# Combined wilderness/disaster dog



## Karin Niessen (Feb 9, 2009)

I hope I am using the right terms, have only just begun in the sar dog-world and that is the Dutch one, so I'm not sure about the correct English words.

At my club, the basic training is in the woods (so that would be wilderness?), but we also have trainings at appartment buildings being torn down and stuff like that (so that would be disaster training I guess). I have had one of those now and I noticed that it's really a different way of searching that is required. 

In the woods Jamey (my dog) needs to lacate, 'tell me' she's found something and then show me where it is. At the 'disaster' training she needed to paw, jump make noise whatever at the place where I needed to clear an entry entry to the building, and she had to try to get in herself, with or without my help. Also there is a difference in staying in sight (disaster) and just run about and search (wilderness).

Will she be able to get the difference between these situations? It seemed to be normal to do it this way but I was surprised at the different ways of working (using the same search command but at disaster area no collar or anything for safety, at wilderness we do use a collar and an orange with fluorescent stripes coat-like thing -wouldn't know the proper Enlgish name for that).


----------



## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

I know people do this so those folks can answer the "can do" question better - cross train disaster and wilderness but we do not. In 6 years on the team we have averaged about two wilderness calls a month but no disaster calls [nor have disaster dogs been called into our area]

Disaster is such a specialty, the deployments are longer than most of us could take off of work, and it is more dangerous for the handlers. If we had a local disaster, I would rather support a specialty team of disaster dogs by doing whatever they needed [water, shelter, K9 first aid, etc.] to keep their teams running.

We do train on all kinds of surfaces and could probably be a responder for small scale building collapses [eg a house] but nothing bigger.

Oh, the English name for the coat like thing is a vest or shabrack.


----------



## Jennifer Michelson (Sep 20, 2006)

I do both wilderness and disaster with my gsd. We started wilderness first and he is an airscent dog (as opposed to a trailing or scent specific dog). For wilderness we train rural areas and also abandoned buildings as often as we can. Because most of my team is on a disaster team, they advised me to do the wilderness work with a bark indication rather than the recall-refind, if I was interested in disaster work. 

Disaster work is very specialized and most(all?) U.S. disaster teams are state/federal supported--I am part of NJ Task Force 1. For training, the dogs have to learn to bark/indicate at an inaccessible victim and stay at the location until the handler gets there. They need to learn direction and control--the handler needs to be able to tell the dog where to go if the handler cant access the area the dog is searching. The dogs need to learn a lot of agility that gives them the skill to move over the rubble. They also have to have a boatload of drive, very solid nerves and ability to work away from the handler. 

The dogs do work 'naked' at a disaster site--they could hook a collar or vest on debris. They do often work out of sight of the handler (we train specifically for it actually) and work with a lot of noise and commotion and extra people in the area

I know a lot of dogs who do both wilderness and disaster and have no problem doing both--search is search to them. I know a couple of people who do only disaster officially, but have their dogs train wilderness problems as a way to have their dogs work longer and have them be more flexible. If the dog has the right drives/nerve there shouldnt be a problem with doing both types of training.


----------



## Konnie Hein (Jun 14, 2006)

A lot of disaster dogs cross train in wilderness, but use the same alert for both. I do know of a couple of people who have cross-trained their dogs for both, yet trained different alerts (bark alert for disaster and refind for wilderness) and supposedly were successful with that. I've also seen a couple of dogs who were trained this way who would occasionally do a refind on the rubble, despite the fact that they were trained to do a bark alert in disaster. The ability to train for both, yet use different alerts and have complete clarity for the dog depends on both the abilities of the dog and the trainer.

I think it also boils down to analyzing your specific situation and what tools are needed in searches in your particular area. In what we refer to as "first responder" disaster scenarios, such as smaller scale tornado response, etc., a refind alert dog might not be a problem. In larger scale searches, it certainly would be. 

Also, maybe I misunderstood your description of your disaster search and alert techniques, but our disaster dogs are taught to work completely independently of us and are often out of our sight. When they find the victim, they are to stay at the victim (or as close as they can get to the victim) and bark until rewarded or called off. This sounds different from your description of what you do. 

All in all, there are different nuances to the different venues, but that's not to say a dog can't do both.


----------



## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

You'll also find; dogs that can do disaster will do wilderness. That is not always the case with dogs that do wilderness. Some dogs have enough drive to do wilderness training, but not the strong nerve it takes for disaster work.

DFrost


----------



## Karin Niessen (Feb 9, 2009)

Let me try to explain. I've only just started training, so I am very new to it all (I have done 3 wilderness and one 'disaster' training). 

At the wilderness training she needs to find the 'victim' (that has her toy), and then get me and show me where the victim is (I think that's what you call recall-rewind). She is allowed to keep travelling between me and the victim. She gets her toy from me when I arrive at the victim (that is the reason why she has to come and get me, lol).

At the one 'disaster' training I did, the entrance was blocked by some rubble so she couldn't get in and I had to wait for her to signal there. Until that point she had to stay in my sight unless I directed otherwise. Anyways, it took some time to get her to signal (she doesn't bark, but eventually did scratch and whine) and I cleared a path so she could move on with the search whilst I was trying to clear the path enough for me to get through too. The victim was built in, so she had to try to get through or signal me again to help her get through. And then of course she won her toy


----------



## Karin Niessen (Feb 9, 2009)

Jennifer Michelson said:


> I do both wilderness and disaster with my gsd. We started wilderness first and he is an airscent dog (as opposed to a trailing or scent specific dog).


Can you explain what is meant by these different kinds of searching? I not really sure what kind my dog uses, my trainer doesn't care, as long as she uses her nose and it leads her to the victim

As far as I get it, airscent is sniffing the air, trailing is following a scent-trail on the ground, but scent specific I don't really understand. (My dog combines airscent and trailing I think, am not really sure)...


----------



## Jennifer Michelson (Sep 20, 2006)

A scent specific dog is one who uses a scent article (non comtaminated personal item from the subject) to determine what scent to find. They are looking for that specific person. Most of the time this means that the dog is also a tracking/trailing dog. They are trying to follow the path of the person. I dont know much about it, but I have heard that some wilderness teams are training scent specific air scenting dogs. 

A generalized air-scenting dog finds any human scent in the area. Each dog/handler team is given a search area (say 1000ftx1000ft). The team's job is to 'clear' that area. We do this by gridding back and forth through the area making sure our dogs have 'access' to the whole area, so that even if the wind is not in our favor, we have covered the entire area.

Hope this helps!


----------



## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Quite a number of teams in the US train scent specific dogs who work in an air scent fashion indicating only on the target person and ignoring other ground teams / people. 

Usually these dogs are started in trailing then progress either to specialize in either advanced trailing or air scent work, based on the dog's preferred mode of searching.

This seems to be a huge logical leap for some, but the distinct scent of one human is specific to that person regardless of whether it fell close to the footfall path or got carried in the air across some distance.


----------



## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Nancy, Thunder started out doing trailing first. For him it was quite simple to cross over to scent specific. 
My "victim" would leave an article (t-shirt, sock, etc) at the pls and the track was started. 
Once he was proficient in this I just started having two people leave from the same spot with only one leaving an article. Initially I would have the person that wasn't to be tracked to leave 5-10 mins earlier. Eventually it was both at the same time.
As easy as it happened I always suspected it was a pretty natural thing for him to do.


----------

