WAY across the road ( about a football field away, and after all, we are talking about a VERY large camp ground with LOTS of trees and wood piles) when we left for town.
So, a fully intact mandible just got ground up. The very nice guy who was operating the machine happened to be a PhD student at University of Wyoming, specializing in kineseology, so he was PROFOUNDLY disturbed when he came over and asked if "everything was ok." When I explained the scenario to him, his response was "I didn't take my lunch break today but if you don't mind, I'll take it now and see if I can help."
The only help there could be is a dog's nose. It was clear no human hands were going to find anything in this mess. The guy was able to articulate which way he drove, how many times, how far chips would fly and why ( depending on size) etc. By gosh, he had even taken a PICTURE of the darned wood pile before he ground it up. Lucky me.
Porter was overwhelmed with scent. The "debris area" from point of impact could be as far as 50 feet away. There were wood chips, shards of wood EVERYWHERE. I imagine there was pulverized jaw bone everywhere. I hoped for the best but knew that chances were slim of finding anything. We had a heavy rain here last night and the ground, wood, dirt were saturated.
He first alerted on the fringe areas, and it was halfhearted so I told him to keep working. He also started to go over near the log that was hiding the deer vertebrae and I had to call him back, fearing that HRD debris was also there ( and likely was). Hindsight being 20/20 I should have picked up the darned deer vertebrae before we started because it was unrealistic to expect an absolute negative alert on that area. It was about 20 feet away from where the jaw bone was. Bad handler.
After working about ten minutes, he focused his area where the initial bone was hidden. He narrowed down one area, lightly pawed it and sat. Ok.......can't imagine anything there but might as well check. We moved the debris around an inch or so and BINGO!!!!!! A three inch shard of jaw bone. I simply could not believe it.
I picked up that shard ( thank the lucky stars I had at LEAST that piece left) and continued to work Porter in the area. He alerted in two other close by areas ( less than three feet away) but I could find no visible shards. I called it a day at that.
Great lesson learned about what NOT to do with my bones. GREAT lesson learned on a real "needle in a haystack"search. He really CAN do it.
I'm going to go back out in the morning with a fresh start and see if there is anything else he can find, but I suspect there are microfragments everywhere.
I'll try to downsize the pics and post them.
Bonnie

[bonefinder]

First pic

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[bonefinder]

Second pic

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[oksaradt]

I love the look on both your face and the poor wood chipper in the first photo.

While you may not recognize it right now, this was an invaluable training exercise for both you and Porter. The search suddenly became personal for you and you were forced to totally depend on Porter. The cost of a mandible is steep for this lesson, but still worth the price.

When teaching at large seminars after we'd send the students off to dinner, it was not uncommon for several of the instructors to be found with their dogs around a spot where a
destructive dog had moved someone's source. Since we use our own sources to teach, it quickly becomes personal. I can remember multiple times where someone's pile of teeth were scattered out into loose dirt and we'd each take a square with our dog and methodically search and dig with our canine partner at our sides, paitiently waiting until we'd ask "show me....pulease....pulease....show me where the teeth are".

My first training partner lived on a golf course and had this odd sense of how to remember source placements. She'd place a source out the night before to work the next day.....say behind a lone dandelion in a field and the next morning there would be fifty companions joining it. I got a call once where she'd placed some bones in a rough area and the landscapers decided to mow it the next morning. We spent two days finely gridding the area to find all the bone chips we could.
We searched a sandtrap for several hours after they dumped multiple tons of new sand over her shallow buried source.
These are just a few examples. I always had fun and was laughing have the time we were searching at the idea of what the upper-crust would think if we told them what our dogs were really doing as they drove by on their golf carts. The times I would start to succumb to temptation would reward me with a punch in my shoulder by my training partner as she always feared the golf course would remove her "privledges" if they found out.


Your challenge should be to work with Porter to get back as much of your mandible as you can.

*grin*

Enjoy, you can't buy training like that. It is a great opportunity for you and Porter to improve. With some it could do great damage if the handler got frustrated, but from watching you I know you'll do great and let Porter do his job for you. No rewards till you recover a piece. On a real search, it's not uncommon that you don't reward as you just don't know and you can't run the risk of setting their training back. A dog like Porter will get greater understanding of what the game really is if the reward only comes when the two of you really do find a piece. I foresee after this experience that your training will adjust a bit and you'll now understand why I sometimes don't reward until the dog and I find the source together even when I know they are right on the money.

Jim

[rthonor]

I think its awesome that you actually recovered part of the bone via Porter. Thats great. rt

[bonefinder]

<<I think its awesome that you actually recovered part of the bone via Porter. >>

Yes it was, and believe me, we had to settle for that one shard. We were back out there this morning for about an hour, all to no avail. Porter kept going back to three specific spots OVER AND OVER AND OVER, alerting, but there was nothing to be found. Of course, we know there was "mandible dust" everywhere in the area, and i imagine there could have even been a small shard in each spot he kept returning to, but we could find nothing to salvage. Jim, as you mentioned, it was a very tough ( and expensive) lesson to be learned but it was the best training opportunity ever.
Best of all, we have made a new friend in the driver of the "masticator machine." He stopped by last night to download the pics of the pile BEFORE he destroyed them, so I have "before and after the pain" pics to save. He also took some pics of the wrecking machine. ha ha. He was the only other person staying in the campground, in a tent. We shared some Jack Daniels ( Rick's, not mine- yuck) and two hours of stories. He's from West Virginia, migrated to Wyoming for his undergrad and master's degree, a died in the wool hunter and Republican, and I'm a died in the wool Democrat who is PRO hunter, so by gosh, the three of us had one swell two hours of discussion. He came away more knowledgeable about the power of a dog's nose, and I came away loving yet one more person from "West Virginee". Bonnie