Daring Darcy

Darcy finally got completely certified in August.  

She’d finished all the big tests in May, but we still had to jump through the rest of the hoops of obedience, agility and temperament testing.  I was dragging my feet because once Darcy was certified, Finn would really be retired and I wasn’t sure I could actually handle that.  Anyway, as Hurricane Irene was moving up the coast in August my team, Blue and Gray SAR Dogs, were put on stand-by for possible deployment.  I couldn’t go unless Darcy was certified; that was all the incentive I needed.  At lunch, the Friday before Irene was scheduled to hit Virginia Beach, Darcy and I were getting the last little check mark we needed to finish our obedience.  The five minute stay.  In the parking lot of Steven Toyota, in Harrisonburg. 

Darcy is not a patient dog.  Particularly not with cars buzzing here and there.  People walking to and fro.  And especially not with the bushes rustling next to her.  Thank God we didn’t have to do the AKC sit stay.  Because, she laid down, sat up, laid down again.  And sat up again.  But didn’t move from her spot.  The third time was the charm for her (this was the third time we were trying to get that five minute stay check mark), and she and I passed.

 

Then we waited and waited and waited for the word to get on the road to the shore.  Thankfully, Irene was being the typical fickle woman, and only side swiped the Beach rather than hitting it head on, so we weren’t needed.  So we waited more for that first call out.

On October 2^nd, Deacon and his mom Cora where with me at Hone Quarry doing some water training.

While we were training that Sunday, an unlucky private plane was flying close by on a course from southern Virginia over the Allegheny Mountains to its final stop in Pennsylvania.    It was raining that day and the trees in the higher elevations of the mountains that ringed the quarry lake were rimmed in ice.  Quite pretty to look.  Deadly for the plane.  It disappeared from the radar around the time we were finishing up and loading the boat on to its trailer.

We got the call Tuesday evening to meet with the rest of the team and other dogs and handlers from several other Virginia SAR teams at 7AM Wednesday morning in the northwest corner of Rockingham County.  There was only a skeleton crew available for planning, and none of them were dog savy.  Then the head guy got a bright idea and snagged a few dog handlers from each team, told us what we were going to be searching, then left it up to us to plan the dog tasks. 

   

Our search area was the entire Gobblebark Mountain.  We split the mountain we were to search into smaller areas, 8 task areas in all.  The easy task I’d devised first, was snatched up quickly by another dog team and I was left with the task at the very other end of Gobblebark Mountain.  According to the map we had, there should have been a two track we could drive on that would get us close to the start of our task.  This little piece of short lived joy just reinforced the lesson we were taught as young orienteer’s- maps lie.  Especially about man-made stuff.  There wasn’t a road, let alone a two track in the area; there was just a path.  A boulder strewn, tree blocked path that not even an ATV could get through.

Do you see a trail through here?

We had to hike to the end of this “path” to even start the task.  Darcy was overjoyed that she got to run free for the whole time.  She found the teams that started before us several times.  She ran up the side of the mountain to find a team that was already in their sector.  And she kept stealing one of my team mates gloves out of his back pocket when he wasn’t paying attention. 

We had no radio communication, even with Civil Air Patrol in the sky to relay for us.  We did our radio check at our trucks, had one short communication a short distance in and then nothing until we got back to the trucks seven hours later.  However, we could hear what was going on over the radio at certain points.  Actually, we mostly heard what was going on in West Virginia and their search operations near Peru (pronounced PEE-rou J ).  We even could hear the Hardy County sheriffs office.  But nothing from our own base.  Twice during trek to just get to the start of the task, a Medi-vac helicopter was needed to extract two searchers on the West Virginia search teams.  One was heart problems and I think the other was a broken leg.  Thank goodness we didn’t have any injuries on any of our teams.

Two and half hours later we finally got to the GPS way point that showed us the drainage we needed to start up. And up and up and up we went.  All the way to the top.  Then all the way down to the bottom into Hardy County, in West by God Virginia.

The trip to the top was breath taking.  Literally.  I had to stop about 5 times to catch my breath.  Darcy on the other hand, probably ran up and down the mountain 3 or 4 times in the time it took me and my team to reach the top.  I had two skinny country guys from our local ground pounding team and one VA State Police officer with me.  The skinny guys ran circles around me and the police officer.  The police officer didn’t have to stop as much as I did, but he wasn’t running up the side of the mountain either.

