# Amount of Scent ...



## Holly Huryn (Mar 12, 2008)

The other thread was getting too long so I'm starting a new one, but it's a question I had from the last one. 
Why would a dog miss a huge load of mj??? How come they can alert on miniscule amounts but, some, when faced with a lot, don't alert? Is that the same with all scents?
So when you train should you always be using different amounts?


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## will fernandez (May 17, 2006)

you should expose the dog to as many variables as possible. That is what training is all about


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Scent overload is common in detection. The dog has to be exposed to as many variables as possible like Will stated. We know that it happens, that should be enough to adjust the training to prevent it.


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## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

It's not so much a miss. There is so much odor, the dog can't find "source" or the strongest point of odor. That is where dogs are trained to respond.


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## Jim Nash (Mar 30, 2006)

Holly Huryn said:


> The other thread was getting too long so I'm starting a new one, but it's a question I had from the last one.
> Why would a dog miss a huge load of mj??? How come they can alert on miniscule amounts but, some, when faced with a lot, don't alert? Is that the same with all scents?
> So when you train should you always be using different amounts?


Yes you should train with different amounts . 

David Frost hit on this subject a little bit in the first discussion . We call it the scent picture . Basically if the amount of scent the dog the dog comes across varies significantly from what it is use to finding or training with it can confuse the dog . 

I saw it on a 100lb marijuana find with my first dog . The most I had been able to train with or found for real prior to that find was about 20 or 40lbs . I can't remember exactly . 

It was in a car . When I started the search he was excited , even before getting to the car and giving the command to search I knew he was in ordor . As soon as we got closer to the car he uncharactersitically slowed down and even stalled for a second . As I worked him around the trunk , where we eventually found it he sniffed hard then stalled again but then started scratching ( his alert ) . 

Bob Eden descibed it best talking about a dope dog that was sent into a barn that had hundreds of bundles of marijuana inside . The dog would run in the barn then run outside and alert . The belief is the odor inside the barn was much stronger then he had been trained with so he worked himself into the saturation point of the scent it was accustomed to alert on and that point was outside . 

David Frost does a better job of explaining this then I do . I'm sure he will make it much clearer when he joins in .


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

I was told by a rabbit hunter that there are times when the rabbit is so far ahead that it has time to stop and catch its' breath. It leaves so much odor in that spot the dog doesn't know where to go from there. A bit opposite to scent overload in the above case but along the same lines.


Also...my EDD was trained on large amounts of product but after a few years of not having it available, a training scenario with a large load was met with slight behavior change but no alert. Boy was I pissed.


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## Jim Nash (Mar 30, 2006)

Crap . Took me so long to type David already resonded .


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Don't feel bad, I'm behind you. LOL


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## Jennifer Michelson (Sep 20, 2006)

Dogs dont generalize well. If trained on a small amount of something only, they can get overwhelmed by a very large amount of something. 

It is difficult finding large scent sources for HR, so we have to try to combine sources to mimic a whole body. I know if I am not able to train on large sources and my dog comes upon one, he may not indicate on the whole body, though he may move in to an area of less concentration and indicate there. I will know he is in scent, I will know he is trying to find something by his body language. Not indicating can be many things--I guess most likely confusion..

I think the term is thresholds, you have to train as many different amounts as possible to condition the dog to each level of scent (I know what I am trying to say, but not feeling real eloquent right now LOL).


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Jennifer Michelson said:


> Dogs dont generalize well. If trained on a small amount of something only, they can get overwhelmed by a very large amount of something.


Yes




> I think the term is thresholds, you have to train as many different amounts as possible to condition the dog to each level of scent (I know what I am trying to say, but not feeling real eloquent right now LOL).


And yes.

Regarding mixing odors to get the whole human scent picture......we've combined every bit of training aids we could get our hands on to get volume. It's a mixture of all the drugs used for training. We don't so much look for the specific drug, just the opportunity to train on weight.


