Post by oksaradt on Nov 8, 2007 12:44:42 GMT -5
One of the reasons I push for getting a puppy as close to 5 weeks of age as possible is it gives me the opportunity to raise the dog's IQ via problem solving at an early age. Some breeders are going with a program they labeled as "Head Start". Who knew what I was doing for years had such a cool name. It's always cool when someone coins common sense with a new title. For SAR dogs, this has to be stepped up as they are expected to not only deal with the woods, but the best and the worst of human creation.
In SAR work, some handlers prefer a dog that's "all nose", i.e. it thinks more with its nose than its head. Most men that grew up in life thinking with the "other head" can attest to you that this is not all it's cracked up to be.
My favorite example of a dog team thinking with its nose was when I got to go hide for a "live find" team. A really nice malinois and experienced handler that had moved from Michigan to Oklahoma. We were experiencing a heavy snow that day (rare in Oklahoma) and the handler made the mistake of telling me "Jim, Suprise me." I just get goosebumps when handler lays down a scent challenge to me. I was in my winter coveralls, head gear, etc. ,....so I was set to get comfortable in most temperatures. I found a gully in the woods with a bank of snow on the upwind side and we were getting a heavy snowfall at the time. I slipped into the snowbank with my back to a comfortable tree and a bush to hide in, buried myself with snow, and waited for 30 minutes before radioing them while the snow covered my tracks and the marks of my hiding. I put the ear piece in so my radio couldn't be heard and told him to go for it. As chance would have it, he had some newbies coming along to watch (he's sold himself as this big northern search dog team....just how bad could Oklahoma be..?)
To the dog's credit, it got within 50 feet of me within 10 minutes...way cool to watch. It came to the downwind edge of the gully, dropped down into the gully, and promptly lost my scent. It returned back up to the gully. Handler shows up as his wunderhund hadn't come back to him with an alert. He watches his dog and proclaims, "I've seen this before." He hooks his dog up on lead and takes it to the upwind side of the gully (did I mention I was very careful to go just along the edge of the upwind gully, had found a tree branch to cross over on...........hey, he wanted to be surprised). He releases his dog on the upwind side of the gully about 40 feet upwind of me. To the dog's credit, it grids from side to side but never approaches the gully on the upwind side. It gives it's handler the finger and runs back over to the downwind side where it had scent, proceeeds to go up and down the gully, in scent and out. The dog was never challenged to pursue scent to where "IT MIGHT BE"...this is a mental leap for many dogs, a must have for cadaver dogs as cadaver scent ( ignore Rebman's book) just doesn't act the same as live scent unless the body is in active decomposition and producing more heat than ambient.
I watched them struggle for 15 minutes longer along the edge of the gully. The newbies had lost interest while the handler (again to his credit) was trying to reason out what was going on so he could help his dog out. Finally, he gets on the radio (that all team members are tuned into) and asks, "Jim, can you see me? Are we close?" I waited because he was five feet below me until he walked on down the gully around a turn and then whispered, "I've been watching you and your dog for a good 30 minutes now, very impressive." He doesn't reply, but then starts walking down the gully looking up into the trees as he surmises I've climbed a tree on the downwind side of the gully. His dog had begun pacing (for the past 20 minutes) a 20 foot path from side to side straight across from me, telling me exactly where my scent was going...way cool.
When he went around the opposite turn of the gully, still looking up into the trees (because he's decided he's going to beat me), I whispered, "pay attention to your dog, man." I almost got into mals instead of ADTs, another misunderstood breed and his was tenacious, great nose.
He climbs up the gully, stares at this dog who is oblivious to him and now whining as it continues on its now slushy red-brown trek from side-to-side. The handler moves about 10 feet back, stares across the gully, and I wave to him. He nearly wizzed his pants. I then rolled over onto my stomach, inched to the edge of the gully, and blew my breath down into the gully. It took three breaths and the mal jumps down into the gully and climbs up to me where I patted his head. The dog's eyes never connected with me, it's nose brought it to me.....my kind of dog.
Sooooo, with that story, yesterday's Murphy IQ puzzle is below. These are heavy equipment pallets stacked outside of my business.. We considered using them as boat docks, but they've become a permanent fixture and I've enjoyed torturing/teaching multiple dogs on them. The wind literally swirls in and out of these pallets, so many different scent puzzles can be created. Up to yesterday, I've protected my sources from Murphy's mouth with various containers. As I'd observed two days before that he just wasn't quite big enough to climb them yet, I could safely put sources there without container scent to confuse the scent picture. Murphy demonstrated to me that his nose drives him to places he'd never go before. Once Murphy figured out how to use his rear legs (as disaster dog handlers can tell you, the hardest part in getting a dog to climb a ladder is teaching it that it has rear legs. Going down, now that's a whole different type of problem.....you try crawling down a ladder, let me know your visual image....scares the pee out of me.)...Anyway, once he realized he has rear legs his climbing skills have taken off. He climbed up my legs last night to demonstrate he can be a lap dog and and we passed out together to the nightly news.
I have photos of the work on the pallets, but apparently I don't have photo insertion permission yet. The pallets are around 25 feet long, 7 feet wide, 8 inch gaps underneath with various items placed there for convenience. Murphy climbed up onto the first pallet and worked his way in, under, over the underside to find the three sources placed inside. He also decided to tunnel underneath the bottom ballet not once but a total of five laps as it was just fun. Underneath the pallets is asphalt which Murphy face planted on his first time jumping down, but this didn't stop him from going back up several other times. I wasn't coaxing him up or down any of this time and I was concerned about joints, but he appears very resilient. I'll try to keep him from jumping down too far till he's 18 months of age to protect his joints.
