Eye-level view of searching with Slam yesterday
This was going to be called “That thing called the handler-dog bond” and I’d written the beginning of it in mid April, after a really great solo training problem with Slam at Karen Pardini’s place in High Falls. With Robin in hiding, on a brilliant, hot and sunny day, I set out for a 20 acre area search problem with Slam.
There was noone with me. Just Slam, a compass, the GPS, a radio, me, and a sense that Robin could be sitting just about anywhere. And it took us a while, and it was our first experience alone together. When Slam found Robin, his bump (his indication), even after 40 minutes traversing the rocky crags and scrambling through the laurel, was emphatic. He stomped into me, like, LOOK, I DID IT. It felt like a milestone.
But learning has its peaks, and its valleys. These days I feel like I’m in a bit of a valley. Not as a handler right now, but more as a navigator. I’m not saying I’ve got my dog down to a T, but I know that when he alerts on scent, his nose is going to surf the air and his tail will flag up; when he’s heading into a scent cone, he gets even faster and more animated than he usually is (and if I can’t see him, I can hear the rapid samba of the bell on his collar, ringing with every step).
But I’m in a navigational pit. I took Crew Boss. I took Basic Wildlands. I passed — if not with flying colors, than at least with forest green and sky blue colors. But these days, it’s a question of putting it together. And so the valley is a dark one, in which the compass dial glows forbodingly, daring me to argue with it — no, really, north is this way — as Slam rapidfires his way in and out of smells I can only imagine, looping and ranging and galloping back and forth. And I need to somehow travel in straight lines: for certain tests, an area search handler has to grid, using only the compass, in such a way that she makes straight lines like some kind of martian graph paper over the terrain. Who once said to me, rather annoyingly, that women do not really walk in straight lines? So much pressure to prove him wrong. And while doing so, not lose sight of what my dog’s doing, of the terrain, of the scent picture, and all sorts of other things. It’s a 12-course dinner of scratchy branches, dog breath, ringing bells, ticks and mud. But for some reason I just want it. So back to the kitchen we go.
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