Pet Detectives IV- There is a difference between wind scenting and tracking.

This is the last of our Pet detectives feature. I hope that you have enjoyed it. Now in its purest sense a wind scenting (scouting) dog will tell you where the person is while the tracking dog will tell you where the person was. The scouting dog is working off wind-borne scent and the tracking dog follows scent that is on the ground. This can best be visualized in a wilderness area. Let's start with the tracking. We have the picture of a Bloodhound pursuing a criminal over hill and dale. The dog with its nose to the ground smells the odor left by the lost person or bad guy. The dog can selectively follow the correct person's trail even if it has been crossed with someone Else's aroma. The dog is checking out where the person was in hopes of catching up and finding out where that person is now. In tracking it is necessary to locate someplace that person walked. In scouting it isn't necessary to locate a place where the person walked. An area can be searched and the dog can tell if some one is in that particular area. Knowing where a person is NOT is the flip side of what we want but is a valuable search tool. The dog supplies the nose and the handler or the search director supplies the brain that determines what areas are to be checked. Now for maximum effectiveness the dog should have the wind blowing toward it at a 90-degree angle. Bear in mind these two distinctions because we will visit them again. The important thing is getting the dog to use its nose. This is not a problem with the trained search dog. The more the dog uses its nose the more he loves the work. When we have him loving it we can start to do all sorts of neat things with the dog's nose skills. Breeds are genetically programmed to track or scout. Now that doesn't mean that you can't re-program your dog to use his nose the other way. How do you determine a breeds genetic predisposition? It isn't in the breed standard and it isn't in the breed books. You can run a quick test to determine which way your dog will hunt. Locate a grassy spot with two longish buildings on either side. The purpose of the buildings is to control and funnel the wind-borne scent while minimizing variables. Now if a hundred people have been traversing this strip of grass don't use it. Remember we are trying to minimize the variables so we can conduct a valid test. Determine which way the wind is blowing and determine where your decoy (possibly you) is going to be hiding. A slight depression in the ground at the end of the buildings will work. Just make sure your dog can't see you. Have a bright friend hold the dog on the leash and tell him that he is to note how the dog is using his nose when you duck out of sight. Have him wait five minutes before coming to find you. You need a couple of minutes to duck out of view behind the buildings, scuff the ground at your starting point and then move upwind of the dog while scuffing your feet in route to your hiding place. An approximate starting point should have been selected without going in and fouling the area. It can be marked with a peg; a piece of paper held in place with a rock or any method so the one handling the dog knows where to start. Your dog will use his eyes looking for you as he approaches the starting point. Now when he gets between the two buildings the handler pauses at the starting point as the dog desperately looks around for you. The area is awash with your scent and we want to get the dog to select the scent he wants to use, the ground scent or the air scent. There's your answer. The dog has used his nose to find you and you can give him a good rubba-dub-dub or a treat---or even both. His two highest rewards are not the petting or the cookie. It is 1) using his nose and 2) finding you. This training is as positive as it comes. Now, the dog ideally should never have been used for any of this work before. A dog with a TDX is surprisingly a poor candidate. He has already "learned" how to use his nose. Our purpose here was to find out his genetic predisposition. That little test has started your dog on the quest to become a SAR (search and rescue) dog. You've done a number of constructive things. 1) You've given him the opportunity and pleasure of using his nose. 2) The dog is thinking this is fun. Let me try it again. 3) You've determined his genetic predisposition to hunting with the head high or low. Your test tells you which way would be the best way to use your dog but it is not an absolute. Should you want to pursue this work further find a good group in your area and hook up with them. They will come up with a training program that will fit in with their objectives and goals. It is a team endeavor and you want to join a good team. Their goals are the team's goals and you have to be ready to bow to that goal. The first time you return a lost child or lost animal to a grieving parent/owner you will know all that hard work and preparation was worthwhile. Below are three different situations needing three different approaches and perhaps three different dogs, three different handlers with three different training backgrounds. It is all search and rescue but each one is different and handled differently. Even categorizing them definitively is an impossibility. First a collapsed three-story building is in a remote hunting area in the northwest. The area would certainly qualify as wilderness but the building collapse is urban in a non-urban setting. There are three people buried under a collapsed building in the middle of no where. That strangely makes it urban search and rescue. The dog must use his nose to find people trapped under the building. They may still be alive trapped under tons of steel and concrete. If they were lucky they are in a void where than can breathe. How long will there be air there is questionable. The possibility of the debris shifting and crushing them is a constant danger. That is why speed is so important. And there could be more than three people in the collapse. The collapsed building needs dogs with good noses to work with people carefully removing the debris. When a dog picks up someone it is necessary to clear away that debris and dig down to where the person is located. The handler and the support personnel have to disassemble the rubble to minimize shifting ad get to the person that are trapped ASAP. The wilderness side of SAR may have a small child lost in some wild and woolly area. You know t five-year-old is out there but you don't know where. Or it could be an elderly demented person that has wondered off and become confused. The young boy, Brian wandered off from his parents when they stopped at a petrol station-restaurant area. They have no idea which way or where he went. The lost boy is more problematical. We probably can't find a starting point although there is his jacket and cap in the car. An attempt will be made to pick-up his trial. If a good SAR team