Post by oksaradt on Jan 25, 2011 16:22:33 GMT -5
The bulk of certifications out there, including the NAPWDA on Murphy, really don't certify a dog team for the bulk of searches that I get called out for. This is because most of the certifications are tissue oriented. I think of the national certs out there, NAPWDA definitely gave me the most bang for my four days and bucks as we tested rubble, building, vehicles, area, water, and buried.
BUT, big but..., all sources had a tissue component to them. If the person my dog is searching for has decomposition slowed down such as in winter or cold water, then tissue is the way to go. For my area of the country, a summer death can be bones only in less than four weeks given temperature, insects, and vermin.
Most of the searches that I get called for, the decedent has been missing years if not decades. If the "bad guy" buried my victim, then my dog has to be working nose down and in tight grids. If the victim has been dead less than four years, there might still be a tissue component to the scent. Time to bones is eight times longer buried than it is for surface and the ground temperature tends to be cooler, so that helps. So, anything older than four years in the ground, my dogs are looking for buried skeletal remains. This is why I spend the first year of the dog's life training with me on bones and teeth. It doesn't hinder the dog from finding tissue. It teaches the dog how to find the hard stuff that we get called out for most of the time.
The search for skeletal remains is tedious and requires one to break down the search area into grids. The width of the grid is determined on the soil type (sand, sandy loam, rock, clay, compost, marsh, water). This is because the diffusion distance and rate of the scent is determined by porosity, permeability, moisture content, temperature differentials, and air movement.
The handler is forced to develop a strategy to eliminate areas to search. Let's say that your victim has been missing five years. Do you know what a six year old tree looks like? If the tree was there first, then chances are they didn't bury him/her there. Most bad guys don't want to work hard at their burials. They just want the "evidence" gone as quickly as possible and out of prying eyes sight. Take a shovel. If you stick it into the ground and hit roots that have been there longer than your missing person....what's that saying, "There's YUR SIGN!" ...that they aren't there. Have I searched where I knew a body wasn't going to be? You betcha if my law enforcement wants to "check it anyway." Nothing says I'm an expert or all-knowing. They ask, I do. I won't talk my dog into something though just because everyone wants the body to be "right there". Murphy is already getting the look of "You and I both know there isn't anything here." But, crap rolls down hill. If I'm asked to do it anyway, then so is he. You have to treat every negative search like it's going to have a find and the dog and you prove it otherwise (OR make a find...muted happy dance, someone did die for us to make that find after all.)
So, let's go one step further. To be honest, I'd much rather look for "old buried" than "old scattered skeletal". Let's say you're asked to search for surface remains (they found a skull, or a long bone down in some rocks .....they want the rest). Let's say they suspect these bones to be 15 years dead. Let's say they want you to search 160 acres of washes, canyons, brambles, blackberry bushes, tumbleweed, ....name your area's crappy vegetation....kudzu... *grin*....and add grazing cattle and horses. Ok, how are you going to do it? If there is any animal activity in this area, then you can be guaranteed that most bones were chew sticks for them. All the long bones (not wedged in rocks where they animals couldn't reach them) are long gone. What will be left (if we're lucky) will be disarticulated teeth, phlanges, menages, and pieces of the other bones. Why look for them at all? Because families need closure and those items might have viable DNA to tell us who the dead person was.
SOooooo, the BIIIiiig question is DO YOUR AND YOUR DOG TRAIN FOR THIS?
Don't L.E. know how hard this sort of search is? Not at all. They consider you the HRD dog expert handler and that you'll tell them what you can and can't do............yea, you have to tell them what you can't do or they take you at your word. You have to tell them what rate you and your dog can work at to cover an area for the remains they hope you will find. Sometimes, you tell them straight in the face( that with the resources available, the time available, and the size of the area ) that your search is only going to be cursory at best AND THEY SAY "good enough." I can say this with a search of 20 dog teams and a search with one dog team, both can be long odds on a find. So, at the end of the day, if you searched anyway, then you better document to the fullest extent how accurate your search was...such as NASAR's Probability of Detection model.
*chuckle* I've had a flanker (very good and experienced) coach me at debrief to say our POD on the area was 20 percent. I looked at him and then at the debriefer with incredulous eyes and said, "10 percent at best for what you wanted us to look for." That was on a 10 acre/hour search for 8-month old scattered skeletal in hog country......you do know hogs will eat everything to where you are considering it when the dog shows interest at their poop. There have been finds in animal scat.