Darcy having fun "finding" my walkers

 

  This guy could run circles around me, while climbing the mountain

 

Even out in the middle of nowhere, there was always evidence of a human presence.  There was a broken down cart with bicycle wheels, the ubiquitous glass liquor bottles 

and even this little trail marker up on top of the mountain:

We ended up sliding down Gobblebark into Hardy County, WV.  

It is not easy walking a contour line in that kind of elevation.  As much as I wanted to skirt around the back of the mountain to the other side, my aching ankles and knees told me it was going to be easier leaf skiing down into the hollow and find the right drainage to go back over the mountain.  Darcy was still bouncing between me and my team mates, just out of her skin excited she got to be the only dog out with three humans to watch her strut her stuff. 

This search ended up being about 7 hours long.  We travelled about 6-7 miles, had over 1000 foot changes in elevation, and only were active in our task area for about 2 hours.

 

The plane was eventually found near Peru, West Virginia.  Ironically, the end of our sector was closer to the crash site than it was to our trucks.

I was dead, but Darcy… she was ready for another 7 hours of fun on the mountain.  Not bad for her very first search.

Hitting the Wall

I’ve been stepping up the pressure on Deacon as we get closer to his certification tests. 

Deacon has got many flashes of incredible brilliance, interspersed with times of a southern California surfer dude attitude.  That’s the attitude where “I’ve worked long enough, it’s time to go home”.  Not what you want when you are in the middle of the woods, two hours into a five hour task. 

Just about every one of my dogs hits this stage in their training.  This is when training changes from fun and games into a job that has to be done. I call it hitting the wall.  The tasks move from being able to fall into a scent pool to tricky scenting conditions like swirling breezes, overlapping scent pools, buried sources and trying to extend the time between placement of source and the actual running  of the task.  I do this to start making Deacon think.  To make him start developing some problem solving ability.  I also move from just one or two sources to many multiples because, contrary to popular thinking, dogs know how to count.  And Deacon got to the point that after locating two sources, his brain went into neutral. 

There is such a thing as mental endurance, or as I read somewhere, nose time.  It is the time a dog is effectively using its nose to detect the target scent.  This also plays into the “hitting the wall” scenario.

To me, developing physical endurance is the easy part.  It's the mental endurance that is difficult.  Deacon has good physical endurance, he can run beside a bike for two miles, can hike three to fours hours or go on a fast trail ride with me on the horse for a couple of hours.  However, when I first started pushing him, he was only effectively using his nose for about 30 minutes at a time.  The 30 minute timer went off and, boom, it was like a switch got flipped off.  To the uninitiated, he continued to run around acting like he was actively searching.  To my eye, though, he really wasn’t working anymore. His whole demeanor changed.  He would work a bit manically, his nose was on the ground, snort like a pig pretending he was working, but he just wasn’t getting anywhere.  Just running around frantically, pushing his nose under this log or that clump of grass.

And that is what hitting the wall looks like.  It is messy and ugly and sometimes you just want to throw your hands up, march your dog back to the truck and head home.  The job was no longer fun or easy, it was WORK.  Almost every dog gets to this point in their career.  And almost every dog comes through the other side with a renewed devotion to the task, to the point that finding that source is the be all, end all, of their life.  It may not be “fun” anymore, but it becomes an avocation, a passion that they would rather do with their human partner under any kind of circumstance. 

This change in attitude does not come quickly nor does it come easily. It takes a dedication on the part of the human partner to remember the spark that made them pick this particular canine partner.  To remember what their tired confused canine partner was like, to coach them, and condition them. So the dog can come out the other side.  During this time is when the true partnership develops.  You see how your dog learns, and you develop training strategies that compliment his style. Your dog trusts you.

Ultimately, it is remembering how exciting this journey is going to be with your canine partner at your side.  That is what keeps you plugging away.  Through the ups and especially through the downs.  It is tedious and it is boring, this training to set a work ethic.  But, it will come.  That excitement, that joy, that devotion to the job.  We will get a partner that works WITH us, not FOR us.

By sticking with it, when it is work and not fun, showing to our dogs that we will stand with them no matter what, we get a dog that will perform in the rain, the snow, disasters, the heat, brush so thick a human couldn’t walk through it upright, all night, then all day the next day.  They want to do this with their human partner because it is the reason they live, to find the source and show it to their partner. 

And it is all the better because we are a team.