Disaster Search
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.
Reward at the Right Moment
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.