Monday, December 7, 2009
Trailing: Learning From Marble Cake
Now take a knife and draw it across the line you just made. A deer just crossed your trail -- see what it did to the hanging scent? It's been drawn sideways into a point. If your dog were to follow the scent exactly, you might think she was "crittering." How can you check which she's doing? Let her have her head for a minute and see if she comes back to the line you were on. If she doesn't usually pursue deer, then she's probably not going to start now, and she'll have learned something important about how scent is moved. A car or bicycle will draw scent similarly, so work crossings on low-traffic streets where only one vehicle is likely to have passed between the trail's laying and running.
Now take the knife to a different part of your cake trail and pass it back and forth across the same spot several times. This is a higher-traffic street or footpath. If the scent was hanging heavily to start with, the dog would understandably believe that the person had gone three ways at once. Rather than letting her make an arbitrary decision, teach her to cross the thoroughfare first and check the other side, then choose a path after checking down the straight line. Your training partner should show your dog a straightaway first. Once your dog has mastered a straight-line crossing of a traffic-muddled scent, she can learn that the victim may also turn to travel along the road. If she learns the turn first, though, you may have trouble convincing her that the straight line is possible.
Now finish following the directions on the box and enjoy the results!
Puppy Training Video
The Video
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Puppy Mills and an Econ Lesson
Other definitions are perhaps too precise. "Any kennel producing more than 25 puppies a year," for instance, overlooks that some breeds would require ten breedings to reach that level and others perhaps three. It's far easier to do the health and genetics research for three litters than for ten.
I'm inclined to leave numbers out of it, nice and precise though they might look to a lawyer or judge. If one batch of dogs is kenneled on wire above another batch, so that the batch below is suffering a slow and steady rain of waste, that's a mill. If any of the dogs are starving beyond the normal thinnish look of a nursing bitch (a condition for which I have great sympathy at present), then we just might be looking at a mill. If medical care is being egregiously overlooked, that's a mill. In other words, if any of the dogs are in a condition we already have laws about, bust the person who owns the joint for having a dog in that condition, and multiply per dog accordingly. There are massive pushes right now for more laws about dog breeding. We don't need more laws. We need to enforce the ones we have.
We also need to put our money where our beliefs are. The pet shop will charge you $500-$1000 for a puppy. For that, you can go to a breeder who did genetic checks, keeps her dogs healthy, and who will want to know a great deal about you before handing over one of her much-loved puppies. You will keep an honest and devoted person from losing quite as much money on her much-loved puppies. If the same amount were spent on "rescuing" the cute pup from the pet store, the money goes to the pet store, the broker who lined the store up with the puppy, and last of all the person who actually bred the puppy, who might see 10% of your sale price. With this much taken off the top, simple economic principles dictate that the miller can't afford veterinary care for the dogs and continue to have a business. The breeder, on the other hand, doesn't have a business. She pays the vet, and eats meat loaf while the dogs get Blue.
And there's my distinction. If the breeder is making a noticeable profit on puppy sales, then probably the breeder is a miller. There are exceptions. Breeders whose dogs are titled producers and whose dogs' genes are very much in demand sometimes do make a profit simply by controlling a rare and desired commodity. On the whole, they lost money for years before getting to that level.
