Four of us decided to celebrate the new year with a weekend of training. Katie Danzig, Karen Pardini, and Sarah Sherburne spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday, January 2nd and 3rd, with me at the Family Foundation School, along with all of our dogs: Abby and Raven, Ripley, Scout, Katya and Suki. Oh, and don’t forget Lily, our beagle. She’s not part of the team but she keeps the other, bigger dogs in line. We also watched Buddy Meyer’s dog, Max, for the weekend. Altogether that’s eight dogs, four handlers and one husband, mine–Sid Parham.
Truth be told, much of the weekend went to dog walking and dog obedience. With three German shepherds, two Dobermans, and Mallanios there were lots of little ranking issues to deal with; but nothing a five-minute down stay couldn’t handle.
Karen rewards Suki after she makes a building find
Abby and Raven squabbled just like the two sisters they are. They also have a wonderful time playing with each other. But there were a few times when their exuberance got out of hand so we cooled things down with a few time-outs. I don’t think there was a single second of actual canine aggression. But SAR dog handlers need to respect the sensibilities of the average person. Civilians are put off by dogs growling at each other–even when it’s perfectly normal doggy communication.
Lily’s little and it’s a good thing. If she weighs much of the shepherds she’d be the alpha bitch. As it was we caught her trying to dominate the Mallanios, Max. I can’t figure out any G-Rated way to explain what she was doing to him.
The new year brought our first serious winter weather. Snow on the ground. Snow falling. Bitterly cold temperatures with a significant wind chill. Large area search problems were out of the question. So we decided to focus on snow burial, HRD, and a little navigation.
Matt dressed for the weather
Two students from the Family Foundation School, Jens and Matt, prepared the sites for the snow burial problems and acted as subjects. They had a ball playing in the snow. Our two youngest dogs Abby and Raven, had no difficulty finding them.
Jens after a hard day in the snow
We spent the rest of the weekend indoors as much as possible using an unfinished building to train in human remains detection.
Katie and Karen took lots of pictures. Here’s a great sequence of Abby doing her first Snow burial.
In the midst of an event packed training day, Jana Martin and K-9 Slam; Buddy Meyers and K-9 Max, did their off-trail tests, their first certifications.
If you want to be certified as an area search dog team through the New York State Federation for Search and Rescue, you and your K-9 partner need to pass 5 tests. Each one increases in difficulty for both the handler and the dog. The first test is called the off-trail test. You and your dog walk a trail as if you were doing a hasty search. Somewhere along the way is the subject, hidden about 30 feet from the trail.
There are four basic goals for this test. Two apply to K-9 and two the handler.
Will the dog leave a trail and search for a live subject? We try to set up the test so that there is a cone of scent emanating from the subject and crossing the trail
Will the dog preform the trained behavior sequence called an indication to tell the handler that the subject has been located?
Can the handler “read” the dog. That is, does she observe significant changes in her dog’s natural, untrained behavior that can mean things like “I smell humans” or “I’m no longer smelling humans.” In this part of the country we call these natural behaviors “alerts”
How well does the handler deal with pressure? Bad as tests can be, searches are much more stressful. The handler’s emotions will impact the dog’s performance
Buddy Meyers and K-9 Max on the trail
Buddy and Max tested first. I was impressed by Buddy’s grace. He later admitted that he felt pressure but he did a wonderful job acting calm and in control. That’s crucial. Your dog will read you and pick up on your tension. Max demonstrated focus and control. A herd of at least a dozen deer and a younger dog chasing them ran right through the search area. Max ignored the puppy and came back when called off the deer. Not bad for a young Malinois. A few minutes later he located the subject well-concealed under a pile of downed limbs and branches.
Jana Martin and K-9 Slam before their Off-Trail test
Slam and Jana were up second. They are off to a great start.
You want your tester to know what you are thinking. You are being evaluated on your ability to read your dog. If you don’t say it, we are left wondering. Jana clearly communicated with me every step of the way, telling me about Slam’s alerts just as I was noticing them.
When Slam entered that scent cone his behavior was textbook. He located the subject rolled up like a burrito in a sleeping bag and a camo tarp, well consealed behind some downed tree limbs and covered with brush. Once he ascertained the contents was truly human, Slam did two flawless find-indicate-refind sequences. Slam’s indication is a full blown body-slam–what else.
Our training on Saturday was an great example of one of Kyle Warren’s favorite expressions: The 7 P’s, Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. We had ample communication before training and Kyle put together a solid plan that he emailed me Friday morning. Friday night, Sarah, Liz and I laid trails for the morning. Kyle and I mapped out areas for each of the dogs to work, sent coordinates to most everyone’s GPS and printed maps. On Saturday we were ready to rock and roll.
Training milestones: Buddy and Max worked their first larger area problem, moving out of the puppy class and into serious preparation for certification. Scout and Katie are ready to start working larger HRD problems. Until now Katie has been focused on motivation, indication and control.
As good as it was, next training will be better. One of our subjects (a student from The Family Foundation School) waited too long to tell us that she was not adequately dressed. She was uncomfortably cold when it was her turn to hide for K-9 Ripley. Fortunately my search area was long and skinny, the wind was favorable and we solved the problem quickly.
Snow was bad enough that those team members who could spent the night here. That was a lucky development. Saturday night Amir Findling told me part of the story of his trip to Australia several years ago where he was part of a team that found a man missing almost 40 days in the Australian outback. Can’t wait to get the complete story.
Sunday morning Karen, Katie, Sarah, K-9 Suki, K-9 Scout, and K-9 Abby helped me and my two dogs at the school. Twice a year I hold try-outs for the dog training program. I had planned to do it by myself. Working together saved time. I got great feedback and I got to see my teammates in another capacity. Karen is an experienced dance instructor and she was immediately able to take control of the group. I love my team. About 20 students tried out. This looks like a promising bunch. There were no real clunkers. Let’s see which ones we freeze next winter.
Word is starting to spread about Eagle Valley Search dogs and we are growing. Our guest from last training submitted an application and we had three more guests this time.
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