Kelsy's search for Sugar

Sugar is a Labradoodle puppy, seven months old and twenty-five pounds at the time of her escape on December 21st.  She ran off in a panic when the car she was in rear ended another car.  Sugar's owner called MPP on the 22nd, and Kelsy started searching on the morning of the 23rd.

 Temp: 47°F
Feels like: 44°F
Mostly Cloudy
Humidity: 73%
Wind: SW 5 mph

Kelsy started a little before noon at the accident site and seemed to have a good scent.  At the intersection east of the accident, Kelsy meandered east and south before picking a route north.  We hit private property where the owner had posted a copy of the constitution with a statement that he had the right to protect his property with guns.  We did not proceed there until Bonnie got permission from the homeowner.  When we got to the back fence line, Kelsy seemed determined that the trail went under a fence to a neighboring property.  We had to go all the way out and around to the other side of that block to start again on the other side of the fence, with permission.  From the other side, the trail was less certain.  Kelsy followed it around and back to the original accident scene.  From that point, she couldn't really establish a direction of travel, and I called off the search pending a new sighting.  The next sighting was about a mile north, but without a specific location.  The day after we searched, the owners got a call that Sugar had been placed inside a fenced yard a quarter mile east of the crash site.  The homeowners did not know if the finders found Sugar at that location or somewhere else.

My interpretation is that Sugar circled around back to the scene of the crime at least once and maybe multiple times.  We received no independent confirmation that Kelsy was on the correct trail.  We did find feces along the trail that was the right age and consistent with Sugar, indicating we were probably on the right trail.

Name:		Track 100
Date:		Dec 23, 2011 11:34 am
Map: (valid until Jul 15, 2012)		View on Map
Distance:		3.73 miles
Elapsed Time:		1:55:57
Avg Speed:		1.9 mph
Max Speed:		27.1 mph
Avg Pace:		31' 07" per mile
Min Altitude:		397 ft
Max Altitude:		549 ft
Start Time:		2011-12-23T19:34:45Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.386979º N
	Longitude:	122.075711º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.387036º N
	Longitude:	122.077267º W

Kelsy's search for Kosmo

Kosmo was an older yellow lab, 14 years old, with back legs that didn't work too well sometimes.  Looking back at the case now, I see that I missed several things and provided bad advice to Kosmo's owner.  Kosmo went missing 12/18, and Kelsy started searching on 12/20.  We used his bed as a scent article.  Kelsy immediately took me to some bushes not far from the house, but Kosmo was not there, and there was no trail he might have taken.  I started her again, and she took me down the driveway to the road, and up another driveway to a wooded lot.  I'm 90% sure this was not Kosmo's trail because Kosmo was found in the bushes 4 days later, fifty feet from his front porch, alive but gravely ill.  Even though I knew Kosmo's back legs didn't always work well, I reasoned that he might have gone that far if his joints warmed up once he started walking.  It happened that way on a previous case.  I remember, now, that Kosmo's owner said his weakness was neurological, not joint related, and more walking made it worse.  The scenario I imagined was not logical, now that I think about it.

Kelsy follows scent trails, and pools of scent are difficult for her.  This is why we use her for dog cases and not cat cases.  Cats tend to leave scent pools without any directionality.  For those situations, we use a cat detection dog, trained to thoroughly check an area for any cats.  Well, this was a case like a missing cat case, where Kosmo hadn't gone far, and he had left a non-directional pool of scent rather than a trail Kelsy could follow.

Before we started, I told Kosmo's owner that Kelsy usually does not track right up to the missing dog.  She has found five dogs directly, and she has been confirmed to be on the right trail most of the time.  In most cases, the missing dog had already been picked up by someone before we started searching, so there was no dog there for Kelsy to find.  As I told Kosmo's owner, Kelsy has been on the wrong trail a few times, and I did not realize it until we had followed that trail a long way.  Kelsy is supposed to give me a negative signal when we don't have the scent of the dog we are looking for.  This is something we have trained on, and I don't know why we fail in this way some times.  Maybe there is a problem with the scent article.  Most definitely there is a communication problem, where Kelsy is misunderstanding what I want and I am not reading her right.  Mistakes do happen, and the owner knew this before we started.

The worst mistake was the advice I gave her.  Before I left that day, I told her that, "At least we can be certain Kosmo isn't somewhere near the house in the bushes."  Obviously that wasn't the case because Kosmo was found not far from the house.  I should not have advised her as I did.  Kelsy can be fooled by a directionless scent pool, and I should not have been so certain Kosmo wasn't nearby.

Kosmo's owner heard him bark, faintly, and they found him in the bushes four days after he had gone missing.  He survived for a while, but he did not regain full health.  Kosmo's owner and the vet decided it was best to euthanize him on January 7th.  The bad advice I gave Kosmo's owner certainly didn't help him and it may have hastened his end.

One lesson I could learn from this is that Kelsy and I should not be doing searches if we can be mistaken in this way.  I have to weigh that against the good we have done when we found those five dogs.  For now, I will continue to work on training with Kelsy in order to try to determine where we are failing to communicate.  In our most recent training session, she performed flawlessly.  I hope the lesson learned from the search for Kosmo will help us on a future case.

Temp: 42°F
Feels like: 38°F
Fog
Humidity: 92%
Wind: SW 6 mph

Name:		Track 099
Date:		Dec 20, 2011 11:04 am
Map: (valid until Jul 15, 2012)		View on Map
Distance:		3.39 miles
Elapsed Time:		2:46:18
Avg Speed:		1.2 mph
Max Speed:		7.7 mph
Avg Pace:		49' 07" per mile
Min Altitude:		0 ft
Max Altitude:		381 ft
Start Time:		2011-12-20T19:04:53Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.496607º N
	Longitude:	122.469742º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.496812º N
	Longitude:	122.469717º W

Kelsy's search for Sadie

Sadie was hit by a bus on December 8th.  She slipped out of the car door in her driveway as her owner was attempting to secure her, and she ran toward the articulated Metro bus.  The bus clipped Sadie, and as her owner ran into the street trying to stop traffic, Sadie ran off into the woods, limping. 

Kelsy started tracking the next day around 11 AM.  Kelsy picked up heavy scent right across the street from Sadie's home, indicating to me that Sadie had come back in the night and spent time near the house.  Kelsy followed the trail down through the woods and to the beach.  The scent seemed especially strong on a segment of the trail, and I interpreted that to mean that Sadie had run back and forth several times on that section.  At the beach, the scent trail entered the tidal zone, and high tide had erased any scent below the bulkhead.

Another branch of the trail led north of Sadie's house.  Sadie was eventually found, that afternoon, several blocks east of home.  The vet gave her a temporary splint, and she was scheduled to have surgery and get a cast for her broken leg.  I did not receive any independent confirmation that Sadie had been on the trail Kelsy followed. 

Now for Seattle, WA (98166)

Temp: 33°F
Feels like: 33°F
Fog
Humidity: 93%
Wind: E 3 mph

Name:		Track 097
Date:		Dec 9, 2011 11:11 am
Map: (valid until Jul 15, 2012)		View on Map
Distance:		2.41 miles
Elapsed Time:		2:22:31
Avg Speed:		1.0 mph
Max Speed:		5.4 mph
Avg Pace:		59' 03" per mile
Min Altitude:		0 ft
Max Altitude:		250 ft
Start Time:		2011-12-09T19:11:51Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.500838º N
	Longitude:	122.376206º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.500601º N
	Longitude:	122.376233º W