Karma's search for Oscar

Kelsy wasn't too happy when I assembled the search gear and then left her at home.  Kelsy follows scent trails, so she is not the best sort of dog to find a cat.  In today's search for Oscar, I borrowed Karma, who has been trained to find pools of cat scent.  Karma does not follow the scent trail of a specific animal, but she just finds any and all cats.  If it's not the cat we are looking for, she just looks for another one. 

Karma found two cats today, neither of which were Oscar.  Oscar is an orange cat with short hair, and Karma found an orange cat with long hair.  Karma cleared about 16 yards in three hours.  We didn't get permission to search every yard we would have liked, but we did hit the most likely places Oscar could be hiding.  During the search, we ran into many people who had seen an orange cat.  Some weren't sure whether it was the long-haired orange cat, but other people were sure it was a short-haired orange cat. 

Even though we weren't able to find Oscar during the search, I feel confident he is still in the area.  The neighborhood has many outdoor cats, and I think that their territories have shifted somehow, and Oscar has been bumped out of his normal range.  Oscar has been missing for five days.  His owner is putting up large neon posters in the area.  He has a good chance of making it back home. 

Karma slept very well on the ride home, and she was happy to see her owner after a day's adventure.  Kelsy scolded me for leaving her at home, but she soon forgave me.

Temp: 47F
Feels like: 42F
Mostly Cloudy
Humidity: 79%
Wind: ESE at 9 mph
Updated: 3/26/11 6:25 PM PDT

Name:		Track 038
Date:		Mar 26, 2011 10:43 am
Map: (valid until Sep 22, 2011)		View on Map
Distance:		1.60 miles
Elapsed Time:		2:42:26
Avg Speed:		0.6 mph
Max Speed:		11.6 mph
Avg Pace:		-- per mile
Min Altitude:		381 ft
Max Altitude:		442 ft
Start Time:		2011-03-26T17:43:48Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.460096º N
	Longitude:	122.165573º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.460829º N
	Longitude:	122.167147º W

Kelsy

Last night, I woke up before dawn, and I couldn't fall back to sleep right away.  Kelsy sensed that I had turned over, and she moved over next to me, seeking warmth because the air was cool.  She laid her spine against my chest and her head on my arm.  My breath moved the short fur on the back of her neck and I could smell the slightly sweet, distinct scent of her ears.  I rubbed her chest, and she fell back asleep.  As she started to dream, her feet twitched, and I felt like I was right there with her in the dream.  I could almost tell which way she was moving in her dream by the relative amplitude of her rippling muscles.  Her neck would tremble as she turned one way or the other in her dream world.  I hoped that she felt my presence and that I was with her in her dream, keeping her safe.  Eventually, her dream subsided, and we both fell into a calm sleep.

Quite often, people ask me why I do this, volunteering my time to chase down a strange dog.  I do it because I love Kelsy.  I love all three of my dogs, Porter, Tess, and Kelsy, but with Kelsy I took advantage of the opportunity to give her a meaningful and fulfilling job, using her skills to help other animals.  It is just a game to her, most of the time, but other times I think she senses what is at stake.  The times she found the remains of deceased dogs, she behaved solemnly, as though she knew the full story of predator and prey, and how the scene unfolded on that spot.  She takes her job seriously, and she is frustrated when we can't continue the search because of property lines or because the dog was picked up.  In doing this work, Kelsy is leading a fuller life.  She still enjoys sleeping on a couch just as much as the other dogs, but I wonder if Porter and Tess are dreaming of cupcakes while Kelsy is dreaming of the search.  I wish I would have known about Missing Pet Partnership years ago, so I could have given all three dogs the chance to do this work.

When Kelsy and I work together, we are a team, a unit.  I am watching everything she does, paying attention to the slightest change in the angle of her head or the tension on the leash.  When a fresh scent hits her nose, the impulse travels right up the leash as if we are wired together.  As we search, we become one person.  Through repetition, through trial and error, we are both learning how to work a scent trail and how to decipher the tricky double-backs and overlapping loops.  I am learning how to communicate with her and how not to communicate with her to stay in the groove and work an ephemeral, invisible trail.  I am allowed to enter her world, to see the world through her eyes, and through her magnificent nose.

