# slow recall help needed



## Karen Stagnaro (Apr 10, 2015)

I started my dog with live finds and her recall is she quickly circles the subject, comes back to me, barks and brings me back in to the subject. She has the same response/recall-typically- with HRD but occasionally she appears very distracted, isn't really working, and if she finally does find the source she isn't too enthusiastic about recalling. If she is showing me this behavior should I just put her up and try working her again at a later time? Or should I try to immediately re-start her, getting her revved up before giving her, her search command? Or should I do something else?
I'm also wondering what the advantage is, during training, to not reward the dog with treats/toy every time?


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## Sarah Platts (Jan 12, 2010)

I'll throw this out for what its worth but some dogs have an aversion to the smell of HR. They flat out didn't like the smell and didn't want anything to do with it. In both those cases, the dogs stayed as live find only.

Here's the other thoughts. HR work is boring. In live work, the victim is fun and exciting. The reward is coming from both you and the victim. Twice the paycheck. In HR work, its all coming from the handler. If the handler isn't making it worth the work then why work? 

Next thought is that the dog is learning that by working fast and efficient isn't earning them much. By that I mean that the dog is spending to much time in the crate and not enough time working. Story time: I had a dog that was super fast. He would blow through a problem that was suppose to last an hour in 10 minutes. My mistake was then putting him up into the crate as we moved on to the next person's dog. As a result, the dog learned that his speed was actually a punishment. By lollygagging around and searching everywhere but where the stuff was actually at that they got to spend more time out of the crate. My solution was to spend time with the dog. When he got done it was not back in the crate but off for a short walk or fun time. I let the team members move on with their own dogs while I spent time with mine. That helped a whole lot and the dog got better.

Next idea is that the dog has not spent enough time with distraction smells. Now that it has the time to smell all this other neat stuff then why not do it? That coupled with both of the above can compound the problem.

I've also run into the issue where the dog blows me off. In those cases, I will put the dog up. I had one dog that if I didn't run him first would cop an attitude and refuse to work. I have several dogs so it becomes a competitive thing if I work the non-alpha first. I also have seen where by running another dog first it fired up the competitive spirit of the lagging dog and they did better.

In training, I always reward. Maybe not the full blow party for each and every hide but always there is something. Partly because if I do the big party in the middle, the dogs get to amped up and it can be hard to settle them back down to 'slow mode'. The big thing is to not reward for sloppy work.


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## Karen Stagnaro (Apr 10, 2015)

Thanks Sarah. By her attitude it appears she is blowing me off. I think she actually even knows where the source is, but just doesn't want to play the game. I think I will put her up next time she does this, because by allowing her to do this, I'm rewarding the behavior and it will probably increase. Have any of your dogs appeared to be on the source but then don't recall? I think this is more of the same issue. Thanks for sharing your experiences..


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Good post by Sarah, in particular about spending more time with the dog to build a better bond. 

How solid is the dog on recall when not working scent? 

Maybe the dog just needs more recall work and more motivation for getting to you? 

With only this to go on it sounds like you could be moving to fast with the dog.


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## Sarah Platts (Jan 12, 2010)

Karen Stagnaro said:


> I think she actually even knows where the source is, but just doesn't want to play the game.


I think she knows where it's at too. You have identified a problem with "just doesn't want to play the game". Now the question is why? You need to take a hard look at the dog and at yourself. Its probably something simple as humans tend to overcomplicate things.



Karen Stagnaro said:


> I think I will put her up next time she does this, because by allowing her to do this, I'm rewarding the behavior and it will probably increase.


You are not rewarding her. She is self-rewarding herself. Something to remember is that if the dog doesn't like the work or has a natural avoidance to the odor than by putting her up in a crate that can be a form of reward. I'm not saying to not go with your plan but the question you also keep in the back of your mind is what happens if this doesn't work? Or how many times do you do it before you decide it's not working? You don't want to not give it a fair shake but when do you declare it isn't working. Do you have teammates? What do they believe is occuring? I've been known to go to a third party and ask them to look at what's going on and tell me (usually because I'm to close to the problem that I'm missing stuff) 



Karen Stagnaro said:


> Have any of your dogs appeared to be on the source but then don't recall? I think this is more of the same issue.


Oh yes, it happens. And it happens to every handler from time to time. Most of the time, the problem is me. I'm not making the problem challenging enough or the dog has been moved to fast to a level he isn't ready for or may never be capable of doing, maybe he doesn't know exactly what you are asking for, the reward isn't strong enough, the dog is pissed at me and this is his way letting me know, its a new odor and one they don't realize they need to add to the data base of "stuff to indicate on", hide is placed to close to a strong natural attractant that he's not ready to work against and so it will pull him off. And on and on.


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## Judy Nguyen (Feb 5, 2015)

I second putting up a dog if they're blowing you off. It works well for my dog.

I also take a few minutes to walk her around the area...not the training area persay but when we're in a new environment I let her off to get her "yahyahs" out of the way. When she does that and gets put up she's much more eager to work.

Could also be puppybrain.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Just a generalized statement and not directed at the op but to often people get into SAR with the dog they have and hope it works. 

