Connecting the Sock Toy with Human Scent

With the first step of the training, by making the dog crazy for its sock toy, we have made the dog a strong searcher. This kind of playing, however, should not take place on rubble or in woods without a training victim, because then the sock toy, not the human, becomes the object of searching. The second step of training is designed to help the dog make the connection between locating the human (finding a human odor) and getting the sock toy.

Before going to search with the dog, the handler should pack in a backpack a small container of dog biscuits, which are necessary for prey sharing, a canteen with water for the dog, and a little drinking pan. The handler should also take the usual materials needed for work, such as a flashlight, heavy work gloves, a hard hat, and so on. A couple reserve sock toys, a piece of plastic sheeting, and a blanket are sometimes handy, too. The contents of this backpack will play a vital role in dealing with the excited hunting drive.

You will need a helper to train your dog for a wilderness search. Starting out next to you and your dog, the helper should pick up the sock toy and get into position, lying down or sitting in sight of the dog at a distance of about thirty feet (10 m) to your left or right. By beginning with searches to the left or right, the dog will start to learn the grid pattern it has to navigate later. This way the dog learns from the first moment that it has to work out the search always first to the left or to the right, rather than simply heading straight out in front of the handler.

Figure 6.1 In early stages of area search training, the helper walks away holding the dog’s sock toy and sits or lies down in full view of the dog.

The helper always lies down or sits and never stands. If the helper stands, the dog learns to indicate standing or walking people, which can cause a big problem during operational searches, when many people are walking around at the same time searching for missing people. The dog might then indicate these other rescue workers.

If necessary, the helper tries to get the attention of the dog by moving the sock toy or calling the dog’s name. Then the helper lays the sock toy on an outstretched hand. Seeing this, the dog will become excited and should then be sent to the helper with an encouraging “Search left,” or “Search right,” depending on which direction the helper is lying. When the dog gets there, it may pick up the toy with your loud encouragement and play with the toy as it walks away. The helper should not pull the sock toy, but must set it loose as soon as the dog takes it. If the dog doesn’t want to take the toy, the helper should wave it in front of the dog’s nose to stimulate its prey drive.

The dog does not have to immediately give the sock toy back to you. Allow the dog to play independently until you see the dog’s drives are becoming weaker. Take care now to be in the vicinity of the backpack and entice the dog to prey share on the sock toy.

Figure 6.2 After getting the sock toy from the helper in the hole, the dog will carry the toy around with pride—it views the sock as living prey.

If everything goes well, the distance to where the helper is lying or sitting can gradually be increased to up to forty or fifty yards (40–50 m). At first, the helper should always stay in sight and to your left or right. If this step works well, then the helper can move out of sight, first at a short distance of about ten yards from you and your dog, and then gradually increasing the distance again. Don’t ever offer two new difficulties at the same time in early training, or you may confuse or overwhelm the dog. For example, either introduce a new helper or another place in the woods, but not both in one training session. Wilderness searching will be covered in more detail in Chapter 8.

Once the dog can walk over rubble without any problem, you can move your search work to the new surroundings and situations offered by the rubble of houses and other broken-down buildings. In the rubble, build a hiding place that is easy for the dog to reach. The dog shouldn’t have to go over rubble that is too difficult. The hiding place has to be big enough for the helper to easily and safely lie down or sit. Make sure that it can’t collapse when people and dogs walk on it. The helper is going to hide in that place, which for the moment stays open.

Leave the backpack at the edge of the rubble pile and stand with your dog about ten yards away, straight in front of the helper’s hiding place. While squatting beside the dog, put one arm around the dog’s neck. With the other arm, throw the sock toy low over the ground into the open hole. As soon the helper has the toy, set the dog loose with a wave of your arm and the command “Seek.” The dog is now free to walk independently to the hiding place without further encouragement. When it gets to the hole, the dog will understand that there is not only a human in the hiding place, but also the sock toy. Enthusiastically, it will pick up the toy and, with pride, go back to you, who should be encouraging the dog from the moment it picks up the sock toy. Do not take the toy away from the dog or give any more commands. The dog is allowed to play with its prey; meanwhile, slowly walk to the backpack.

After playing a while with the sock toy, the dog will at last come to the backpack for the prey sharing. By keeping the backpack outside of the work field as much as possible, you will prevent the dog biscuits from falling in the search area and distracting or confusing other search dogs.

The next steps are to give the sock toy to the helper before hiding and to increase the distance to the hiding place. But remember not to offer the dog two new difficulties at one time. The open hiding place will be gradually closed over as training progresses. Make sure the material that covers and closes the hiding place is adapted to the capabilities of the dog. Do not close it with heavy stones or thick pieces of wood the first time. The dog should have the opportunity to successfully complete a search, according to the level of its training and stamina.

Figure 6.3 Never pull on the sock toy. Let the dog play with it in accordance with its hunting instincts.