Hope this helps people
Jim
In SAR work, some handlers prefer a dog that's "all nose", i.e. it thinks more with its nose than its head. Most men that grew up in life thinking with the "other head" can attest to you that this is not all it's cracked up to be.
My favorite example of a dog team thinking with its nose was when I got to go hide for a "live find" team. A really nice malinois and experienced handler that had moved from Michigan to Oklahoma. We were experiencing a heavy snow that day (rare in Oklahoma) and the handler made the mistake of telling me "Jim, Suprise me." I just get goosebumps when handler lays down a scent challenge to me. I was in my winter coveralls, head gear, etc. ,....so I was set to get comfortable in most temperatures. I found a gully in the woods with a bank of snow on the upwind side and we were getting a heavy snowfall at the time. I slipped into the snowbank with my back to a comfortable tree and a bush to hide in, buried myself with snow, and waited for 30 minutes before radioing them while the snow covered my tracks and the marks of my hiding. I put the ear piece in so my radio couldn't be heard and told him to go for it. As chance would have it, he had some newbies coming along to watch (he's sold himself as this big northern search dog team....just how bad could Oklahoma be..?)
To the dog's credit, it got within 50 feet of me within 10 minutes...way cool to watch. It came to the downwind edge of the gully, dropped down into the gully, and promptly lost my scent. It returned back up to the gully. Handler shows up as his wunderhund hadn't come back to him with an alert. He watches his dog and proclaims, "I've seen this before." He hooks his dog up on lead and takes it to the upwind side of the gully (did I mention I was very careful to go just along the edge of the upwind gully, had found a tree branch to cross over on...........hey, he wanted to be surprised). He releases his dog on the upwind side of the gully about 40 feet upwind of me. To the dog's credit, it grids from side to side but never approaches the gully on the upwind side. It gives it's handler the finger and runs back over to the downwind side where it had scent, proceeeds to go up and down the gully, in scent and out. The dog was never challenged to pursue scent to where "IT MIGHT BE"...this is a mental leap for many dogs, a must have for cadaver dogs as cadaver scent ( ignore Rebman's book) just doesn't act the same as live scent unless the body is in active decomposition and producing more heat than ambient.
I watched them struggle for 15 minutes longer along the edge of the gully. The newbies had lost interest while the handler (again to his credit) was trying to reason out what was going on so he could help his dog out. Finally, he gets on the radio (that all team members are tuned into) and asks, "Jim, can you see me? Are we close?" I waited because he was five feet below me until he walked on down the gully around a turn and then whispered, "I've been watching you and your dog for a good 30 minutes now, very impressive." He doesn't reply, but then starts walking down the gully looking up into the trees as he surmises I've climbed a tree on the downwind side of the gully. His dog had begun pacing (for the past 20 minutes) a 20 foot path from side to side straight across from me, telling me exactly where my scent was going...way cool.
When he went around the opposite turn of the gully, still looking up into the trees (because he's decided he's going to beat me), I whispered, "pay attention to your dog, man." I almost got into mals instead of ADTs, another misunderstood breed and his was tenacious, great nose.
He climbs up the gully, stares at this dog who is oblivious to him and now whining as it continues on its now slushy red-brown trek from side-to-side. The handler moves about 10 feet back, stares across the gully, and I wave to him. He nearly wizzed his pants. I then rolled over onto my stomach, inched to the edge of the gully, and blew my breath down into the gully. It took three breaths and the mal jumps down into the gully and climbs up to me where I patted his head. The dog's eyes never connected with me, it's nose brought it to me.....my kind of dog.
Sooooo, with that story, yesterday's Murphy IQ puzzle is below. These are heavy equipment pallets stacked outside of my business.. We considered using them as boat docks, but they've become a permanent fixture and I've enjoyed torturing/teaching multiple dogs on them. The wind literally swirls in and out of these pallets, so many different scent puzzles can be created. Up to yesterday, I've protected my sources from Murphy's mouth with various containers. As I'd observed two days before that he just wasn't quite big enough to climb them yet, I could safely put sources there without container scent to confuse the scent picture. Murphy demonstrated to me that his nose drives him to places he'd never go before. Once Murphy figured out how to use his rear legs (as disaster dog handlers can tell you, the hardest part in getting a dog to climb a ladder is teaching it that it has rear legs. Going down, now that's a whole different type of problem.....you try crawling down a ladder, let me know your visual image....scares the pee out of me.)...Anyway, once he realized he has rear legs his climbing skills have taken off. He climbed up my legs last night to demonstrate he can be a lap dog and and we passed out together to the nightly news.
I have photos of the work on the pallets, but apparently I don't have photo insertion permission yet. The pallets are around 25 feet long, 7 feet wide, 8 inch gaps underneath with various items placed there for convenience. Murphy climbed up onto the first pallet and worked his way in, under, over the underside to find the three sources placed inside. He also decided to tunnel underneath the bottom ballet not once but a total of five laps as it was just fun. Underneath the pallets is asphalt which Murphy face planted on his first time jumping down, but this didn't stop him from going back up several other times. I wasn't coaxing him up or down any of this time and I was concerned about joints, but he appears very resilient. I'll try to keep him from jumping down too far till he's 18 months of age to protect his joints.
Hope this helps people
Jim