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2008)

Remember, YOU THE HANDLER call it. Maybe he didn't find source, but its YOUR job to read the change of behavior, I am sure there was one....

This is all training....just cause the dogs doesn't final doesn't mean YOU can't call it.....read your dog, if he is trained properly he will tell you.


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Jody Butler said:


> Remember, YOU THE HANDLER call it. Maybe he didn't find source, but its YOUR job to read the change of behavior, I am sure there was one....
> 
> This is all training....just cause the dogs doesn't final doesn't mean YOU can't call it.....read your dog, if he is trained properly he will tell you.


 It's training. Why call it? The final response is what you need for the search. I would suggest that the handler recognize the behavior change in training then continue to work with the dog until the final response is given on large amounts.


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2008)

Howard Knauf said:


> It's training. Why call it? The final response is what you need for the search. I would suggest that the handler recognize the behavior change in training then continue to work with the dog until the final response is given on large amounts.


 
training yeah I understand, but real world, you call the change, especially on a bomb dog.

Not to mention, most people can't train with heavy amounts of odor or let odor sit for hours/days and go to the problem days later (without a guard on it)


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Jody Butler said:


> training yeah I understand, but real world, you call the change, especially on a bomb dog.
> 
> Not to mention, most people can't train with heavy amounts of odor or let odor sit for hours/days and go to the problem days later (without a guard on it)


 I totally agree with you on calling it with an EDD. Public safety and all that gives a handler a little more latitude. When it comes to drug dogs and taking peoples' freedom away, the final response is the only thing I'll search on. A behavior change gives me cause to run the dog once more in the area but thats all. He either gives a final response, or walks it before it's a search, or no search.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Jennifer Michelson said:


> Dogs dont generalize well. If trained on a small amount of something only, they can get overwhelmed by a very large amount of something.
> 
> It is difficult finding large scent sources for HR, so we have to try to combine sources to mimic a whole body. I know if I am not able to train on large sources and my dog comes upon one, he may not indicate on the whole body, though he may move in to an area of less concentration and indicate there. I will know he is in scent, I will know he is trying to find something by his body language. Not indicating can be many things--I guess most likely confusion..
> 
> I think the term is thresholds, you have to train as many different amounts as possible to condition the dog to each level of scent (I know what I am trying to say, but not feeling real eloquent right now LOL).


I know I have driven 4 hours just to get a chance to work the scent pool left by a freshly removed body - trying to work something out with the coroner but it is hard - once a body is found, of course, they have to protect the scene. I understand that combining is just not quite the same ......and was surprised how big the scent pool is around graves from the 1800s (we worked some mid-1800s slave graves in the woods at canfields last year at a seminar - we went to help us with techniques on shallow graves)

I was fortunate very early in our training to be able to work a whole body that was so strong WE smelled it from 200 yards away and it was a total meltdown.


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Shoulda been riding with me today. We had one in a field about 10 hours old. Once CSI and the evidence guys left you coulda worked it to your hearts content.:mrgreen:

Hell, the neighbors were molesting the scene as soon as we left.


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## Pete Stevens (Dec 16, 2010)

I'm slow, I was still posting on the old thread. The guys hit it right on the head, especially with EDD. If the bomb dog is alerting to residual, who cares, get the hell out of there. Yes, I would like to know exactly where the bomb is but that is why I'm not a bomb dog hndler. I would have a 300' foot long line and that still wouldn't be long enough for me. The bomb dog guys are awesome and brave, us narc guys are just looking for dope. No one blows up with dope.

Like the other narc dog handlers, if I don't see it, I ain't calling it. And I mean all of it. The excitement, the intense sniffing, etc. But there are many different types of searches. If the dog is being used for probable cause, if I don't see it all, sorry guys there was no odor my dog alerted to. If we are in a house search where the dog is being as a locating tool, then I have no issues say "Hey, my dog spent a lot of time over here, you might want to look really hard".

