SAR question. - Page 2

Politics are too often part of SAR. A friend who had a very nice GSD certified him in SAR, but left a local SAR team over politics. The politics include the preferred type of dog (typical American/hochtzuchtlinie/leistungs preference), type of handling and type of training. Some SAR people want to keep their small, exclusive club just that: small and exclusive. If a dog and handler can do the work, they should be accepted, IMO. Not everyone thinks that way.

Mystere -I guess to me, persistance is hunt drive :) - there is a lot of debate on whether "hunt drive" should be referred to as a real drive. Plus - I know of some people who just don't care about hunting ability - only ball drive. Idiotic IMHO, but true.But a dog who will hunt relentlessly if he feels like hunting is a dog that sucks when he doesn't feel like it. So - it is only one part of a huge picture. There is also source committment, solid nerve, pain tolerance and a million other factors. 

Sam - I hear what you are saying, but the flip side is that people come onto a SAR team, take up the senior trainers' time and effort for sometimes two + years, and then bail b/c either it got too hard, or their life got in the way, or whatever. Or - they certify and refuse to keep up with their training (my personal favorite) becoming a liability to the missing. I am not suggesting that your friend did that - but it is often the generic "politics" that gets blamed when there are valid training issues that people won't deal with.

So - if it is a volunteer organization you have to give the people doing all the work a little bit of lee-way to make choices that are right for their team. That being said, my team will accept anyone for training who can get a NASAR SARTECH II, pass a background check, and pass a pre-certification test that shows their dog is about 60% to mission ready status. Then they can start training their dog on the team. That might be the first time they ever came out, or for some people, they join the team, then bring their dog later. We are also fortunate that people can take scent detection classes locally, I can see where that might not work for some areas.  I wish I could afford to pay my handlers a salary, b/c things would certainly run a little differently. :)

I get what you are saying, auntievenom. I wasn't there - I'd be a liability in SAR since I'm not healthy enough to do the work - so I am going by what my friend said and she's not a slacker. Still, there are two sides to every story and different groups operate differently. She might have had more success with a different group.  

SAR training is very expensive, time consuming, hot and often times you are working in a less than desirable location, so only those who truly love it stick around for long.  :o(  You're required to obtain several classes & certifications for yourself before you and you K9 are even eligable to test as a team.  I would think there is another team in your friends area she can contact and possibly join and I would encourage her to do so.  It would be a shame to let her time and joy for the work fall to the way side.  

 Aunti what scent detection classes are offered near you and with whom?  I would be interested in checking into them.  I truly enjoy attending seminars, classes, etc. to learn as much as I can.  

I agree the dog must have hunt-search drive.  The dogs must also have the confidence to move into a scent cone from a grid of the area and then committ to the source.  The source is where their reward comes from.  Yes they know you have their food, toy & praise but they don't get it until they make their find.  Cadaver dogs are more like air scent dogs.  You grid them into the wind so they can pick up the scent and cut into it and follow the cone until they reach the source.  A trailing/tracking dog wether scent discriminating or not works from older to newer scent/trail to the target where they get rewarded.  They are expected to stay on the track and follow it closely.  Some dogs with trailing backgrounds who have been changed to cadaver have the habit of trailing the person in who placed the source.  We contaminate the area (several people & even a dog walk through the area).  We don't want them to follow anyone, we want them to grid their area and move into the source.  The dogs with a trailing backgrounds often make very good independant searchers.  I don't like cross training live find & cadaver due to legal issues, etc. but several teams I know, require each dog to be dual certified live & cadaver.  This will be a personal conflict for me with my new pup who I planned to train cadaver and later work in Schutzhund. :o(   I will have to make sure she is solid with her cadaver work and certified before beginning tracking and see how she handles it.        

Teri      

Teri -
In the Dallas/ Fort Worth area - Shannon Kiley with Dobie Detectives:

http://www.dobiedetectives.com/scentworks.html

She did a Level1/ Level 2 combo class a few weeks ago that were one right after the other. Right now the classes have to be taken in succession, but I am wondering if she won't do some scenario based HRD classes that are open to experienced handlers who haven't taken the intro classes.

