Abby a certified search dog and her life as such
Our wordless wednesday post is all about search dogs doing disaster work, enjoy!
Max a Belgian Malinois working the bark barrel
Emeline indicating on the bark barrel
Abby a german shepherd working the rubble pile and alerting on the buried subject
Our wordless Wednesday post is all about working dogs in action this week.
Raina alerting on a door, the subject was in the back of that building.
Abby playing with her subject after the find
Emeline about to take off
Typical weekend for the pack consists of some fun and play after some work. Sunday was no different and the girls all got what they needed! Raina worked some HR, making fast work of a problem that was set up 48 hours prior. The dog amazes me every time i see her work. I got lucky, really lucky that not only did i get an amazing genetic package with her (thanks to my team member Rita who bred Raina and her sister from a previous litter Abby) but i also have had years of dog related experiences in multiple facets to be able to raise her to be such an amazing working dog. You really cannot have a good canine search team without both the genetically appropriate dog and the knowledgeable trainer who knows how to work their dog to its fullest potential. Raina’s fullest potential was obvious when she was a certified airscent and HR dog at 12 months old, she has been ROCK SOLID ever since.
But i have digressed obviously, can’t help it 🙂
Emeline also ran a nice short, hot trail through a parking lot and around the school building with contamination everywhere. She did great, especially getting a direction of travel when casting her on the blacktop.
After we finished up the work we piled all 5 dogs in the truck and headed out to our swimming spots, first stopping off at the Delaware river section where its deep enough for the girls to really swim.
One going out, one coming in
Next we moved on to a more shallow inlet section where max and frank really got to enjoy it, as neither swims in deep water.
hanging out in the cool water
We finished up the day with obedience. The key to a well behaved dog is regular fun obedience sessions which we do daily.
Attention healing with happiness
I’m always looking for something new to teach the dogs.
A. because i’m bored
B. because they are bored
C. because the students at the school get bored
D. because i love to spend my money ( that one isn’t true but i DO end up spending all my money on my dogs, wouldn’t have it any other way!!!!!!)
So last week i purchased a target stick from amazon. I gotta admit its pretty fun! My dogs have a “touch” and “target” command but shaping the behavior to target the end of the stick is amusing. We worked with both Abby and Raina for about 10 minutes each. Raina has intense focus on me, we worked a lot on eye contact when she was younger and it is one of the reasons she has stellar obedience in almost any setting. This is wonderful, its the way our training relationship is and i love it but boy it makes it hard to get her to notice the target stick or even care about it! I cannot complain, i cannot get frustrated, dogs are perfect at being themselves and this is who she is!! So our 10 minute sessions are very different with each dog. Abby will now target the purple ball on the end of the stick within a few seconds of presenting it to her at any reasonable height around her, I or objects she is familiar with. We have not moved it to enough locations to generalize the behavior nor have we put it on cue yet to take her to more distracting environments.
Raina is another story, her focus on me has lead me to have to try alternate “attention getters” for her to find positive association with the target stick. Coating the end in peanut butter of course 🙂 For Raina we will break this down into very short training sessions with clicking as she touches her nose to the peanut butter covered ball on the end of the target stick. 3 minutes 4 times a day, as well as a few sessions with her sister Abby so she can gain some social learning (watching Abby, seeing what she does and what she gets rewarded for)
Abby and her 2nd session
Raina and her 3rd session.
Much less progress if compared to Abby but what you must remember is they are 2 totally different dogs (even though genetically they are exactly the same, 2 litters, Raina was a repeat breeding of Abby’s litter.) As a handler of multiple dogs you must always make sure you do not compare them to each other or their progress. Each dog learns differently and thats what makes training multiple dogs so much fun!
Raina in a platz
I’m a dog trainer, but i’ve never been a dog trainer who really LOVED teaching obedience. I usually took on the behavioral cases the more challenging canines because i liked the adventure it took me on and i loved watching the dog transform. Now, my dogs have obedience training and all the dogs i teach must have a good foundation of obedience but i never thought i would really enjoy teaching strict competition level obedience.
WELL THAT CHANGED!!!!!!!!
A. It’s necessary fact of life, my dogs already have great obedience why not prove it a bit?
B. It’s wonderful to teach more then just fun tricks and real life skills, obedience routines are an amazing area to perfect a relationship.
C. I like to stay busy?????? ( Please excuse the question marks, sometimes i think i’m nuts)
D. It is FUN!!!!!
I never had anything against competition obedience, i just seemed to focus my training in other venues. This summer however my goal is to get both Abby and Raina obedience titled. This means major focus on their heal, finish, and drop out of motion obedience commands. The commands are less used in everyday life (hence the reason i never really focused on them) but do complete the obedience routine nicely. Both will compete for their BH (Begleithund) which is the precursor for all Schutzhund work. Neither will compete in schutzhund, as they are both SAR certified already and i personally do not wish to mix the two but i figure why not expand my training in knowledge into yet another area?? That is what good dog trainers DO!!!!!!
