Unnatural Human Remains

[oksaradt]

I haven't posted in a while. I've been in a funk and just didn't see any reason to share that in my words. I kept training dogs and dog teams, just didn't feel like sharing.

A while back I decided to create training aids that law enforcement would expect (or rather not know otherwise) "cadaver dogs" to be able to find. One of these I call my "closed up in a 55-gallon drum body" I used a placenta in a steril paint can, but the effect was the same. Over time with variations in environment like freezing weather to really hot days in the sun, the remains got to decompose in mostly anaerobic conditions.

I opened the paint cans a couple of times, each time producing a pressure release. The end result after months was a tarry black goo.

....remember one of my theories are that the dogs that make the best HRD dogs are those where the genetics have gone into overdrive to create a dog that loves to roll in the nastiest stuff to mask its scent. This would be an evolutionary bonus in that such a dog can hide in the bushes from prey until time to strike. Mr. bunny rabbit would hop near the bush, smell something obviously dead, and not run as it would not consider this a threat.....

Not to my surprise, my dogs love this stuff to the point that I have to go to extremes to make it hard to roll in. As long as they can't get to it, they alert and target as trained. If it's available, they try to roll. My saving grace is I'm golden if I'm searching a yard full of drums. One falls down and cracks open, it could be both embarrassing and a long drive home afterwards.

My point to this post is those of you who consider yourself accomplished HRD dog handlers need to ponder what you might be called out on and decide just how you are going to train for that. A search covering two hundred apartment doors, up and down flights of stairs, doors opening, cats running, etc. in hopes of finding where someone was butchered comes to mind.....just another idea for a negative search to do with your dogs.

Get those imaginations going,

Jim

[bonefinder]

Your sick little experiment is a variation on what I did......with placentas I got from you
Over the winter of 2010, I had a cooler with placentas in it. Put those back in the freezer but the cooler had alot of juice at the bottom. My intention was to rinse/clean it but winter came early. I left the cooler sealed, all winter, and when spring came, I had my "gas mask" ready when it came time to open the cooler. Oddly, there was no detectable odor but that does not mean there wasn't alot of scent. I took advantage of the "odorless" liquid and made about 150 sources by dipping Q tips in there and storing then in their own jar. I wasn't sure what the dogs would do but OH BOY.........they hit on those like nobody's business.
The rolling.......I'd like to discuss that at greater length in June. As you know, I was on a long vacation and didn't do a whole lot of training while there. We had a great session yesterday and rolling was a MAJOR component but it involved rolling in fringe scent.
Glad to see you back posting. Still the best place for info around
Bonnie

[oksaradt]

I've had several of the local area search/live find dog teams that wanted the truly nasty sources left out to see what their dogs would do. I've observed both avoidance and high attraction. Realize that (I believe) the best dogs for this type of work are those with off-the-scale hunt drive (not prey drive). The high-hunt drive dog is ruled by their nose above all else. A fraction of the high-hunt drive dogs evolved (or survived) by rolling in "dead stuff" (not just human) to mask their scent, allowing them to lie in wait upwind to catch the "rabbit."
Now this survival trait developed before human got involved in their breeding programs to create the "ultimate dog of their choice" which is why you'll hear of tea-cup poodles dragging a human bone out of the bushes and why I don't get fixated on a specific breed best for HRD.
Many of the professional dog organizations fixate only on high-ball drive, only a tangent of prey drive. There does not exist any creature on earth that rolls and bounces, so ball-drive can't really be attributed to survival genetics. I test for ball-drive because I want to have a built-in reward system. I want the five-week old puppy that already wants to chase down the puppy-size ball and bring it back to me. I didn't have to teach that and it suggests the end-result-dog can become ball-obsessive. A trait I can use machievellan tactics upon to generate a behavior in the dog that gives it a reason to include me in on the hunt.
As with any behavior modification tool, timing is everything. If you wait until the dog is in active roll in the scent, it is self-rewarding and the ball has minimal effect. So, in training you have to set the dog up with the tantilizing scent where you know just before it's going to roll and you introduce the ball reward instead of the roll. This has multiple benefits as 1) you don't have to drive home smelling that scent on your dog's coat in the same vehicle and 2) You can create a behavior where the dog alerts (instead of rolling) for the anticipated ball.
I try to suggest to handlers with either ball or tug reward that there should be a trade to get the reward back, i.e. I use the secondary reinforcer of food reward for the ball. Doing this, I don't get into the tug-and/or-chase game with the dog to get the ball back to work the next problem or find more remains. Yet, I continue to see handlers get into a battle of wills with their dog to release with many times the handler communicates a correction to the dog to get the ball/tug back.....you know, "ouss"......"Ouss"......"OUSS!"......(finger press into muzzle with "OUSS!!!!) while I walk by the same dog with a treat and it hands me the ball for the sweet smelling treat with no fight at all.
Now, Thorpe, my two-year old dog-in-training, He enjoys owning the ball for a time. He likes the victory dance with the ball. He'll roll over and play with the ball, trying to entice me into chase. I appreciate that letting him own the ball for a bit enhances its value for him. I never succumb to the chase and simply wait him out at first for the trade. After one or two times, he comes to me readily and drops the ball at my feet for the anticipated food trade. In my mind, this is the paycheck to the working dog with the ball being my marker of "job well done."
Thorpe LOVES to roll in nasty decomp. The worse the smell, the more he wants to roll. So, my challenge is to throw the ball past his eyes before he succumbs to the roll. I have to repeat this over and over again to modify his behavior to anticipation for the ball over the roll. Thorpe is a "hard dog", i.e. he takes longer to train, but once it sticks it sticks much longer than the "soft dog." He simply forces me to be ever consistent in my training skills. The nice thing in him being a hard dog is he's starting to demonstrate he'll stick with a hard seach where targeting is really tough. That's what I have to have in the searches I do, so I think the investment will be worth it.

And, of course, we have to reduce the "roll" as much as possible for fear of disturbing a crime scene. I've been teased that the "roll" is the dog's alert? Not so, because it could just as easily signify my dog has found a rotting armadillo carcass, a truly obnoxious scent that requires the same treatment as skunking to remove the scent from the curly Airedale coat.


Jim