Shannon B

Thank you for the info Shannon.  I will try to contact her.

Teri

I have been in SAR since 1999 and have a cadaver dog.

I just wanted to add that the teams who do not allow sport trained dogs are not always uneducated about and opposed to schutzhund. We have a few teammates who have done sport work, and one who actively does, but not with his SAR dog.

We are not working any sport trained dogs in SAR .  If a dog had a little training in the past, ok, well,  we do look at dogs on a case by case basis and take into account their history, but for us the issues are (1) dog works offlead, still would need to overcome concern of dog making up mind to bite a fleeing victim in abscence of physical presence of handler (2) liability insurance - our team insurance is the single biggest expense our team has. We do not want to jeapardize ith with bite trained dogs (3) LE, some of our LE who work bite dogs are relieved to have dogs without bite training looking for missing folks. (4) dogs are dogs and accidents can happen [we have not had one, actually the only one I have heard about WAS in Germany and a dog trained in sport] the press resulting from a *nip* by a sport trained dog could completely destroy a team that was years in the making.

For a cadaver dog, we would have less concerns on former biteowork than a live find dog.

I can understand your teams concerns with liability, however if you think about it most LEO K9's are dual trained in protection coupled with either drug, explosives and/or trailing.  I believe their training is the same as Schutzhund, from what I have seen here in Florida anyway.  Yes there is a liability when working with ANY animal regardless of it's training, they are animals, that is why the training must be solid.  The reason for Schutzhund training in the first place was to pick the most mentally level headed, obedient, confident and phyically fit animals for breeding.  I get so tickled when people say they want to train their dog to be a cadaver dog because it is either aggressive to people, animals or both and they think it would make a good cadaver dog.  They just never considered it would need to work in and around people and often times in areas where there are other animals.  Most testing agencies require the dogs to have some level of obedience prior to  being eligible to test.    

I have to say the most obedient dogs I have ever seen have been well trained Schutzhund dogs.  I have been to several SAR seminars and had to be careful around "trained" and "certified" search dogs.  I am not clumping them all together or slamming SAR dogs, there are many that are great, I have several, which I am VERY proud of but there are many who are a liability because their aggression isn't controllable and very dangerous.   I spent a week in Miss. at a seminar and had to sleep next to a lady with a dog from HELL (I won't enter the breed because it doesn't matter, all breeds have the ability to be butt heads)!!!!!  Every time we passed this dog, it was trying to eat me, my dog or both and it did this with EVERYTHING it passed.  I personally think they should have sent her back home until she taught her dog some manners.  The following year the dog appeared to be better (beacuse it wasn't pulling, lunging or barking & snarling at everything!).  But you could see it's warning signals had been removed but the dog HAD the SAME desire as before and in my opionion was more dangerous.      

Correct me if I'm wrong but dogs trained for schutzhund are ONLY trained to attack if the person/decoy is endangering the handler.  They are NOT encouraged to run after any person walking, running, riding a bike or driving a car.  I am new to Schutzhund and could be totally wrong but it is my understanding the BH is to test the dog for soundness in these area's and make sure they behave and are well socialized.  I think most people in SAR have the wrong idea about Schutzhund, I know I did until I went with my breeder to watch one of her dogs compete and I was so impressed that I wanted all of my dogs to be that obedient.

Teri             

Teri- I get SO many inquiries from people who say their dog can't pass a CGC because of XYZ, but they think they have great potential as a SAR dog... What??? Seriously???

Many of the SchH dogs I have seen here won't attack a person at all, they only bite a sleeve at SchH training. They are very cued into location and gear. And I know some SAR dogs that would attack a person who was hurting their handler who have never had a bit of SchH training. It is a process of evaluating the dog handler team and seeing if they will work to present the same consistent image as the rest of the team.  Shannon :)