Keep an eye out for more posts on their training and success during this adventure.
Raina mid dock dive
One of the favorite summer time activities is swimming. Dock diving, chasing water toys, or getting just plane soaked. Swimming is not only a great way to cool off but also a great way to exercise the dogs in a low stress sort of way on the body. The girls are used to running 8-15 miles a week with me as my therapeutic medicine. Of course this mileage doesn’t count their weekly search problems, hikes, walks, or ball playing. I would estimate they do between 15-25 miles a week most times.
Now please do not just go start running your dog excessive amounts after reading this post, my girls have been conditioned over time to keep up this stamina. When they are puppies you must be VERY careful not to over exercise them or you can permanently damage their joints and bones. No dog is run on pavement until 14-18 months old, once growth plates are fully formed. Then each dog is worked according to his or her training plan which not only encompasses the mental growth and training of the pup or dog but also its physique and what its body is capable of. When we go out on a search i expect my dogs to work 6-8 hour shifts and cover between 2-10 miles depending on the terrain, weather, and search strategy. Everything is carefully planned out from the time we bring the dog or puppy home up through his or her eventual certification process and maturation.
BUT I DIGRESS 🙂
Anywho so back to the fun stuff, swimming is GREAT!!!!! Eme is not the most confident dog in new situations and water was one of them. From the time she was a pup i had her in and out of marshes, ponds and puddles but she never had a great role model canine to follow into the water. Social learning is an amazing thing!!!!!!! Once Raina hit the water as a puppy she turned into a floppy eared shepherd 😉 This summer between the other dogs and the kids Eme decided what her sister did looked like fun……..
Eme dock diving
Abby brushed up on her swimming skills as well, having never willingly swam into deep enough water she couldn’t touch she is now much more happy and confident jumping in after her toy.
Abby swimming like a pro
Moral of the post, get your dog swimming this summer for both his body and his mind!!!
Well the end of May brought us our first water training for the search dogs. A nice calm quite private lake, a boat, multiple handlers and K9’s and a few of my students. The kids loved swimming and driving the boat, the dogs loved swimming and riding on the boat……..i swear there are not many differences between them!
Water trainings are great BUT BOY does it take a lot of pre-planning, set up, and specific execution plans to make happen. The dogs obviously get no water work during winter and colder months, lending to just a short time we can get them on a boat ever year. We have 2 water seminars later this year, one in August in Mawah NJ, and one in September in Binghamton NY with Amigo Search Dogs. Both will be excellent opportunities to get some good training in.
Anywho back to our water training.
First off was Abby- Shes a certified HR water dog meaning that per NYS Federation of Search and Rescue she is certified to search for lost people and human remains on or near water. She is excellent at “driving” the boat with her nose pointed in the correct direction. My focus for water training was to work a blank area with no scent and see how it differed from when she worked scent. BOY WAS IT OBVIOUS!!! She was just out for a cute boat ride!!! She knew her sensitive little nose had nothing and she was calm and quite just hunting around a bit checking to see if she got any scent as we went around the lake. Zach was our boat driver and he was impressed by how different her body language was.
Abby on the boat
Our next order of bussiness was to get Abby comfortable in the water. Last summer i was able to enlighten her to the benefit of “wading” in the water and how much fun it was to splash around but she didnt have the confidence necessary to dive out swim across the pond and get her toy. This summer the boys know its fun time in the pond for Abby!!!! The goal is to desensitize her to swimming in all environments and build her confidence around the water. In the lake she was already swimming out into deep water to get her ball!!!
Abby swimming in deep water on her own
Moving on, Ms. Raina is working on her water skills, i’m in turmoil over how much to push water work on her. She loves it and seems to excel at it so i have no reason not to pursue it with her but I’ve held back mostly due to her “crazy drive” She seems calm when in the boat and we practiced that with running her on a nice blank boat ride, then following up with some short HR boat work. I was impressed with her behavior change during the work and will defiantly be continuing it to see what the outcome is.
Raina and I with Jimmy the driver.
Lastly we have little miss Eme to report on. This training was a huge step for us as a trailing team as i was able to run her on one of her blind training problems. It was a hot trail, about a mile long and the last .3 miles was double blind with no idea where the trail layer went. The joy and exhilaration that came with the successful completion of the trail and then comparison of how well she had run it (no more then 20 feet off) was insane!
Eme’s hot trail approximately .8o miles long.
Eme is red the subject light blue. She gave me a good negative immediately but after resting her and re casting she went on a bit more before giving me another negative.
Us running the road portion of the trail.