Back to large amounts- if you train with a gram of dope and only that amount or less, what happens when the dog gets exposed to 10 lbs? There is strong possiblity that the dog will alert when gets to the point where it smells like the gram it has trained on, maybe a short distance away from he actual dope. The dog isn't wrong, it is detecting odor but the source isn't in the amount that it has ever been exposed to. They may go a few feet from the source and then alert or whatever you want to call. So just kee that in mind when you or someone else is doing the hand search. 

Then throw in the air current factor. My dog alerted to the front grill area of a car on the side of the freeway. Dope was in the dash, was she wrong? No because that is where the odor was pooling based on the wind conditions. But air current is a whole new issue......


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> I know I have driven 4 hours just to get a chance to work the scent pool left by a freshly removed body - trying to work something out with the coroner but it is hard - once a body is found, of course, they have to protect the scene. I understand that combining is just not quite the same ......and was surprised how big the scent pool is around graves from the 1800s (we worked some mid-1800s slave graves in the woods at canfields last year at a seminar - we went to help us with techniques on shallow graves)
> 
> I was fortunate very early in our training to be able to work a whole body that was so strong WE smelled it from 200 yards away and it was a total meltdown.



I had the good fortune to visit the body farm in Knoxville Tenn. I had an Austrailian Shep at the time and her reaction to the different "phases" was interesting. 
Everything from buried bone to full bodies at different ages of decomp. The "newer" bodies really freaked her out. 
There were other teams there at the time and you could pick out the dogs that had worked only old bone. Some of them would just about run over a newer body.


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> ......and was surprised how big the scent pool is around graves from the 1800s (we worked some mid-1800s slave graves in the woods at canfields last year at a seminar - we went to help us with techniques on shallow graves)
> .


 Haven't trained an HR dog yet (was supposed to but 911 happened)....I've heard of dogs indicating on civil war and older graves but I am skeptical. Is there still viable odor on an area like that from so long ago?


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## Jennifer Michelson (Sep 20, 2006)

http://www.k9forensic.org/

dogs hit on dried bones, bones last a long time! I am currently on my first HR dog and have not done deeply buried remains yet, so cant comment on personal experience. But lightly buried dried bones seem reasonably easy.


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Thanks for the link, Jennifer.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

You would be surprised at the size of a scent pool in those old graves..it can be much larger than I could imagine.....the thing I have learned from several of these trainings is the dog needs more time to sort it out to pinpoint than on a fresher problem......you figure there are still bones down there, and we have had the opportunity to work arheological bones (400 to 700 years) which the dogs still hit on. They can also differentiate human from animal cremains.

For us finding places to leave out sources for longer periods is important (and hard). Private property with limited access, cages to keep out critters and chaining it down. The scent pool on a decomp problem that has set for, say 24 hours, is wickedly different than a fresh hide. It is very easy for a dog to pinpoint even a small amount of decomp that has been out for only a few hours. Much more all over the place and fragmented when it has been out for a long time. Bone scent seems to not dissipate as much. 

The little bone fragments in my "bone field" are about 5 grams each over two one half acre areas.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Bob Scott said:


> IThere were other teams there at the time and you could pick out the dogs that had worked only old bone. Some of them would just about run over a newer body.


The hardest aids we have to get are "fresh" ones - so whenver I do get something fresh, it is kept frozen as much as possible. ......


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> The hardest aids we have to get are "fresh" ones - so whenver I do get something fresh, it is kept frozen as much as possible. ......



We were allowed (under supervision) to dig up some of the saturated earth around a couple of the new to older "inhabitants". 
This was after the SA disaster and she was "suspected " of getting some of her material from there.
I've heard they've tightened down on it quite a bit.
It really was a great learning experience there!


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## Brent Dell (Oct 10, 2009)

Does this apply to tracking as well? My dog is a great hard & variable surface tracker and I have noticed when I go back to freshly laid (5-10 min delay) tracks on grass for a change up, he struggles to concentrate and appears to decome distracted and all over the place???