with a good search director is near by there will a dog trying to pick up his trial and the director analyzing the area for lines of drift. As soon as the director figures likely areas for Brian to be in she will bring in wind scenting dogs to quarter these areas. The elderly gentleman had a starting point and a Bloodhound is sent in to smell his bedding and clothes from the hamper, not clean clothes. In a suburban area there, hopefully aren't too many crossed trails and there is a need to find him before nightfall Before we return to our lost people let's see some of the different ways that dogs work. There is a difference between wind scenting and tracking. Now in its purest sense a wind scenting (scouting) dog will tell you where the person is while the tracking dog will tell you where the person was. The scouting dog is working off wind-borne scent and the tracking dog follows scent that is on the ground. This can best be visualized in a wilderness area. Let's start with the tracking. We have the picture of a Bloodhound pursuing a criminal over hill and dale. The dog with its nose to the ground smells the odor left by the lost person or bad guy. The dog can selectively follow the correct person's trail even if it has been crossed with someone Else's aroma. The dog is checking out where the person was in hopes of catching up and finding out where that person is now. In tracking it is necessary to locate someplace that person walked. In scouting it isn't necessary to locate a place where the person walked. An area can be searched and the dog can tell if some one is in that particular area. Knowing where a person is NOT is the flip side of what we want but is a valuable search tool. The dog supplies the nose and the handler or the search director supplies the brain that determines what areas are to be checked. Now for maximum effectiveness the dog should have the wind blowing toward it at a 90-degree angle. Bear in mind these two distinctions because we will visit them again. The important thing is getting the dog to use its nose. This is not a problem with the trained search dog. The more the dog uses its nose the more he loves the work. When we have him loving it we can start to do all sorts of neat things with the dog's nose skills Now let's get back to our above victims. The collapsed building required heavy equipment to move the material but because of the buried people they couldn't go in there with bulldozers. They had to carefully investigate each ''find'' and remove the debris by hand. The first two people were found rather rapidly. The third person's odor causes the dog to act strangely and confused. The dog's owner, an experience SAR handler knew what was upsetting the dog. They were too late. The person was dead and the dog started to shut down. There are very few cadaver-trained dogs for obvious reasons. Often when they find their first dead body they become confused. They can tell the difference and never having worked on a dead body upsets them. It is good that it was the last lost body the dog located. If it was the first the dog might not have been able to continue working. The missing boy presented problems. The Bloodhound couldn't find his trail at all. There were a lot of people passing through the area to get food, tend their cars, asking directions and all the things necessary at that sort of a stop. This is a constant problem when tracker dogs are brought in on a case. They are brought in as a last thought---an after thought more than anything else. The trail has been fouled with all sorts of people including investigators. Bringing the tracker dogs in earlier produces the best results. This is not so for the wind scenting dogs. The search areas have to be cleared of extraneous people or the dogs will pick up on them. The search director had her act together along with a good typographical map of the area. She studied the map and reconnoitered the surrounding wooded area. Rapidly computing the time since the boy disappeared, the lines of drift (the boy would more than likely move down hill rather than up hill) and vegetation she selected a few key areas to employ her scouting dogs and she had two. She was hopefully assuming that she did not have a kidnapping case. Bingo! Within forty-five minutes of starting to work one of the wind scenting dogs found the Brian safe and sound. The older man was a different story. A Belgian Lakenois tracker dog was brought in seven hours after his disappearance. The Lakenois is genetically a wind scenting dog but it had received as lot of good heavy training in tracking. She was a tracking fool with a good cold nose. Fortuitously she was the only dog available and ideally suited for this job. The handler, while in transit, phoned the relatives and had them put some of the man's dirty laundry in a large zip-lock bag. Finding the house the handler put the harness on "Babette" as she brusquely grabbed the bag from the man's daughter on the way into the house. "Where's his room?" she asked at a fast walk. Babette was excited and hot to trot. The handler threw back the covers on the man's bed as she de-bagged his dirty laundry. Thrusting the dirty clothes under Babette's nose she used the command, "Search!" She didn't need it. The dog knew what she was there to do and took a full scent, went over to the bed sheets and put her nose to the ground. She was working it out. Running through the house with her nose on the ground, smelling where the man had been that day. Babette headed for the door and went flying out with her handler hanging on to the leash into the suburban area. She was working fast and then about 400 meters from the house she seemed to loose the trail. The handler slowed down to let the dog work it out. For some reason she couldn't pick up the trail. The handler started moving Babette out in a widening circle. She repeatedly cast the dog off to find the scent. Babette hit it and was on the trail again with her nose close to the ground. The handler knew Babette was getting closer as her head rose to chest height and she strained harder on the leash. The dog went up to a man sleeping under a tree and started nuzzling him. The handler finally had a chance to look up and see that she no longer saw the occasional house. She was in a wooded area. "We found him!" she said into the radio as she bent down to check the man out. He seemed fine and she helped him to his feet. Mission accomplished! We have three different situations all requiring different solutions and different dogs. The all-important similarity is TIME! Those buried alive in a collapsed building have limited oxygen. We want to find the lost child and lost man before nightfall. Colder temperatures could prove fatal to the man but Brian probably could survive but he might panic. There are some accompanying problems in working search dogs at night. The solution is to get the search dogs in as soon as possible. Awareness is the key to getting the dogs in on time.