In the war of definition, though, the anti-breeders have one very powerful weapon. They have more compelling pictures. Try http://k9korner.wetpaint.com/page/Puppy+Mills+and+Backyard+Breeders to see what I mean. However, in a war of anecdotal evidence, I prefer solid facts to sheer gut-level appeals to fear. The fact is, not every fertile dog is kept in appalling conditions, and a responsible ethical breeder will show you their grounds without a qualm. My fertile dog happens to be loafing beside the baby at the moment. Hopefully this is an environment with which nobody can find fault.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
A Few Words on the Law and Pickup Trucks
However, one way and another, this raises a different question for discussion. When would the officer be justified in pulling over a dog owner out of concern for the dog? I've seen dogs dying of heat stroke in the back of pickup trucks, clearly a matter of owner negligence, because someone didn't think about how in the summer a truck bed is a perfect frying pan. One fellow sitting at a gas station ladling ice over his German Shepherd's head looked genuinely regretful, and probably wouldn't have minded if a cop had pulled him over half an hour sooner -- his dog would have had much better odds of survival than she appeared to. Other owners seem to feel their dogs will be fine if crated, but the crate isn't secured or doesn't provide shade or both. The breeze in the back of an open-topped truck just carries away the dog's moisture the faster, making him dehydrate sooner. It exposes him to all the fumes of the great outdoors on a highway -- exhaust, gasoline, and the vapors of hot pavement, all of which can ruin his scenting ability when you arrive where you're going. If he's not tethered or crated, he can fall out; if he is leashed down, he'll get decapitated in an accident or hanged if he does try to jump and the tether is a little too long. So, gentle readers, DON'T PUT YOUR DOG IN THE UNCOVERED BACK OF A PICKUP. Save yourself a heartbreak or an animal cruelty charge, or quite possibly both.
The camper-top helps. It provides shade and keeps the worst of the weather off. In conjunction with crating and with the windows open, it keeps the dogs pretty safe from the outside world of climate and injury. Personally, though I've hauled a dog that way a couple of times, I hate it. If the dog isn't sharing the passenger compartment with me, I don't know how hot she's getting, whether she's complaining, whether she's knocked her water bucket around or vomited on herself, or any of the other things I can keep track of fine by ear and nose. At that level, it's a personal choice. The good part about the camper top is that you don't have to leave your passenger compartment so wide-open when you park for lunch; you just have to get the back of the truck in the shade.
This discussion suggests another question, though: that of ownership versus guardianship. As best I understand the distinction, I own my stereo but have guardianship over my child, as in "This note must be signed by a parent or guardian." The stereo, or anything else I own, I can treat however I wish: it is a thing without its own interests. If I wish to take it out back and beat it with a sledgehammer, that's my right. My child, on the other hand, despite being mine, I genuinely believe is better off living in a society where his parent can do no such thing without severe punishment. Should we own our animals or be their guardians? I consider them to be beings with interests, and so vote for guardianship. This doesn't mean they'd have the right to vote (for instance) any more than my infant does; it just means their interests can be taken as existing for legal purposes. They cannot be beaten, starved, electrocuted, or what have you by the people they live with.
Update from the Blogger
And yes, the baby is fine. Born at 8 lb 12.6 oz and gaining roughly a pound a week (!) so he's pretty clearly a healthy sort. By the time he's two he'll have to carry me if he wants to cuddle. For now, he's merely on the brink of needing a new baby seat and a new rig for me to carry him without arm fatigue. Everything seems to top out at 20 lbs, and he can't hold his head up reliably yet.
The dogs are adapting well. Bruce and Dustin are keen on being big brothers, though they really wish the little one would learn to throw a ball or something fun like that. I tell them to be patient. The older male is more the doting-uncle type, and the female is utterly uninterested in this threat to her status as supreme ruler of the home. Dustin has, at least, settled down a bit in his role as Diaper Alert, since for the first few days he was something of an Adrian Monk about it all. He's nearly given up hope that the baby will ever be properly housebroken.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Various Updates from the Dog World
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Recent Tracking Ventures
Dustin is well-indoctrinated by now. He knows the routine of finding the article and downing on it, and if we end up taking off a week or three for any reason it doesn't really faze him much. I'm beginning to vary the distance between articles, which gets his nose down a lot more solidly. If he can count on a set distance, he tends to meander out to about that distance and then circle until he hits what he expects to hit. If he can't, he starts actually following the line of crushed grass and whatever bits of my scent are in it. This is, after all, the point! "Good track!"