All in all it was a great training, and with a few airscent problems in the mix as well a tiring day for all. So thankful for my team mates and my girls who share this great experience with me.
April brings us the yearly Pennsylvania search and rescue council experience and 2012 was a different one! The one and only time I ever attended this was when Bo was in training back in 2010. This year I went sans 3 German Shepherds, 2 Belgian Malinous, 1 Chihuahua, and 6 students!!!!!
As always a lot was learned for both the dogs and the handlers. Raina and Abby worked with Linda Murphy and John Valvardi of PA Recovery Dogs. They set up amazing search scenarios and both girls had some challenging nose work all 3 days.
John instructing Jenn on her search area with K9 Abby
Eme got to work a few trails, giving her variety in her locations and allowing other handlers and trainers to watch her raw talent. She has some impressive natural trailing traits in her genetics, we are fine tuning them and me as a trailing handler!! It was also great to watch a bunch of other trailing dogs work, i never knew how many people did trailing and the variety of dogs too!!! This was my first experience as a trailing dog handler at a public trailing event, most of what i learned came from the days when Maya, Emes mother was a trailing dog and my general overall absorption from over the years.
Of course the kids had fun, they had responsibilities too like helping take care of the dogs, taking a few classes for humans, and assisting the trainers with setting up problems. Everyone also took turns helping work the dogs through drills or other search work. Some times though they just hung around.
Our evenings held one of the greatest activites, the pack walk! Now we were in a public campground with not only other SAR dogs and persons from this event but hundreds of locals who keep campers at the campground year round. We took off each evening with 6 Shepherds, 2 Malinois, 1 chihuahua, and 1 golden retriever. If that isn’t a site to see I don’t know what is!!! Everyone was well behaved and it gave us time to fine tune our obedience in a busy public place.
Ready Rainy
The kids behaved wonderfully, the dogs were amazing, and the experiences priceless!! What a better way to spend an April vacation?
Part of my job with my K9 partners is to search for runaway students from the school i work at teaching dog training, The Family Foundation School. Monday morning comes and I’m minding my business getting my lesson plan for the week together when i see a girl take off running. K9 Abby and I deploy with two flankers and get a direction of travel. She has a good head start on us and as the only K9 team out we make a search plan up as we go. Checking frequent travel routes by runaways we pop out 4 miles later and get back to the school for a break and some food. Next we harness up K9 Raina and redeploy covering another 5 miles of potential land.
Raina with PA and the Delaware river behind her
Tuesday morning brings us back out again, this time covering another 4 miles with some beautiful views of NY and PA, some great quarries, and some hot weather. The girls did fantastic working tirelessly for hours and each got closure wednesday morning when they got to meet there subject after she was returned to the school. Unfortunately she has no idea where she went, but Abby gave us a pretty good picture.
Raina working the quarry
We gave the girls their “paychecks” by giving them a short easy find with a lot of play time!!!
I’m always amazed at the level of dedication in the dogs and the people, especially my students who go out on the searches with me. It was a lot of miles and a lot of gator aid.
The view
Raina
Friday morning K9 Raina and K9 Abby deployed with me south of Utica to search for a hunter who went missing on thanksgiving. We were on the road by 5am and in the field as soon as we arrived. We met Kara our flanker from Amigo and got Raina started first, working Abby later in the afternoon to finish up our area and recheck a couple places Raina had scent. The search was called off later that afternoon after he was located deceased. It was a sad ending but at least the family had closure. Raina and Abby worked about 7 miles total and were happy to get home and take a break!
Of course there is no rest for the weary and we were deployed last night at 7pm to Ellenville to search for a missing man. He had been missing for almost 22 hours already and K9 teams were out all day. We took the night shift working from 7pm till 5am this morning. It was a crazy night in rocky mountains and high mountain laurel up and down over the hills chasing scent and clearing areas. After 7 miles with Raina I got abby out to clear the rest of my area. She dragged us up to the same mountain top and worked scent all over till my phone rang. It was our subject, he thought he was on the mountain across the street from his house and he was cold, hungry, and not 100% coherent. After the area was thoroughly checked with no trace we re deployed raina back in our area where the dogs had interest. The subject called back again, he was confused and scared and said people were chasing him, and he could see our flashing lights. I looked at my flanker from Amigo Erik and knew we had to step it up! Raina had a bright blue flashing light on her vest and i knew we had been closing in on someone earlier when he had called. Our suspicions were right he didn’t want to get found, he wanted to make it out on his own!! After a scary run in with a confrontational pack of coyotes we took our sticks and moved on clearing the rest of our area. We emerged from the woods and went home at 5:30am. Halfway home my phone rang again, our subject had walked out on his own an hour after we left down the street from his house! He was safe, the girls did great, and we managed a few hours of sleep before our week began again!!!
Elite Instinct K9 Training 