You have the boat, the divers or the scent generator, access to the lake. If this is the first time you have been in charge of organizing a What else should you be thinking about?
Check your gear way ahead of time. This is especially important at the start of the season. Do it far enough in advance so that you have time to get things repaired or replaced.
A few years ago, I got out our inflatable boat the night before training. It had been nicely packed away for the winter. Mice had eaten holes right in the side. There we were scrambling for a replacement at the last minute.
Remind your team members about the equipment they will need just for water work. If you have done a lot of water training this list will seem obvious. But if you usually do wilderness work–its very likely that you won’t remember one or more of the following:
Shade–it will be in short supply. Bring your own. 10 by 10 pop-ups work great
PFDs
Clothes suitable for boating and towels to dry off with for handler and dog. Sound obvious? Try it. Don’t remind them and see how many of your teammates show up in their usual BDUs and Hiking Boots
Boat Tenders: On searches you will often have local people driving your boat. But on trainings that job often falls to team members. Develop a cadre of experienced boat handlers and get them in your boat and out practicing before your water training day.
Set up will take longer than you expect, way longer. If you have divers factor in the time it takes for them to get geared up. Also, they will need to swap out frequently. If you are using some other source like a scent pump, it still takes a God-awful amount of time to set up a problem. The hose will always float; the dobber, float or anchor will always come loose, the pump will fail, batteries die. Count on it.By the way, did you invite the local dive team to practice with you? Great. Want to keep them happy? Feed them. And if the weather is at all chilly to arrange for hot food.
Assign team members to crowd control and public relations. If you are training in a high use area and you have two boats, put one of your people in the second boat to answer questions and manage traffic from the water as well. Use one of your most experienced people. Make sure they have the answers to frequently asked questions. Who are you? Did somebody drown? Who gave you permission to train here? Can the dogs really smell things under water? Have you ever found a body? What do you train with? Are you putting body parts in the water? You get the idea.
Run your most experienced dogs first. Get the kinks out of your set-up using dogs that know what they are doing
Have observers on shore watching the dog’s behavior with some way to communicate to the handler. This is good advice for searches as well. It’s damned hard to see subtle changes in K-9 behavior from behind the dog.
If you have a large team, set up multiple problems so that handlers can use down-time profitably.
Pre-plan rotating your key positions. Your observers can’t watch all the dogs, they need to work their own. Likewise, your drivers and Public Relations staff.
Try to plan 5 water training days a year. Your dogs need the repetitions. You need the practice. You put all this work into planning a super training day for your team. Get the most out of it and do it again.
May 26, 2010 10 AM: Today is test day at the Southern Tier Police Canine Association 2010 Police Cadaver Dog seminar. If we pass, Raven and Ripley will be certified Police Cadaver Dogs through the Eastern Police Canine Association. This is Ripley’s 5th time through the process. We re-certify every year. Raven, my 2-year-old, is taking the test for the first time. Several other dog teams are testing today as well including Dick Szczesh and Amanda Scarpato from Amigo Search and Rescue along with their golden retrievers Buddy and Libby.
We have trained and prepared for what is ahead. Still I feel pre-exam nerves. When I got up this morning, I thought “Why am I doing this? I took vacation days to torture myself. ” The truth is my idea of a good time involves putting myself to the test. My guts are roiling. Breathe…..4 counts in, hold for 4, 4 counts out, hold for 4…repeat.. OK. that’s a little better. Pre-frontal cortex is back in the driver’s seat. My reptile brain is still sending out waves of stress but now it feels more like excitement than panic.
4 PM. We made it through all the tests. Both dogs passed. In fact, they did great. Tests are usually set up so that an average dog on an average day has a good chance of passing. They aren’t supposed to be tricky. Still, the buried hide was interesting and allowed the girls to show off a little.
We had an acre area mixed wood and field with a substantial incline. The parking area was on the top. There was a small drainage on one side, and a road on the other. Grass turned to dirt at the bottom of the area.
Sun's energy creates scent cone in opposite direction from the prevailing wind
My plan had been to work from the stream toward the road using the wind. But as I walked toward the evaluator to explain the plan to him, Raven had a head pop. Scrapping the plan I had just outlined I let her go. The sun’s energy heated the dark road surface, pulling the cool air out of the copse of trees creating a little micro current opposite the direction of the wind and a beautiful scent cone for Raven to work. The problem took less than 3 minutes.
The day was miserably hot and humid. To spare the dogs we worked each dog through a single scenario before moving on to the next. The dogs had time to rest and cool off. But I found the waiting a challenge. My ability to channel stress diminishing with each trial. By the last test, the vehicle search, I was sending tension like an electric charge down the lead to Raven. It wasn’t terrible; we did fine, but Dan Wilcox noticed, and that was disappointing. My goal is to keep up appearances from start to finish. We are making progress. Five years ago, at my first EPCA trial, I looked like a wreck the entire time.
Dan Wilcox EPCA Judge Ripley indicating on buried training aid
The truth is I am confident and competent. I know how hard and how often we train. I am good at reading my dogs and I am accurate in my assessments–cataloging our strengths and weaknesses realistically. That is the image I want to present. At the therapeutic boarding school I work at, nobody confuses expressions of doubt with lack of competence. But when I am hanging out with cops, the rules are different. If I want them to see the truth, I need to lie. To present as the confident and competent person I am, I need to keep any and all misgivings to myself. More than anything, for me, taking these tests is my way of working on my persona as a dog handler. So I will go back next year and try again. Maybe mirrored shades will help…..
Rip and Raven are certified in Human remains detection by both civilian and law enforcement organizations. They re-certify every year.
Last year EVDOGS was part of the effort to find the remains of Laura Garza. We searched for her in the Steward Forest Preserve in Orange County. Here is a link to a Times-Herald Record story covering the event.
If you follow this blog you know our most experienced member is Amir Findling. As a member of First Special Response Group (1SRG) he has made a number of international deployments. I recently e-mailed him and asked if he had any plans to go to Haiti. Here is his response.
Hi Rita:
Tonight I got a call from Rabbi Isaac Leider whom I know from previous searches in Canada and California and he asked me to go and help on the recovery of a Jewish person missing in PAP. I told him that I could not go without the needed logistical support, as nothing is for sale or hire on the island. … But I was asked to do a phone interview of the last person that saw Alex Bitton, the missing person, at the hotel where they were staying. I then wrote it up in a report, translated it to Hebrew so that the Israeli team who is on location will be able to understand the information without needing to use whatever English they can muster. …. Just want to keep you in the loop.
Amir
P.S. Jewish people pay a lot of respect to the dead and the way things are going in Haiti, well they have an urgent need to find that person before the body disappears in a mass grave or is just plain burned. That’s why I got that request from Isaac.