As you conduct your training, use different hiding places and different helpers. To keep the work interesting for the dog, you should also change the work surroundings. It is also important to set up the dog to search from different sides. If you don’t, soon there will be a track to the hiding place and all dogs will simply use the track. The point is to have every dog complete a good search action with every training session, working out its drives from the beginning to the end. Each training session should also have a higher degree of difficulty than the last, depending, of course, on the capabilities of the dog, so that the dog has to expend more effort each time to find the highest odor concentration in the debris.

A big mistake handlers make, maybe the biggest one, is to immediately praise or reward the dog when the dog locates the place where the helper is hidden. Do not reward the dog at this point. Wait for just the right moment. You need to be sensitive, because the right moment has to be judged to make clear to the dog, with appropriate encouragement, that what it just did is what you want from it. Saying too much can be damaging, because as soon as the handler says something, or even coughs, the dog’s concentration is broken. Spectators, and even the instructor, can talk to the dog quietly and encourage it, because that will not disturb it. The moment when the dog gets its sock toy from the helper is for the dog the highest point of this search action, and you can then praise the dog enthusiastically, but not earlier.

Putting pressure on the dog to complete the search within a given time frame can also seriously damage the dog’s training. Therefore, we have to take enough time and let the dog go its own way. When the dog walks away from the area surrounding the hiding place, even when we think that it has smelled the helper, it may only be getting a breath of fresh air and will return to the hiding place, sometimes approaching from a totally different direction. Odor can be blown or turned away sometimes by wind and rubble contours, or it can come to the surface in a different place than we expect. However, the dog’s nose will always lead to it, giving the dog the right direction by itself. But we must not disturb the dog while it works out these traces of odor. Keep your distance from the searching dog. Wait each time until the dog makes it clear that it has found the victim, and then, after it has received its sock toy, we may praise the dog.

Each time the dog locates the training victim, it is important that the handler complete the rituals that follow, as time-consuming as they are. The first elements involve the dog’s searching, locating, and giving an alert by scratching, digging, and possibly biting away rubble, and barking as an expression of annoyance because it can’t get its sock toy quickly enough. As soon as the dog reaches its sock toy at the victim, it will pick it up and at the same time it will hear praise from the handler. The dog will then bring its prey out of the search area with pride, walking around with it or trying to kill the prey by shaking it, and eventually carrying it to the backpack at the edge of the rubble pile. The handler follows the dog quietly and works out the playing and prey sharing rituals.

Any influence of the dog handler on this ritual, such as by giving commands, not letting the dog play the way it wants to, or just taking the sock toy from the dog and putting it away without prey sharing, will frustrate the dog and diminish its desire to work. Each frustration lowers the dog’s desire to complete the next search action. Several such frustrations can mean that the dog will search, but will leave the location of the hidden victim after a short, fleeting alert. Why? Because the dog is trying to work off its feeling of disappointment through a replacing act (displacement behavior).

Consider this example: A search and rescue dog is searching, whether in training or a real search, for a victim. The dog locates the scent clue and tells its handler, by an alert, where it has found someone. The search and rescue dog has performed a search action on the basis of the hunting drive complex, and it likes to complete the action. The end of the hunting ritual is, of course, catching and carrying the prey and prey sharing.

What would happen, during the prey sharing, if we were to put the sock toy in our pocket and stroke the dog on the head with a “good boy”? Think about it for a moment: the prey, for the dog, is alive. If, during the prey sharing, the handler fails to give the dog some biscuits, the dog might think: “My handler is anti-social. He keeps the whole prey and all I get is a little pat on the head. No, dear boss, I won’t go along with that! Next time you have to search yourself.”

Of course, a dog doesn’t actually think that way. But its next search action is going to be weaker. That’s why we always have to pay attention to the goals of the dog, and the drives that go with them. In our case, the prey sharing takes place with dog biscuits. For the dog, that becomes the only right way to share prey, and only in that way will the dog work out its drives without frustration.

Figure 6.4 To share the prey correctly, the handler should place a dog biscuit on the sock toy, holding it between thumb and forefinger.

That not all handlers have a feel for exactly how a dog must be stimulated is illustrated by a story from an avalanche course we once gave in the Austrian Alps. A dog handler who was available as a helper was asked, before he crawled into the cave in the snow, to show himself to the dogs first and get their attention. Imagine our amazement when we were suddenly confronted by a raving man running across the avalanche field swinging a coat and yelling wildly. Because some of the dogs had also done defense and protection work training, and the man looked suspiciously like an escaping decoy, so you can imagine what happened next. Fortunately the dogs were also obedient, so there were no further problems. It was obvious that this handler didn’t have a feel for what we meant by getting a dog’s attention: stimulate and entice. To prevent such problems, trainers should give clear, detailed instructions to the people who act as helpers about exactly what is required of them.

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