Bruce has changed. Before his case of parvo, he'd figured out the line of scent and the down on the articles, and he liked the game because it earned him cheese AND he was using his nose. Now -- he's forgotten the game, I think, during his quarantine layoff and general rebuilding, but that doesn't seem to be all of it. I'm not sure if the high fever affected his brain and nose or not, but he doesn't seem to be as keen. Pre-parvo he followed my husband's scent down the driveway and back just for fun. Now he seems more oriented on vision and taste (he's barfed up the other half of a pair of socks, now, and should be feeling better than he was...) and less on smell.
On the other hand, this could be the general battiness of adolescence. He's seven months old and acting like a complete doofus about a great many things. People? Grr. People who have given him treats in the past, including in the past five minutes? Still Grr. I'm trying not to make a huge deal about this in either direction. He's allowed to Grr at people approaching the car without my permission. Otherwise, I'd rather he didn't fuss at houseguests, random pedestrians, and the PetCo staff, and I do tell him so in a low-key way.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Ted Kennedy
Now, this may seem like an odd thing to post to a dog-blog, but among other things, Kennedy was a fan of the Portuguese Water Dog. This isn't the sort of item that generally goes into the biographies of our senators except in passing, though perhaps it should -- I'd like to know whether I'm voting for a whippet person, or a cocker person, or perhaps a boa-constrictor person when I go to the polls. (I, for one, was pleased to learn that our current VP is a shepherd person.) However, he introduced the First Family to the breed, and we certainly all heard about that in the dog world.
PWDs are nice dogs, though they have the traits I tell people to watch out for when looking for a family pet. They're energetic and clever. This sounds like a good thing. Some families, however, need mildly foolish semi-animate furniture and will not be at all happy with a PWD. Know thyself, said the philosopher, though I don't think he added before you go dog-shopping.
At any rate, there is now an opening in the Senate for a PWD person. Here's hoping it is sensibly filled with the sort of man or woman who can handle some energy and intelligence about the home. Loving the PWD -- fuzzy, goofy, fun-loving, problem-solving breed that it is -- is a trait that spoke well of Senator Kennedy.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
"Write About Dogs!"
Clearly I write about dogs. In fact, two semi-fictional works about Sunny are now accepted. One is in print at Emerald Tales, and I've been strictly ordered to tell all future readers that it needs a tissue warning. Another, a little flashfic, has been accepted at Ruthless Peoples Magazine -- to my great surprise and delight, since I submitted it yesterday.
However, sometimes I write about non-dog subjects, too, and while questing for markets I came across a call for Hint Fiction. What's hint fiction? Robert Swartwood, who seems to have invented the term, defines it as "a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story." For details, if you think this sounds like something fun, go to http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8 for the anthology guidelines. Personally, I mean to give it a try. If nothing else, brevity hones the writing tools. Besides, a dollar a word on acceptance is pretty darned fine.
Learning by Example
However, little Bruce is no herding breed. I'm not too sure what he is -- he looks a bit like a working-line Lab as he gets older -- but he's definitely not built for sheep or cow control. He's living his life with shepherds, though, and he likes to please the humans, so he's doing his darnedest to be a German Shepherd Dog regardless of his genetics.
This isn't always obvious, but he gave away the game yesterday. Sunny taught Dustin to bark and whoop with excitement over an impending ball game, it seems. McCoy likes to have a good yawp now and again too as we approach the door and I juggle toys for the pack. Bruce decided yesterday morning that he, too, could join in the noisy fun. He threw his head up and bawled like a hound.
And then he looked around with a puzzled expression on his face. "Who did that? What was that strange noise? I certainly never made such a sound!" After a moment's thought, he barked the way he has lately, which is to say he made a fairly threatening sound which imitates a shepherd's alert-bark. I'm onto him now, though. That's not his real vocalization. His mutters, whoops, and that bawl -- those are real. I may have to find him a hound-dog buddy to chum around with, just so he can learn there are dogs other than shepherds in the world.
Monday, August 17, 2009
What Are Dogs Seeing?
