Practice Search for Buster in Federal Way

Trails laid in training exercises often lack some of the common features of scent trails of lost dogs.  This exercise covers two of those aspects: doubling back and circling.  We train our dogs to follow the strongest scent, which is not always the freshest scent.  If a dog takes a given path multiple times, he will leave more scent on that trail than he would simply moving from A to B.  When we are working cases, we often dip into yards and down dead ends, only to come back out and resume the direction of travel.  Dogs on the run would not know that a certain trail was a dead end before trying it, so this makes sense.  When dogs circle around a particular area, this seems to have been difficult for Kelsy to sort out in past cases.  She followed the strongest scent, which looped, and the trail out of the circle was just a single layer of scent, weaker than the scent in the loop.

Bonnie walked Buster on the trail shown at the top of the page.  She walked him on several double-backs, or feints.  By this I mean that Buster went down a path for about 40 feet and then came back and went the other way.  In the middle of this trail, Buster went around a loop several times.  Where the practice trail comes out onto the walking path under the power lines, the BPA trail, Bonnie and Buster could have gone one of two ways, either continuing on the BPA trail, or going out into the neighborhood and back.  I knew most of the trail in advance, which is useful because I can watch Kelsy's behavior seeing how she reacts to the presence or absence of scent.  The option of choosing one of two trails in the middle accomplishes two things.  First, it prevents me from steering Kelsy, either consciously or unconsciously.  By varying the tension on the leash, the handler can steer the dog instead of the dog steering the handler.  In training, you want to do this somewhat, rather than just allowing the dog to continue a mistake or search for coyotes.  Out on a case, you want to avoid steering your dog unless you are sure she has been distracted.  The second purpose of the optional trail is that it is a true test of the dog and handler, forcing them to work blind instead of knowing the trail in advance.

Kelsy did follow four of the five dead-end feints.  She skipped the one by the loop.  She also added a new dead end that she followed.  It turns out this was probably because she caught a direct air scent of Buster before continuing the trail to his hiding place.  Interestingly, Kelsy did not follow the loop.  She choose the single, freshest trail instead of looping on the strongest scent.  I predicted she would go around the loop once before finding the path out.  Kelsy had no problem choosing the correct trail on the A/B option where I did not know in advance the path chosen.  She went toward the neighborhood without hesitation, which was where Buster had gone. This video of a segment of the trail, where Kelsy first enters the BPA trail and checks out a feint, illustrates several things.  First, you see the tension that I put on the leash.  I don't just let her run when she gets a scent of something.  I keep a certain amount of tension as my way of asking, "Are you certain this is the right way?"  Second, you see her head come up, and she starts using her eyes instead of her nose when she has lost the scent.  Third, when she has the scent, she will get into a groove, with her head tipped slightly below horizontal, and the tips of her ears will flop in a signature mode.  When I see the tips of her ears waggle like that, I feel confident we are on the scent.  She also breaks into a gallop at the end, which is another strong sign she has the scent.  Fourth, she is distracted by a drunk on a park bench trying to get my attention, but you see that her body is still moving along the scent, and she quickly forgets about him. 

The single most important part of training is the reward.  You want to make the reward so extraordinary that your dog will remember that moment and make positive associations.  I have seen signs that Kelsy likes finding the dog, and that the find is the reward in many respects.  Still, we add other rewards to ensure that she loves her work.  She gets her treats, of course, but then we find a stick and play fetch.  Of course, we play fetch every day, but training day fetch is especially fun.  On this day, she found a rotten stick that crumbled when she chewed it, her favorite kind.  Kelsy did an excellent job on this extensive test, and she especially enjoyed her fetch at the end.