It's hard to imagine that anyone loves anyone as much as I love Kelsy, but it is possible.  I can imagine how crushing it would be if Kelsy were suddenly missing.  My life would come to a stop.  When people are missing their dogs, if they love them half as much as I love Kelsy, then I know how hard it is, and how desperately they want this member of their family back home, safe.  Because they've never met someone like me, someone who works with a scent dog to track lost dogs, people often ask me why I do it.  I do it because I love Kelsy, and because I understand that you might love your dog almost as much.  I do it because, if Kelsy were suddenly missing, I would want someone to help me.  If Kelsy were lost, I would give anything to find her.

The Search for Mac

Mac is the first wallaby that Kelsy has tried to track.  I didn't know what to expect, and I advised Mac's owner that Kelsy had never tried this before.  Kelsy is a dog-detection dog, not a cat-detection dog, and so she is trained to follow the scent trail of a specific animal.  Her style of scent trailing usually doesn't work for cats because cats generally don't run for miles on a distinct trail.  They move a little, create a pool of scent, move a little more, and create another new pool of scent.  If Mac behaved like a dog, Kelsy might be able to track him, but if he was more like a cat, then she would probably be unsuccessful.

The trail Kelsy followed is on the map at the link below.  It starts out looping around, and then Kelsy hits on a distinct trail heading south toward home.  We hit that trail by accident after I had already called off the search.  We were just walking back to the truck when Kelsy started to pull me across the main street.  She got into her groove, for the first time that day, and she followed along the guardrail and down onto the walking trail between the main road and the lake.  She stuck to this linear scent trail like glue, ignoring dogs that she passed.  Finally, the trail led to a series of waterfront lots, which are long and narrow.  The first one had been recently mowed, obliterating the scent trail, and I didn't want to have to stop every sixty feet and request permission from each new property owner.  I advised Mac's owner to concentrate her search in that area.

If Kelsy was correct in the trail she followed, the answer to whether a wallaby acts more like a cat or a dog seems to be, a little of both.  I will be very interested to learn where they eventually find Mac.  Kelsy seemed disappointed that I stopped her in mid-trail.  Later in the evening, when I said the word "wallaby," she howled at me.

Temp: 49F
Feels like: 48F
Mostly Cloudy
Humidity: 60%
Wind: SSE at 4 mph
Updated: 3/20/11 2:45 PM PDT

Update:  Mac was eventually found, deceased, not far from where Kelsy's trail had ended.  Mac had entered the water, for some unknown reason, and seems to have drowned.  Kelsy could not follow the scent trail into the lake.  Mac was found 700 feet east of where Kelsy followed a trail to the water's edge, possibly pushed there by currents.

Name:		Track 037
Date:		Mar 20, 2011 1:29 pm
Map: (valid until Sep 16, 2011)		View on Map
Distance:		1.67 miles
Elapsed Time:		1:14:43
Avg Speed:		1.3 mph
Max Speed:		4.7 mph
Avg Pace:		44' 37" per mile
Min Altitude:		45 ft
Max Altitude:		331 ft
Start Time:		2011-03-20T20:29:56Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.579448º N
	Longitude:	122.073612º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.569705º N
	Longitude:	122.066391º W

Random notes

No search today.

I used to keep a journal of all my dogs' inconsequential activities. I realized I can still do that here, and people can skip over the boring stuff.

Kelsy acted strange, today, and it took me a minute to figure it out. We had gone to the dog park and she had run around like a maniac, chasing her ball and wallowing in her swamp. Then we went to the rain garden at the elementary school, and Kelsy watched me pull weeds. After about an hour, I look over and noticed she had an odd expression. I didn't know what to make of it. I wondered if Mount Rainier was about to blow. When I got closer, I noticed she was trembling. I looked around for what might be causing her to tremble, but nothing was unusual. Finally, it occurred to me that she was cold! I had never seen her cold before. Since I first got Porter eleven years ago, I have never seen any of my three dogs cold. It never occurred to me that they could get cold. They are always rolling in the snow and plunging into half-frozen lakes. Just last week, Kelsy went swimming in Puget Sound during a storm. I guess lying on the concrete in the rain, not moving, finally quenched her furnace. I felt bad for making her cold, but it had never dawned on me that she could be cold. We went and hopped in the truck, and she was instantly fine.