We have a new (well, all right, somewhat used, but new to us) television at the house now, bigger and lower to the ground than the old one. The puppies are intrigued. Wanda liked watching television to begin with, and now takes a great interest in blue things, such as the flying wizard-bird in the second Conan movie. Dogs can see blue. She's also been entranced by baseball uniforms and odd things of that sort. She's a very entertaining dog.
Bruce, on the other hand, watches faces. Most of the time he is a mild and sweet little fellow. The other night, a brief clip of Michael Richards (Kramer) ranting about race set him off for the next fifteen minutes, and he calmed only for a game of chase-the-treat. Even after that, the pup kept giving the TV suspicious looks, as though it might let that stranger into our home again at any moment. The next night a sports program showed Michael Vick's recent statements on putting the past behind him. In other words, perhaps in future he will not strangle, electrocute, drown, or bludgeon any more pit bulls. Bruce took one look at that supposedly-repentant face looming large and flew into a full snarling barking rage.
Smart boy, I say.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Parvo Convalescence
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wolf moment
Males vs. Females
Especially male or female.
Right now, I have a surprising stash of male dogs -- three, which is three more than usual. They're good fellows, and very solicitous, and very protective. However, I like to go for walks with my dogs, and I like to actually walk when we do this. Today, Dustin and I went for a short little hike. We probably managed an average speed of about three miles an hour, but that was an average. Boy dogs stop. A lot.
Girl dogs, on the other hand, do sometimes like to mark territory. However, the most territorial girls I've known still consider three or four markings to be enough to claim the whole park for their own. With a certain sort of self-confidence, in fact, some girls will claim all of Yellowstone with one good mark. "It's cool. I like it. There, now it's mine."
The boy will claim each and every vertical thing along the way. "Mine, mine, mine... Oh, yeah, hold up, that's mine, too." It does get to be a bit of a drag.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Dogs, Mirrors, and Intelligence
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Parvo Followup
The scary part is now keeping him whole, healthy, and away from his sister for a bit. Apparently parvovirus stays in the system and is shed through fecal material for a good two weeks after the puppy recovers. We've put up an isolation pen on concrete so we can clean up after him easily and thoroughly. Bleach kills the virus. Very little else does.
We have all sorts of enticing but mild goodies for him, too. Boiled chicken with rice, yogurt, very tiny pieces of steak -- he seems rather pleased by all the smorgasboard, though still quite peckish. We're working out a rotation of who cares for him at which time of day (two sets of pills) and how we're going to keep ourselves disinfected. I'm hoping to do a little obedience with him during our snuggle sessions, just to give him something to think about besides the squirrels which will no doubt tease him from beyond the fence.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Parvo Worries
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tracking Update
I ran Dustin on an hour-and-a-half old track, two turns, fifteen paces between articles, at noon. Aside from some distraction to watch a pedestrian passing the yard, he did quite well. He is sharp-nosed enough to work it partially as a trailing problem, though, and was clearly working along the edge of some shrubbery a couple of feet from the track at one point. A couple of feet, I can live with, provided he's going the right direction.
Bruce worked a straight line, only three articles, two hours old. Since he also followed my husband's track to see what had been going on with the garbage the other day -- also two hours, on the macadam driveway, for no better reason than his own curiosity -- I was confident he'd do okay. He can't always remember to down on the articles, but he finds them himself with a good low nose. Not bad for having done this perhaps ten times. I made the articles fewer and farther apart not for the sake of my back, though it appreciated stooping less, but because the pup attention span seems to be better on the track line than it is for downing. I'm willing to adjust to the pup.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Returning after a Dry Spell
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Instinctive Behaviors Also Take Practice
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Scent and the Aging Dog
As your dog gets older, he may lose some of his sensory abilities. You're probably used to thinking of him as getting hard of hearing, or maybe a little blind, but the nose can weaken too. His olfactory powers may not be what they used to be, or, as the Lady and the Tramp line would have it, "You mean you don't smell as good as you used to?"
This morning, we had a little evidence of this. I took the shepherds out to play ball, a perfectly ordinary morning activity. Tasha chased hers; McCoy (pictured in his favorite spot) danced out and looked back at me at exactly the wrong moment as usual. The ball bounced behind him, hit a tussock, and disappeared behind a tree.