I have to take my hat off to those that do this is in march/swampland on a regular basis as the "pain-in-the-ass" factor goes up exponentially with gators, methane gas at every turn, boats that leak, and locals that would be happy to add you to the body count (oh yea, done those searches with two deputies at my dog's side and mine.)
Oh yea, that reminds me....can your dog search with 20 officers/ground pounders working the same area all around you? If your dog is a cross-trained dog, life is going to be very awkward when your dog becomes tired and frustrated such that it begins alerting on all the live folk. When my dogs go up to a live person on a search, I usually zip off at them without thinking, "Leave it! He's not dead yet." I like a nervous officer, they stay more alert for those locals that might want to add me to the count. I don't carry a gun....mainly because I'd end up hurting myself or my dog on a regular basis by accident. So, I like having all those experienced and knowledgable about guns there to keep me alive.
All the crap I've discussed above can be on a typical search that I get called out for. I can also be called to come check a quarter-acre lot for a "witnessed killing and burial" where common sense dictates a body isn't there because it's chock full of old growth trees with roots everywhere. You search it anyway while you are explaining why the odds of a body being here are low. And, once your dog knows it's clean, you try to explain why he wants to go check everything else but that one quarter-acre. He's no dummy, no scent means no reward.
In such cases it helps to know your taphonomy because you can then discuss with the non-dog search specialists (also called out to check the same area) about grave lines, changes in vegetation, yada yada yada to the point where the other specialist decides you aren't just a yokel with a dog and you work together instead of trying to show each other up.
Some of you have to be wondering, "why does he do this when he whines so much?" I'm not whining. These are just the rules of the game that I play. I hate to play alone and always rejoice when I come across other players willing to put in the effort to get to a decent level of the craft.
A friend of mine who tends to manage searches rather than work a dog anymore....because he's very good at managing searches...complained of the turf competitions, the egos, and the hidden agendas. He sounded beaten down. I felt for him because despite all the crap discussed above, I'd much rather be out in all of that with my dog then have to deal with the egos, the con men, the agendas, and such. He has it much rougher than I do.
So, you all come play when you are ready. We'll see if you have what it takes. If not, then there's always frisbee competitions.
Happy trails,
Jim
BUT, big but..., all sources had a tissue component to them. If the person my dog is searching for has decomposition slowed down such as in winter or cold water, then tissue is the way to go. For my area of the country, a summer death can be bones only in less than four weeks given temperature, insects, and vermin.
Most of the searches that I get called for, the decedent has been missing years if not decades. If the "bad guy" buried my victim, then my dog has to be working nose down and in tight grids. If the victim has been dead less than four years, there might still be a tissue component to the scent. Time to bones is eight times longer buried than it is for surface and the ground temperature tends to be cooler, so that helps. So, anything older than four years in the ground, my dogs are looking for buried skeletal remains. This is why I spend the first year of the dog's life training with me on bones and teeth. It doesn't hinder the dog from finding tissue. It teaches the dog how to find the hard stuff that we get called out for most of the time.
The search for skeletal remains is tedious and requires one to break down the search area into grids. The width of the grid is determined on the soil type (sand, sandy loam, rock, clay, compost, marsh, water). This is because the diffusion distance and rate of the scent is determined by porosity, permeability, moisture content, temperature differentials, and air movement.
The handler is forced to develop a strategy to eliminate areas to search. Let's say that your victim has been missing five years. Do you know what a six year old tree looks like? If the tree was there first, then chances are they didn't bury him/her there. Most bad guys don't want to work hard at their burials. They just want the "evidence" gone as quickly as possible and out of prying eyes sight. Take a shovel. If you stick it into the ground and hit roots that have been there longer than your missing person....what's that saying, "There's YUR SIGN!" ...that they aren't there. Have I searched where I knew a body wasn't going to be? You betcha if my law enforcement wants to "check it anyway." Nothing says I'm an expert or all-knowing. They ask, I do. I won't talk my dog into something though just because everyone wants the body to be "right there". Murphy is already getting the look of "You and I both know there isn't anything here." But, crap rolls down hill. If I'm asked to do it anyway, then so is he. You have to treat every negative search like it's going to have a find and the dog and you prove it otherwise (OR make a find...muted happy dance, someone did die for us to make that find after all.)