The Search for Rocky

Rocky dashed away from home yesterday around 4 PM.  He was last seen running into the park as people were trying to catch him.  Denise requested the help of MPP, and I sent her the handbook of 15 tools and techniques for finding your lost dog.  After reading through the material, she was interested in a search dog.  I explained that this search might have a lower chance of success than usual because they took Rocky for walks in the area on a regular basis, so old scent trails might be hard to distinguish from new scent trails.  Knowing the limitations and the drawbacks, Denise opted to have the search.  Kelsy and I arrived around 4:40.  We got started right away to make the most of the daylight.

For a scent article, we used a bed that Rocky liked to lay on for many hours each day.  Kelsy spent longer than usual sniffing the scent article, and then she started on the trail.  Fairly quickly, she found some scat that Denise said was consistent with Rocky.  Kelsy followed the scent trail through the park, a wooded ravine with fairly good visibility and sight lines.  On the downhill side of the park, Kelsy started using her eyes instead of her nose, a sign to me that she was either losing the scent trail, or it had gotten weaker.  Then she started using her nose again and took us to the end of the block.  At the intersection below the park, Cullbertson and Sherwood, Kelsy turned and gave me the negative signal, indicating she had run out of scent.  When turning back, she stopped at a gate to a yard.  Instead of pursuing this, I took her back to the center of the park, where the scent was hottest, and started her again.  She led me on several branch trails, and into a section of ferns and huckleberries.  Each time she took a particular interest in a spot, I checked to see what she was smelling, and I never saw signs of predation.  Kelsy ended up leading me back to the beginning, to the parking lot and the point where Rocky was last seen.  As we were trying to find a trail out of the main overlapping trail, Denise got a call that Rocky had been found about a mile south of where we were looking.  Denise went to that house, and it turned out to actually be Rocky.  He had curled up on someone's porch, and they found him when they came home.  I don't know for sure, but I think the finders saw the neon posters for Rocky as they were driving through the neighborhood.  Or they might have called the number on the tag.  Anyway, Rocky was home, safe.

After we determined that Rocky was healthy, and offered him some food, Denise agreed to let Kelsy find Rocky as a reward for her efforts.  They walked Rocky from their front door to the end of the block and then right half a block more.  Kelsy sniffed the scent article again, and then led me charging toward Rocky on this fresh scent trail.  Rocky was a bit nervous at this big black dog rushing toward him, but he wasn't too scared.  Kelsy took a good sniff of him to make sure he was the right dog, and then she turned to me to ask for her treat.  I tossed her several good treats that Denise had given me, and then I threw her ball for her a few times in the street.  Kelsy slept soundly in the truck on the ride home.


Temp: 47F
Feels like: 44F
Cloudy
Humidity: 77%
Wind: S at 8 mph
Updated: 3/12/11 5:45 PM PST

I forgot to switch on the GPS, so I didn't record half the trail.  We actually started right where the map indicates the end, going in a loop, as Rocky probably did more than once in the middle of the night.

Name:		Track 036
Date:		Mar 12, 2011 5:16 pm
Map: (valid until Sep 8, 2011)		View on Map
Distance:		1.14 miles
Elapsed Time:		33:37.0
Avg Speed:		2.0 mph
Max Speed:		16.4 mph
Avg Pace:		29' 27" per mile
Min Altitude:		162 ft
Max Altitude:		460 ft
Start Time:		2011-03-13T01:16:14Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	47.733691º N
	Longitude:	122.367748º W
End Location:
	Latitude:	47.734147º N
	Longitude:	122.361454º W