And when I say disappeared, I mean disappeared. Half an hour of looking and we still haven't found it, though we all had a bit of exercise from trying. Usually I rely on the dogs' noses at least as much as on my sense of sight, but they couldn't find it either. Part of this is that Dustin and Tasha both figure McCoy's ball is his lookout and they aren't much help. Part of this is that he really doesn't have much sense of smell anymore. It's times like this that I really miss Sunny's help, as she was the only one willing to accept a possessive form in a sentence: she understood that "Find McCoy's ball," meant "I know that your toy is in my hand and you don't have to tell me about that one; look for the missing one."
Dustin, on the other hand, feels that if I have a ball in my hand, there's no need to go questing elsewhere for a different one. Tasha's feelings are less clear, but she's also less bonded to me, so the vibe I usually get from her is that if I can't find it myself I'm not good for much.
My best guess is that when Dustin looped behind the tree he came out the other side with McCoy's ball, then dropped it somewhere when I threw his own. Now, I thought his jaws were empty the whole time, but if they were, the aliens have beamed McCoy's ball away for DNA testing. I would quite sympathize if they want to replicate the German Shepherd on their own planet, and I'd much rather they beamed up the ball than the dog (and since he's neutered, the DNA may as well come from his saliva as anywhere), but since he never actually caught the thing today, those aliens are going to be working with some very stale spittle.
Most likely, though, it'll turn up by zinging across the yard next time we mow.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Animal Intelligence
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Train For What You Want
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The Flushed Puppy Case, PETA, and Plumbers
Things happen (the usual form of this might be appropriate to the toilet-and-sewer part, but not to the age of the child in question).
However, a comment in one of the blogged versions I read was “Where is PETA?” This actually did bother me. PETA’s stance on breeders – ALL breeders – may be found at http://www.peta.org/campaigns/ar-responsiblebreeders.asp by anyone willing to look. In fact, reading the mission statements of any group you think you support is always a good idea. How PETA handles the cases it handles may be found at http://www.petakillsanimals.com/index.cfm with links to legal documentation. You may find that puppy-flushing looks pretty innocuous after that second link, though.
Where is PETA? Doing what it always does: drumming up money. Far better to just call the plumber.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Tracking: "Believe Your Dog"
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Puppy Socialization and Exercise
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Productive Training Session
At 8:30 (the earliest I could expect to have track scent stronger than trail scent) I took Dustin out to work, and he happily found the starting article by the flag to lie down on it. Though he seemed to need to think about his reward a little (cheddar cheese) and decide whether he liked it, he went on willingly from there. The turn I’d made went straight into the wind by the time we ran it, and Dustin indicted with a high head that he could find all the articles easily enough from there. I reminded him that “Track” meant “Work the line on the ground” anyway, and he obliged. Released from work at the end, he danced off, gave himself a play reward, and discovered the end of the puppy track. He scooped up the cloth glove, showed it to me just to prove he’d found it, danced in a crazy circle, and dropped it on the track again.
I love that he can tell when we’re not working anymore, and that he has such a tidy mind.
I took Bruce to his track next. This was his second. The first had been a mess; he forgot his down, panicked because he didn’t know what I wanted, and his sister ran over to take the rest of the game away from him. The object of the game at present is only to get him to equate discovering an article and lying down on it with reward. Last night, he discovered the first article and puzzled over it, then dropped readily when I asked him to. He sniffed out the second article on his own, natural line-follower that he is, and flopped. I was impressed.
We did both miss the fourth article of the five. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but could tell the scent was concentrated in the right sort of way, and fell all over the place, down here and there and everywhere, and I had a lesson in not using brown leather articles at twilight near brown leaves of similar size while working an inexpert tracker. Still, I expect the next time will be at least as good and possibly better.
