Scent in Training Police Dogs? - Page 2

The last time I talked to my old police depts K-9 they said they now teach them to track by ground disturbance??? Was a new one to me ever heard of that.

LOL Gshprdsrul ..... the Natives have been teaching that to wolves for years.   !!!!!!!  

I am absolutely no authority. I am a very very beginning level of SAR but have read a good bit and been introduced to the very basics of scent theory. I would be interested in this though. So, none of these are an interrogation- just the questions that have popped in my head if your friend may have mentioned them:

Are these specifically search dogs (as in for suspects) or SAR dogs? By ground disturbance do you know if he meant the ground itself or if it was the dust etc on pavement or cement? Could it refer to subtle wind disturbances? Is this for a general scent or specific to a person scent or adrenalyn scent?

If no one here has heard of this I can ask one of the instructors at my group and see if it rings any bells.

What I believe your referring to by ground disturbance is the "ecological" scent. This is where grass, or other live vegetation is disturbed (crushed) causing the material to start to decompose. When tracking for police work you use ecological scent with "skin rafts" that are shed from the body.

Also the scent your describing is from the Apocrine sweat gland, normally goes into overdrive during fear or stress.

Just my two cents, hope it helps.

That is my understanding of tracking and "ground disturbance" tracking.

As for the adrenaline, I mulled the whole thing around in my mind last night about using it in law enforcement. I can see maybe some trainers mindset and ideas on it;  I just don't see any benefits that would offset what I perceive would an increase in potential liability through indiscriminate or unintended bites. Conditioning a dog to bite to a specific stimuli is just not a good idea.

Allabout--Don't hate us all

I have a question for SAR people. Do you guys track, air scent, or a combination of both? I helped an SAR group a couple of times and all of their dogs air scented.

Sigma-Aldrich
3050 Spruce St.
St. louis, Mo. 63103
Phone: 800-325-3010

Call them.  They have what you are looking for.  Tell them what you want.  We use scent in a bottle where I am at to help with hard surface tracking such as parking lots etc.

GARD-I didn't say I hate anyone. I just have found that I can't automatically trust anyone, especially the police around here. When I say it's systemic, I mean they get away with such atrocious behavior and there are no repurcussions. It's just wrong to abuse authority the way they do. It falls much more on the management that allows it; which in effect, encourages it.

As far as air scent/tracking goes, in our group the dogs learn tracking first because it is less instinctual to learn. Then they do air scenting. The reasoning being,if they learn the easier way first (air) it's harder to teach them the ground tracking later because they will tend to fall back on air scenting.

Regards,

Dawgs

I have never heard of this unless you have blood hound. ( never been around bloodhound in training ). I have never trained with this and i would never try to track around a crowd of people.

I have trained for years on police dog trailing  but never used this. We trained on both ground scent and rafts which are dead human skin cells which a person sheds about 40,000 each of them per minute. Once they are shed bacteria begins to eat on them after 15-30 minutes and each person had a different smell which the dog learns to differiante in training. The problem with training is alot depends on various factors including weather conditions, time of day, tracking surface, humidity , wind and so on which determines how long the track can be scented by the dog. Plus you have to have a starting place to be on the track and the more traffic crossing the track makes it harder. A good trailing dog can stay on the right trail.

Ground scent is just the plants you crush while walking and the organisms living in the soil that you step on. We train using both. In many ways air scenting is far superior to tracking for search and rescue. My current female was a superior training dog and could track in extreme desert conditions in the heat  of a 100 deg day. She was also trained in SAR air scenting and was also excellent.

And as a former police officer I trust no one until proven trustworthy. And if your innocent then don't run and the doggies won't eat you...