Ideally you want to select a dog for the work. 

If a person is working to hard to get that out of a dog then either the dog is wrong or the training is wrong. 

If, under the supervision of good trainers the dog and/or handler isn't getting it then serious decisions need to be made.


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## Sarah Platts (Jan 12, 2010)

That's true, Bob and that's a valid point. The dog seems to be doing live find work o.k. but HR may not be the best venue for this dog. Right now I'm not ready to hang up the hat since we know so little about the dog and the situation other than what the OP has posted.


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## Karen Stagnaro (Apr 10, 2015)

I appreciate all the great input. I've worked her a few times since then and have made some more observations that might help you all with helping me piece this together. I think there are two different problems going on that I need to address. I did get her as a puppy with the purpose of SAR work, and carefully made some breed choices and asked help from experienced SAR handlers to determine her aptitude and strengths/weakness's. She is very strong on live searches, ranges well, follows up on weak scent, great recall, great drive, great endurance and persistence. When I started HRD all the skills from live seemed to transfer over well to this discipline as well. And I'm thinking the problem with recall started when I began working buried problems. I was testing evidence and buried was the hardest part of this test for her. So I worked lots and lots of buried. I initially didn't bury deep so she would paw at the ground and find something quickly and recall/indicate well. As soon as I made it more difficult re; deeper or under rocks or only trace scent the bigger problem was/is she stays with it, pawing at it or moving rocks away but not quickly letting me know she was found anything. I've had others watch the behavior and she is very interested in the odor and pinpointing the odor but the recall is slow to come. Eventually, either I call her and make her recall (3 sec rule) or she makes her way back to me as an afterthought. I thought maybe she just needed more time to identify the odor and was confirming this before recalling, but now I don't believe that is true.
Two of the problems I worked today- The first was trace odor lightly buried in a rock rubble pile. She pawed at the rocks a bit, and was able to get to the source within a few inches and did a great recall- this problem I was very close to her. The second was source in a tree that she couldn't see. I stayed back quite a ways and watched her work it. She circled the tree trying to find the strongest smell. I turned my back and had another handler watching her. She did find the closest position she could get to then looked back at me-still hesitated but then after maybe 3 seconds she enthusiastically came back to me and finished up with a good recall. With her live find recall when she makes the find there is absolutely no hesitation at all to come find me- but she typically can not see me when she makes these finds. What I'm not sure of; when she has finally recognized the odor and I should be demanding a recall. If something is buried fairly deep or is buried in rocks that have numerous crevises and scent pathways, how long should I allow her to investigate before I need to get her to recall?
I believe the other problem she was just more interested in scents around her and no matter what I did could not get her focus. I think the answer to this is to put her up for awhile and maybe try a motivational runaway before putting her back to work again.
Thoughts? Suggestions?


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## Sarah Platts (Jan 12, 2010)

Thanks for the follow-up. Part of the issue is that, at times, the dog can have difficulty in pinpointing on the return refind particularly if they had a hard time on the initial find which could be causing the hesitation to leave. Most HR handlers tend to not have their dogs do refinds because of this. I would rather they get there and stop especially if we have eye contact. My dogs, upon occasion will do a refind, and its been my observation that the dog never gets as close back as they did the first time. Upon those occasions the dog goes back into an area and it may require gridding or detailing to get the dog to pinpoint again. I hope you keep posting updates on your progress with your dog.

One of the arguments against refinds is that it can cause an increase in potential danger to the dog especially in rubble or dangerous footing situations. On a stagnant rubble pile, the footing can be secure but in a fresh fall situation there can be a lot of slipping and sliding of material.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

How solid is the dog on live find. Is this dog just doing well in training or is it certified, operational, doing large areas and large negatives? If not I would not mess with HRD yet.

I have only met one person with a recall-refind on an HRD dog and it really was not that great. For a dog driven to find HRD, I don't think it is boring at all. JMO. For that dog it is all about the hunt. 

I think a lot of dogs are going to find you if you don't show up quickly enough and they are at source. That is why I bought an Astro collar to continue to reinforce staying with source regardless. It is a lot easier to find a whole human again than a shallow grave or a small bone.


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## Judy Nguyen (Feb 5, 2015)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> HI have only met one person with a recall-refind on an HRD dog and it really was not that great. For a dog driven to find HRD, I don't think it is boring at all. JMO. For that dog it is all about the hunt.


I second this. I started my dog on recall/refind on HRD because I thought she'd be into airscenting, but she'd have trouble refinding the source. With live finds it's no problem at all for the same reasons noted.

She was more prone to sit at source and just chill, even with live finds, though, and so we finally made the choice to keep her on HRD only. If I'm out of reach she'd recall/refind but that's far and few between...

Some people would be somewhat iffy against dual purpose dogs because I've only heard that the dog would be great on one discipline and so-so on the other. With the dogs I've seen so far I think this is for the most part true.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

It often is the case. 

I had two MTs in two different organizations tell me my dog is one that should be able to do both disciplines well (we are just starting him on air scent) -- BUT ---these were the caveats.

1)It would be easier to train two dogs, each in one discipline than one dog in two disciplines
2) training records really need to show they do not interfere with one another


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