Practice search for Kody

Yesterday, Kelsy searched for Kody in a short practice trail.  Kelsy has been working hard lately and getting little reward.  I did praise her and reward her after the search for Cookie, where she found conclusive evidence, but that is not as rewarding as finding a happy, wiggly dog at the end of the trail.  Kat and Kody laid a short trail before our two hour meeting, and I put Kelsy on the trail after the meeting was over.  The trail just went around the block.  When I started Kelsy, she took off like a rocket, and I had to hold onto the leash with both hands.  She overshot the first turn, which I could tell because she was looking around in the dark for Kody, instead of using her nose.  When I took her back, she hit the right trail and started pulling even harder.  Again, she overshot when she saw a group of people, strangers, and leapt to the assumption that they had Kody.  After she saw they didn't have her, I was able to back Kelsy up, and she found the right trail again.  On the last leg of the trail, toward Kody's hiding place, Kelsy pulled the hardest yet, and we were fortunate that there was no traffic as she dragged me across the street.  Kelsy whipped around the corner and found Kody, and she asked for her reward, confident she had done a good job.  I gave her big chunks of cheese.  We went to get back in the truck, and Kelsy reminded me, just with a certain look, that we hadn't played fetch, yet.  I got the ball out, and we had a few quick throws in the dark parking lot. 

For that last leg of the trail, Kelsy was lit up, on fire.  That's how I like to see her.  She is powerful, motivated, on a mission, and I just hold on and try not to trip.  Kelsy works so hard on the difficult cases, trying to follow my instructions, which are often contradictory and confusing.  Go, stop, hurry up, slow down, wait, get to work.  To see her run through the dark like that, all fired up, is very gratifying to me.  This little practice trail was not difficult.  It was only intended to reward Kelsy, and I think it served that purpose well.  However, I did learn a little something, even though I wasn't expecting to: when Kelsy is on a hot scent, she will overshoot the turns, and I can tell she is overshooting them because she is looking instead of smelling.  In the past, I would have just read her hard pulling as evidence we were on the right trail.  Now I know to pay attention to whether she is looking or smelling her way forward.  Actually, I think we learned this lesson before, but this trail reminded me. 

Kelsy is snoring now, sleeping deeply.  I think the good search for Kody is helping her sleep even better than usual. 

The Search for Wolf

Wolf is a skinny old cat, 18 years old, about 5 pounds.  He went outside about 9 PM Monday night, and he wasn't in the house Tuesday morning.  Amy, a friend of mine, took her search dog Harley out to look in the woods for Wolf.  The trouble is, Wolf is Harley's kitty, and Wolf's scent is everywhere, so Harley isn't that good at finding Wolf sometimes.  Harley did find the remains of a cat, however.  The little that was left seemed to have come from a recent kill.  Amy asked if Kelsy and I might be able to help. 

I said we would try, even though this isn't our optimal sort of search.  Kelsy finds dogs, mostly, and finding cats is usually a different process.  I brought Kelsy over just to see what she would find.  Kelsy was very interested in a spot in the yard, as if some event had happened there.  I could see her reading the earth like a book, and I imagined she was reading the story of a struggle.  Kelsy took is into the woods, mostly along the same path Harley had taken earlier.  Kelsy found the same remains, and she led us deeper into the woods to the remains of a small rodent and a crow.  Kelsy and I didn't give Amy much new information.  Amy examined the little material she could find, and she thought it looked like it came from Wolf. 

It turned out, however, that Wolf was safe and warm in a neighbor's house, who mistook him for a stray and tried to help him.  Wolf is safe at home now, and we don't know whose remains we found in the woods.  We did see a flier for a missing cat, and that cat looked a lot like Wolfie.  Kelsy had started with a scent article of Wolf, taken from the freezer, and she got the signal to follow that trail.  Once we entered the dense undergrowth of the woods, we couldn't follow our usual procedures.  I think Kelsy just ended up following her nose to the next interesting smell. Kelsy unearthed information about the activities of predators in the woods, but it was hard for us to draw conclusions based on what we found.  Amy and I came to the wrong conclusion, thankfully.  Someone lost their cat, but it wasn't Wolf. 

Had it been someone besides Amy, I probably would have told them that such a search would not be Kelsy's strong suit.  Also, these kinds of searches are hard on Kelsy, I think.  Like the search for Cookie, Kelsy didn't get to find a happy animal at the end.  Fortunately, Kelsy got to search for Kody later in the day.