# Proud of my little one



## Karin Niessen (Feb 9, 2009)

I'm so proud of Jamey. We only started doing SAR this january and she's already so great at doing her work. We mostly do wilderness training, I can now largely stay on the paths and she will go out and search through the difficult areas. It's a lot easier walking. Of course, if the area becomes too large, I also have to leave the paths but hey, when we started she would just stay on the path if I did.

She has little difficulty in finding the victim, but needs to be triggerd with the toy a little, because else she will just sit on top of the victim #-o or sniff in the surroundings. She then comes back to me, I have a ball on a rope hanging by my side. She jumps up, bites in it, releases it and then takes me back to the victim.

Disaster training goes well to, but then she doesn't come back, but jumps up, claws and whines (really can't call it barking, lol), at the place with the strongest scent. The only thing is that she won't do any of those if she can reach the victim, so those are the hardest for me to read her. Have to find a trick for that, as she is so small she fits into many openings, when everyone thinks it's sealed off good enough.

I'm just so proud of my little one. I just started doing SAR for fun, but she is actually good at it (although she does have difficulties in rough terrain)


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Welcome, If you want this you can PM me with your email address:

I have an article written by Trish Heldman of Task9 on backchaining the alert sequence [recall refind] done entirely away from scent training which is the best way to build it and it breaks the sequence into steps. One of the most important things you have to train. It is copyrighted and I have preserved that info on the document and would request you to do the same. Before I took any advice given on a board, I would discuss with your TD.

We don't do any disaster but I would be a bit concerned about asking your dog to do two different alerts. It just seems to be multiple commands [live, cadaver, this, that] and multiple alerts are recipie for confusion for the dog. 

There are several folks here who do disaster so I would defer to anything they say on that.

What kind of difficulties does she have in rough terrain? She should be like a mountain goat- unless you are talking about learning to work out the scent picture which takes time.

Are you on a team?


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## Konnie Hein (Jun 14, 2006)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> I have an article written by Trish Heldman of Task9 on backchaining the alert sequence [recall refind] done entirely away from scent training which is the best way to build it and it breaks the sequence into steps. One of the most important things you have to train. It is copyrighted and I have preserved that info on the document and would request you to do the same. Before I took any advice given on a board, I would discuss with your TD.


Does this training of the alert sequence involve a human subject/victim, but just not the entire search sequence? (meaning, does the handler work the dog on an open person with no search involved to teach this)



> We don't do any disaster but I would be a bit concerned about asking your dog to do two different alerts. It just seems to be multiple commands [live, cadaver, this, that] and multiple alerts are recipie for confusion for the dog.


Agreed! However, I know some folks who claim their dogs can do it. Never seen it done reliably in person though.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Konnie Hein said:


> Does this training of the alert sequence involve a human subject/victim, but just not the entire search sequence? (meaning, does the handler work the dog on an open person with no search involved to teach this)


Yes, this is for recall - refind seqeunce.

Starts with a person in visual range at the "show me" then builds back to "find" with all the steps in between.


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## Karin Niessen (Feb 9, 2009)

The rough terrain problem, my dog is only about 30 cm's high, a jack russell/Yorky cross, so she does fine in a normal forest and easy to slip through bushes (I'd rather she had more trouble with the bushes as I can't easily follow her through, lol), but it's hard for her when there are loads of treetrunks or really dense undergrowth as she has to keep on struggling and jumping to get through.

Her recall/refind is actually (to my amazement) getting on really well. In terrain/wilderness she comes back (sometimes with a little help of the victim because she tends to linger there), she alerts me (with our special way, I'll try to get a pic of that), and she takes me back to the victim. We've only recently started training in the alert and she's already doing wonderfully with that. We can't get her to bark/whine, she simply doesn't get frustrated enough (although she did bark when she found out last training her victim was in the tree, gave her disaster alert there, lol)

With disaster she can't reach the victims, so gets frustrated and will jump up, scratch and make sounds, and is rewarded for that, I don't want her normal alert (coming all the way back to me to jump up and hang in the ball at my side) for safety reasons. My instructor (is that the right word?) wants us only to use the things the dog gives by itself for an alert, because that's more reliable. The problem is that if she can reach the victim, the frustration doesn't get high enough for her normal (disaster) alerts, and as we don't have the wilderness one for safety, I really have to read her bodylanguage. At wich I'm still busy learning, we've only been at disastertraining for 3 times as there aren't many training area's over here (Netherlands)

@Nancy the short version of your story sounds just about how my dog has been trained in the beginning. I will send you a pm, am always ilooking forward for more information We are on a team. We don't do cadaver, as my instructor says that in a disasterarea you don't want cadaver dogs before all the live victims are out. There's no hurry in finding dead people (her words). And the Netherlands are so small that really getting lost in the wilderness and die there would be a pretty hard thing to do


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Article sent - always good to have stuff in the toolbox to think about. We, too, try to refine a natural behavior into the trained alert instead of trying to force what we want. 

Actually we have currently made our team cadaver dogs "single purpose"

Since we only do wilderness, live find dogs have some exposure to cadaver but are not trained for crime scene scenarios though we may train some on water.

It is hard enough to have proficiency in one discipline, let along multiple so that is why I do it that way.

It is great to have someone doing SAR in yet another country.


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