So, let's go one step further. To be honest, I'd much rather look for "old buried" than "old scattered skeletal". Let's say you're asked to search for surface remains (they found a skull, or a long bone down in some rocks .....they want the rest). Let's say they suspect these bones to be 15 years dead. Let's say they want you to search 160 acres of washes, canyons, brambles, blackberry bushes, tumbleweed, ....name your area's crappy vegetation....kudzu... *grin*....and add grazing cattle and horses. Ok, how are you going to do it? If there is any animal activity in this area, then you can be guaranteed that most bones were chew sticks for them. All the long bones (not wedged in rocks where they animals couldn't reach them) are long gone. What will be left (if we're lucky) will be disarticulated teeth, phlanges, menages, and pieces of the other bones. Why look for them at all? Because families need closure and those items might have viable DNA to tell us who the dead person was.
SOooooo, the BIIIiiig question is DO YOUR AND YOUR DOG TRAIN FOR THIS?
Don't L.E. know how hard this sort of search is? Not at all. They consider you the HRD dog expert handler and that you'll tell them what you can and can't do............yea, you have to tell them what you can't do or they take you at your word. You have to tell them what rate you and your dog can work at to cover an area for the remains they hope you will find. Sometimes, you tell them straight in the face( that with the resources available, the time available, and the size of the area ) that your search is only going to be cursory at best AND THEY SAY "good enough." I can say this with a search of 20 dog teams and a search with one dog team, both can be long odds on a find. So, at the end of the day, if you searched anyway, then you better document to the fullest extent how accurate your search was...such as NASAR's Probability of Detection model.
*chuckle* I've had a flanker (very good and experienced) coach me at debrief to say our POD on the area was 20 percent. I looked at him and then at the debriefer with incredulous eyes and said, "10 percent at best for what you wanted us to look for." That was on a 10 acre/hour search for 8-month old scattered skeletal in hog country......you do know hogs will eat everything to where you are considering it when the dog shows interest at their poop. There have been finds in animal scat.
I have to take my hat off to those that do this is in march/swampland on a regular basis as the "pain-in-the-ass" factor goes up exponentially with gators, methane gas at every turn, boats that leak, and locals that would be happy to add you to the body count (oh yea, done those searches with two deputies at my dog's side and mine.)
Oh yea, that reminds me....can your dog search with 20 officers/ground pounders working the same area all around you? If your dog is a cross-trained dog, life is going to be very awkward when your dog becomes tired and frustrated such that it begins alerting on all the live folk. When my dogs go up to a live person on a search, I usually zip off at them without thinking, "Leave it! He's not dead yet." I like a nervous officer, they stay more alert for those locals that might want to add me to the count. I don't carry a gun....mainly because I'd end up hurting myself or my dog on a regular basis by accident. So, I like having all those experienced and knowledgable about guns there to keep me alive.
All the crap I've discussed above can be on a typical search that I get called out for. I can also be called to come check a quarter-acre lot for a "witnessed killing and burial" where common sense dictates a body isn't there because it's chock full of old growth trees with roots everywhere. You search it anyway while you are explaining why the odds of a body being here are low. And, once your dog knows it's clean, you try to explain why he wants to go check everything else but that one quarter-acre. He's no dummy, no scent means no reward.
In such cases it helps to know your taphonomy because you can then discuss with the non-dog search specialists (also called out to check the same area) about grave lines, changes in vegetation, yada yada yada to the point where the other specialist decides you aren't just a yokel with a dog and you work together instead of trying to show each other up.
Some of you have to be wondering, "why does he do this when he whines so much?" I'm not whining. These are just the rules of the game that I play. I hate to play alone and always rejoice when I come across other players willing to put in the effort to get to a decent level of the craft.
A friend of mine who tends to manage searches rather than work a dog anymore....because he's very good at managing searches...complained of the turf competitions, the egos, and the hidden agendas. He sounded beaten down. I felt for him because despite all the crap discussed above, I'd much rather be out in all of that with my dog then have to deal with the egos, the con men, the agendas, and such. He has it much rougher than I do.
So, you all come play when you are ready. We'll see if you have what it takes. If not, then there's always frisbee competitions.
Happy trails,
Jim