Next time I’ll put another out for Wanda, just to see what she makes of it. She had an obedience lesson for steak scraps in place of a track this time. She’s become less grabby at long last, and so I can now get the basic positions (stand, sit, and down) and a passable heel, front, and finish. Of course, getting those without a handful of scraps would be something else again, but the patterns can be obtained and labeled. She’s clever enough.
Both of them are nimble for their age, possibly an effect of their wild first eight weeks. I’d love to start them on the safer bits of agility, ramps and step-over jumps, and they’d enjoy it. First, of course, I have to build the ramps. At present, they make up their own courses around the yard and over sleeping adult dogs.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Organizing Puppy Training
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Research on Scent Dogs
There are several ordinary-language works on how your dog perceives the world. One of the better ones is Chapter 5 of Stephen Budiansky’s The Truth About Dogs. While other sections of the book, such as the pro-alpha stance and the aggression discussion, may be debatable, he’s done a very nice job of summarizing the science on canine perception, particularly on sight and scent. Too, the illustrations of color perception are worth a thousand words. You will see very soon why your silly dog can fetch his blue toy out of the grass so much faster than his red one! Knowing this, you can make your scent articles easy to see for you and invisible to him or plant your decoy in the woods wearing bright red in summer so you can watch your dog's alert as you get close.
For scent work, Pearsall and Verbruggen have an excellent first four chapters in Scent. Their discussion of skin rafts, the microscopic few-cell bits of our surface which we shed constantly, is coherent and understandable, though it may give clean freaks the heebie-jeebies for a little while. Likewise, the length of time a fingerprint can persist is enlightening when your dog takes off on a trail you were pretty sure couldn’t possibly be there. The training portion contradicts some of the science end of the book. I bought the book used, refer often to the first parts for understanding how human scent is deposited and perceived, and largely ignore the rest.
If you want to get technical, try the “Sources” section of the Budiansky and start Googling. There are some excellent articles out there, though many of them are hidden behind the academic-access filter. Another resource is to accept common-source articles. For instance, through searching one academic article, I found accessible ones which cited it, though I could only reach the abstract of the original. “The Use of Scent Detection Dogs” in the Irish Veterinary Journal is beautifully thorough and relatively recent, published in 2006. I have to agree with the final sentence: the limit on how we can utilize a trained dog’s nose is primarily our own imaginations. Find fire ants? Exterminated mice for safe removal before decomposition? The use of human growth hormone by athletes? First, someone has to think to try it.
Even if you never train your dog to search for a specific thing, knowing how sensitive his nose is may make you more likely to listen when he wants you to know you smell different to him. Untrained dogs can still alert their owners to everything from cancer to pregnancy, whether the children are smoking something they shouldn’t, and household risks. However, the humans of the household still have to be willing to take the “I smell something different” body language seriously.
Working The Young Dog
Dustin (above) has now been with me for about a year and a half. I don't work him nearly as hard as I worked Sunny; he doesn't demand it of me, for one thing. At this age, she was deploying on searches. He is still working on formal tracking at a pretty low level and air-scents more or less as he sees fit.
One reason for this aside from his drive (and mine) being lower is that I have no current training partner. For air scent, there's only so far you can go by thanking the dog for pointing out your neighbors -- though it's a great start! Tracking, at least, I can do by myself for quite some time yet.
The method I picked up from Mary Adelman (yes, her again!) with asides from the book by Lue Button is to put out straight lines with articles dropped on them and to teach the dog to find the articles by finding the line. At the articles, the dog should down and take his reward. The chief difference between Adelman and Button is the age of the track suggested. The first recommends working in the one-to-four hour window of track scent, which is primarily crushed vegetation with only traces of human scent. The second suggests working at a full day's age. At this point the crushed-vegetation scent is gone, but a good bit of the human scent is also. Working back from this point apparently worked well for her. With Sunny I did the hour-old tracks first, with very short stretches between articles, and she jumped to day-old tracks easily. However, since human "trail" scent is very strong in the first 45 minutes or so, and in the fourth to tenth hour of the trail or so, when we started running trails with the SAR team which liked to work quickly, she became a little drunk on the scent and followed air currents too easily. She worked well in the tracking window, and once she'd worked a while on the hotter trails, she figured out that if the scent appeared to go one way on the breeze and another on the ground, she should look to the grass.
