Good weekend training dogs with a friend

[jocoyn]

I did trails for her BH and she set some blind hides for Grim .....Got pretty creative on her end:

Just some of the better HRD ones:

Source in a henhouse in an egg box. The noise was deafening and "fowl" smell overpowering when Grim went into the area. But no issues there and he even nudged a Turkey "guarding" the entrance out of the way. Did not pay a moment's notice to all the birds flapping around.

Source located in tons (literally) of bagged coffee grounds (she lives on a farm and they spread them on the soil) Source also located among spices (big empty 5 gallon tubs used for them)---in both cases we used small fluid sources because I told her I did not want her to put my training sources too close to strong odors - so she got some "fluid" and put on gauze....all we could smell was the coffee and spices.

Large source by creek in animal trap (set up so animal could not trip it) -set out overnight. Wow, even 2 days after we removed the source you could still smell the scent lingering by the stream. He hit that one about 150 yards away. We did some more overnight, large source, larger area and he did fine with those too. I even ran one later in the day to make the scent picture more complex but he nailed it as well.

Scent in large sewer pipe in Fire Department training area. Also in burned out buses.

Bone lineup (we spaced them apart because, once again, I don't want to contaminate my sources) but I had a horse skull, cow skull, cat skull, deer horns, turtle shell, fox skull, and human vertebra. Then I just stood there so as to not throw body language - .

The only problem (another one) we had trouble with was I hid about a half inch fragment of human rib zip tied to a horse skull still having flesh. (bone pile at a farm)......Did not locate THAT one, The rib is now retired as a training aid too. Just wanted to see .......

And the really interesting one was she gave me a section of train track to search. This one wound up being the site of an actual accident 5 months ago. It was in town and had been well cleaned up and was very subtle but he showed the appropriate body language in about a 20 foot area on and downhill (tracks are on raised beds) to the gully and up a little onto the grass. He gave trained indication in the crack between the tie bracket and the rail. We were, in fact, in the right location.

For her trails:

We did some heavilty contaminated 18 hour ones, some urban trails where I moved so the dog would hit my airscent (it did) and also one where I hid inside a truck trailer holding hay. She liked them.

[JakodaCD OA]

sounds like a fun and productive weekend)

[ladylaw203]

The only problem (another one) we had trouble with was I hid about a half inch fragment of human rib zip tied to a horse skull still having flesh. (bone pile at a farm)......Did not locate THAT one, The rib is now retired as a training aid too. Just wanted to see .......

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what was the objective?

[jocoyn]

Originally Posted by ladylaw203

The only problem (another one) we had trouble with was I hid about a half inch fragment of human rib zip tied to a horse skull still having flesh. (bone pile at a farm)......Did not locate THAT one, The rib is now retired as a training aid too. Just wanted to see .......

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what was the objective?

I wanted to see how small a human source he could locate with overwhelming animal contamination. The bones were in the farm bonepile.

I do know that sometimes animals are/have been comingled with human remains in an attempt to mask the odor but a more realistic scenario there would have required more source......and, I presume, decomp though it seems differentiating animal bones from human bones is sometimes easier for them than differentiating decomp.

I decided not to push that one so did not prompt an alert ......just let it go.

[ladylaw203]

good call. The animal odor was the overwhelming odor plus you had overlap so an alert would be on animal remains. If the bone fragment is bone room, especially

[jocoyn]

Yep, now I only buy from Skulls Unlimited - and also do have some wet bone. (joint replacement surgeries-we need to remind everyone to know that those femur heads make nice scent objects)

Maybe I don't need to worry about comingled remains (Because to me they would be ruined after that) in training. The fellow I knew who found a shallow grave that way - the dog had no problem finding the human who was under the dog. And the dogs can find the target source in the presence of strong competing odors (which was what we did a lot of in training this weekend)

[ladylaw203]

I agree. I just never place a training aid like that as in attached to a negative. If the dog would have alerted and was subsequently rewarded,then the dog would associate the animal with the positive and one basically rewarded the animal remains too. Make sense? We emphasize the target odor in maintenance training, proof off of non target odors. In the real world, the dog will locate the HR despite the presence of non target odors


I do however scatter animal remains all over an area with a positive training aid in the mix and provide the dog plenty area to only exhibit the final trained response at the HR so there is no confusion

[jocoyn]

Yes, lesson learned. Fortunately the next day we placed bones from 5 different animal species about 5 feet from each other as well as one human bone....none touching, and the dog located and indicated properly (and I let him work offlead and backed out of the picture) on the human bone.

which brings me to a point about training logs......

If I document on day 1 that I did something wrong or the dog gives an inapproprate response, which I fix on day 2 - should the log entry for day 1 refernce the "fix" on on day 2? I fix problems noted in my logs and document the fix but I have not "cross referenced" them and I could see in court where a problem could be located in training and finding the place where it was fixed could take awhile ........

[ladylaw203]

If you have an "issue" today. I assume you immediately set up a scenario to address it right then. You dont leave on a bad note. You denote that on your log. As you move forward,you denote your scenario to address the problem. FIx was a bad term that I used. Just show you are setting up scenarios to address the issue. make sense?