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

I think it is a whole different thing. Right after a track is laid the scent appears to be everwhere; needs a chance to settle to the ground.

Yeah Bob some folks frown on dirty dirt but I have some that is 4 years old and it is a very strong training aid and not that hard to come by.


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Nancy/Bob, when your dog is working an ancient grave as opposed to something fresher (say 2-10 years old) what's the body language difference, if there is any? Just curious.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

I will make my comment with the disclaimer that this is an area where I am trying to learn to build expertise - and there is a long learning curve. 

I have limited experience in graves other than training. Most of my real life experience is with water, so that is why we are learning from those who have had success in this field. 

The few times I worked something large fresh and buried (that I knew was there) the dog was much more animated and biting at vegetation/and going up trees in the immediate area -- and it IS known that plants take up odor from decomp and release it....I think they even have lab data showing the outgassing. 

We worked one where we all think there is a body there (about 20 years) but they dug where the dogs indicated even though we said that we thought the body was actually up the hill (the dogs indicated in a low spot with loose soil) and wanted to do some more systematic work to pinpoint. My dog was literally trying to climb the trees. Fortunately it was a rural area and they did not did up someone's driveway  

It is very common for the strongest scent in a buried to be not right at the body due to the terrain.

I saw much more subtle and slowly focused deliberate behaviors on the old graves. The difference to me was more like watching a dog work decomp vs. bone..........

Now maybe we can poke Jim Delbridge and get him to come on here - He has a good bit more experience in this particular area.


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Thanks. Have you heard of moving underground water tables being a PITA when searching?


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

I have - scent can travel underground, soil types impact how scent is released (e.g., clay soils are much harder for the scent to permeate than sandy loams),

A lot the same with water and thermoclines and underwater currents, eddies, etc. 

Part of it is the dog but then there is a whole lot that is "what to do with the info from the dog"


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## Howard Knauf (May 10, 2008)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> I have - scent can travel underground, soil types impact how scent is released (e.g., clay soils are much harder for the scent to permeate than sandy loams),
> 
> A lot the same with water and thermoclines and underwater currents, eddies, etc.
> 
> Part of it is the dog but then there is a whole lot that is "what to do with the info from the dog"


 Dealing with air currents is bad enough. At least we can feel and see wind direction as well as see what is affecting it. The underground movement of odor affected by unknown soil types, and underwater thermoclines would have me consulting a psychic. You'd almost have to be whatchamacallit to figure it out.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

I've never worked anything that old. Not buried for the length of time anyway. As Nancy mentioned I've also worked (in training) bone that was 20+ and it was no problem.
The older burial grounds would be a plus in the sense that the bodies would be in wooden coffins or none compared to modern day, air tight, etc coffins (how long do they last?). There would be more saturation in the ground with the earlier burials. 
Dr. Bass (body farm) was working on microbes in the soil to determine how long the body had been there. 
Much the same as a forensic entomologist would determine length of time a body had been there with different species of fly larva, beetles, etc.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Nancy said;
"A lot the same with water and thermoclines and underwater currents, eddies, etc."

Not to mention that at very deep,cold depth there is very slow to decay from a corps. Some may never bloat and rise. 
The deepest water find I've seen was 90 ft after a couple of day being down. 
I've seen water finds at 30 ft that were only hours old.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Grim had a water find that was 75 feet and 3 hours old and it was very easy for him.

The one we worked that was 3 days in 15 feet of water (he floated about an hour after we worked it) was horrible. He could not pinpoint and was just going ballistic barking and spinning on the boat.

That one is where I learned the hard way after subsequent analysis an discussion to work that type of problem with the wind at your back. 

Fortunately another hander wanted confirmation from the night before and she had pegged it spot on (The divers had been days a few hundred yards away and did not count her report as plausible)......anyway......her find convinced a lot of folks about the utility of water cadaver dogs.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

The down side to water work is the family is often times on the shore line. With sound traveling so easily over water it can be very sensitive.
Ponds, lakes and rivers all have their own bag of tricks!


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