Bringsel

The bringsel alert, typically used in area searches, can cause problems if it is also used on rubble with the same dog. Trained to use a bringsel in a wilderness search, a dog should only pick up its bringsel when it makes contact with a victim. In rubble, that contact doesn’t often happen. Upon finding the scent clue for a person covered by rubble, the dog must give an alert without contact with the victim. If the dog then learns in a rubble search to alert at human odor without contact, there is a danger that it will begin alerting at the odor of other searchers during a wilderness search. In short, if you use the bringsel alert in the wilderness search, you cannot use the same alert in a rubble search.

The bringsel alert is very useful with dogs that like to retrieve, but as with barking, the bringsel alert by itself is not enough as an alert for a real mission—the dog has to indicate exactly where the highest human odor concentration is coming out of the rubble by pawing, scratching, or putting its nose in the rubble.

Recall

With the recall alert, the dog walks back and forth quickly and directly between the handler and the scent clue spot of a victim, thereby leading the handler to that spot. The dog uses a special behavior towards its handler to show that it has found the odor of a victim beneath the rubble. Training the recall alert is described in Chapter 8, “Wilderness Search.”

As with barking and the bringsel alert, for a real mission the recall alert must be accompanied by the dog’s pawing, scratching, or putting its nose in the rubble to indicate exactly where the highest human odor concentration is coming out of the rubble.

Pawing

A dog will scratch in an attempt to penetrate the rubble in the spot where the highest concentration of odor is emanating. In conjunction with this, we sometimes see the dog biting stones, wood, or metal to pull it out of the rubble. This pawing should not be confused with the so-called “orientational scratching,” by which the dog, to further convince itself of the odor, scratches away at some rubble with its front paw. The dog does this to open “odor canals” in the rubble. Pawing can also appear in combination with barking.

Some people are afraid dogs will injure themselves by scratching in the rubble, but our experience is that this rarely happens. Dogs can judge how strongly they can use their paws. This behavior is especially important on missions where dogs work many days in a row and become tired—sometimes the only alert you see in the end is the scratching at the scent clue.

Behavior and Postures

The most important behavior is the dog being strongly interested in a certain place in the rubble and refusing to leave the spot. Even if it then walks away, it is often just going to get a breath of fresh air outside the area—even sometimes also outside the rubble area. Then the dog returns on its own, searching for and alerting at the spot with the highest odor concentration.

It is also easy to see from the dog’s body expressions that it has found something. We can see it in the dog’s walk, body posture, ear stance, tail wag, and so on. The dog may also sit or lie down at the location of a strong human odor. By itself this alert is not enough. The dog has to be driven to indicate the scent clue spot of a victim more clearly by pawing or scratching in the rubble or putting its nose in the rubble.

Natural Instincts

For safety reasons, it is essential that a search and rescue dog stay in place when it is commanded to lie down. But the following example clearly shows that we have to stay aware of our dog’s communication at all times during a mission.

After the 1980 earthquake in Italy, a search and rescue dog handler brought his dog to one of the houses still standing. The house was investigated and was shown to be safe. It was very cold, it was raining, and the dog had searched for a long time. To give his dog some shelter and rest, the handler laid him down in the house and went off with some rescue workers.

However, after a few minutes the dog came to his handler, although this experienced search and rescue dog normally wouldn’t have moved from his place. At first the handler was irritated, but then he realized that something exceptional must have happened. He went back to the place where he had laid down his dog. On the spot where the dog had been lying, there was a big crack in the floor. There had probably been a tremor, which had gone unnoticed by the people, but the dog felt it, and as a result, left his position in the now unstable building.

Value your dog’s instincts.