Training tips for search and rescue dogs

Training Tip #39:  when leaving the house to set up your evenings training, make sure you put the puppy in her crate.

Addendum to Training Tip #39:  latch the crate door.

Paths Unkown

A couple of weeks ago a beautiful silver balloon drifted into my yard, having lost all its helium.  Made me wonder who lost it.  Was there a child somewhere that cried when it floated off?  Whose birthday party did it drift away from?  Did a young man give it to his first love, and she lost it?

It also made me think of other things that wander into my life that I wasn’t aware I was looking for.  Those things that make us travel a path we weren’t expecting or planning on.  There is only one thing that wandered into my life I can remember that definitely pointed me down a trail that I had never planned on, and that would be my first search dog, Ben. 

Ben

I’d been with my search group, Blue and Gray, for about 6 months.  I’d come to realize the time commitment needed and the monetary commitment as well, so it was time for me to look for a dog.  I was in love with my college dog, Jack and wanted another one just like him.  He was a big dog, with long luxurious golden hair that paid homage to his mixed heritage; he was ¾ Golden Retriever and ¼ Great Pyrenees.  He was as beautiful as he was tough.  So I went looking at Bernese Mountain Dogs.  They are stunning to look at, and in my neophyte enthusiasm, thought they were working dogs.   All the dogs I saw were beautiful and exactly what I thought I was looking for, but something kept holding me back from committing to a puppy.

At this time in my life I was boarding my horse at my friend’s farm, Mountain Run Farm, where she also had a small boarding kennel.  I was out finishing up a ride, when Kari comes rushing down to the barn to tell me that I needed to stick around. She has the perfect search dog for me.

Some clients of hers were boarding their dog at her kennel until their house was finished being built as the place they were renting didn’t allow pets.  They frantically called Kari one afternoon, they had just picked up a Labrador on the road near their apartment building that they thought had been hit by a car.  Could she help them take care of it?  Why they didn’t call the emergency clinic, I’ll never know, but in karma of the universe, they weren’t supposed to.  Kari actually told them to go directly to the emergency clinic, but they wanted her to look at him first.

I was expecting what I call a cur Lab, to step out of their car.  A cur lab is a dog that nobody can tell what breed it really is but kind of looks like a Lab so that is what they call it.  They usually are whippet thin, with a whip like tail and a pointy snout, with a vague wave to a distant relative that may have been a Labrador.  The SPCA is notorious for calling everything a Lab, because that is the easiest to adopt out.  Especially if they are a black dog.

But, from this tiny car, out steps this big beautiful yellow Lab, with a gorgeous block head.

It was love at first sight, both ways.  I was completely and absolutely in love, the kind where music should be playing and little hearts floating around.  And all that was wrong with him was a raging ear infection. 

He was not the most gifted of search dogs, but he was patience personified.  Patience to deal with my mistakes as a novice trainer and the patience to not get frustrated with me when he couldn’t understand what I wanted from him.  He was a teacher, that was his gift.  I was lucky to have such a dog such as him, it made training the rest of my dogs that much easier.

Most SAR dogs are trained using toys, and for months I tried to get him to play tug, but it was beneath him.  I spent 6 frustrating months trying to get him to work for a toy, because that’s what everybody said I had to do.  This dog, though, was incredibly motivated by food.  One day he got out of my house when my pet sitter came to let them out to do his business.  She called me frantically, knowing how much he meant to me.  I remembered it was trash day and told her to just follow the trail of turned over trash cans.  Sure enough, she found him at the fourth trash can happily munching on what, I don’t know, but content. 

So I switched to training him with hot dogs.  He was certified in 6 months.

His only find was a suicide in the Blue Ridge Mountains, before he suffered a career ending injury to a suspensory ligament in his rear leg.  He led me down this path I am on right now and he was the first step.  The second step of which was getting Finn, my current search dog.  Then my second HRD dog Cora, and have bred two litters of Labs.  I am training director for my team.  And with Finn, I’ve been deployed to New Orleans after Katrina and to the jungles of Guyana, South America on HRD missions as well as numerous local missions. 

In 2005, I lost him to cancer and still think about him almost every day.  I saw his ghost in my bedroom doorway, right after I put him to sleep.  He didn’t want to leave me, but I told him I’d be ok.  He did good with me and it was time for him to go and help someone else.

Little did I know what was in front of me that first day I saw him step out of that car.