For now, Dustin is getting articles around every twenty paces -- not too exactly, as while a dog cannot count to twenty as far as I know, they do get a feel for "There ought to be an article around here somewhere." He has to work out turns and some changes of vegetation. I've learned that he doesn't care to work across pine needles and greatly prefers tall grass to short. He's learned that if he works at it he finds the articles and gets cheese. We're getting somewhere.
What's an article for us? I don't lock him in on leather for schutzhund or on gloves and wallets for AKC tracking; someday we may need to find an actual person or run the VST. Real people and VST tracklayers are prone to dropping things like water bottles, soda cans, business cards, and other oddities. He does get some gloves and leather bits. He also has to identify voided credit cards, metal washers, keyrings, and the like. To my surprise, just as Sunny did, he likes metal articles. I like the cloth ones I made from a pair of hot pink sweatpants, as the color is highly visible to me and utterly lost in the grass for the dog.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Commands and Communication
My last scenting dog, Sunny, started off with "Search" to find airborne scent and "Find another one." The latter was useful for tracking: find another thing with the tracklayer's scent on it, and another, and another -- surprise! Those footprints in between link them up. From there we developed "Track."
What I didn't specifically train for some time was article search without a connecting track. However, one fine day, I needed to have a key in my car to run the air conditioner and another to lock it while I was not in it. In finally shutting everything down and leaving the car, I lost one of the two keys. Several hours later, returning to the car, I discovered this. Note: gray plastic-and-steel key, gray parking lot, nighttime with depth-perception-destroying sodium lights. I went home and collected Sunny, then went back.
I showed her my keyring and told her "Take scent," a command she already knew. Then I pointed to the ground as though we were tracking and said "Search" as though we were air-scenting. She looked puzzled for a moment, thoughtful for a second moment, then put her nose down and began casting around.
A few sweeps of the nose later, she took a few steps straight ahead, looked back at me to say quite plainly, "Is this what you wanted? You need new glasses," and lay down on my key. Twelve feet from where we'd started, it had been completely invisible to me. To her, it stood out just fine. Since we could communicate pretty well, she had figured out the key was probably what I'd had in mind, and since I use positive training, she was willing to take a chance on guessing.
When evaluating a training system, whether for scentwork or otherwise, it's worth asking, "What else can I get from this?" In this case, by working from a "Find another one" tracking system from Mary Adelman's method and also making sure my dog knew air scent was a useable and viable option, I "bought two, got article search free." Later, when we took up trailing, which relies on air scent deposited along any surface to which skin rafts can stick, it was far less work than it would have been starting from scratch because my dog knew about scent flows and footprints. Extending the metaphor, we took trailing at a discount.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Track, Trail or Airscent on in!
At present, I am working a young German Shepherd Dog, Dustin, in AKC tracking. He is working himself in air scent while I research the military's Silent Scout training -- a post later on this subject, or possibly several. My past experience includes training another GSD in tracking, trailing, air scent, and cadaver while helping friends train their German Shorthair Pointers, Bloodhounds, Labrador Retrievers, Belgian Malinois, and mixes thereof for one or another thing off that list. I am the sort of person to capitalize proper breed names most of the time.
For practice, I also snatch up the nearest rescue to test a new training method on. If it'll work on the baby chow mix or the elderly and traumatized GSD, it will probably also work for your dog, and possibly even on your cat, rat or horse. These methods usually involve setting up a situation to get the desired response, labeling the response, and rewarding with food, praise, petting, and more food.
My main research fallbacks include (but this is the short list) Mary Adelman, Lou Button, Susan Bulanda, and Stephen Budiansky. Further "highly recommended readings" will follow. So will the occasional wacky post on canine misadventures around the house.