In teaching cadaver work, I utilize a step-by-step process
that takes a beginner dog and teaches him the ability to reliably indicate on
the presence of cadaver and teaches the handler how to interpret the information
the dog is relaying. These steps are the building blocks in our training
foundation. As with any foundation, if a block is skipped or hasn’t been
mortared in, the foundation becomes weak and the house may crumble. In search
work, that means failure in the field and that is unacceptable. Some of the
following quotes signify a crack in the foundation wall:
“My dog finds it OK. It’s just, when he does find it, I
can tell. But he doesn’t do anything spectacular to let me know”
Translation….the dog hasn’t been trained to give us an alert
behavior; step two of the process.
“My dog gets bored with the short problems. He doesn’t
want to smell cans or blocks. He wants to search.”
Translation….we taught the
dog to search large areas and do what he wants to do rather than search what we
want him to search. The search step was laid before the alert step. We have a
hole in our performance.
“My dog will find it, but then he walks away and starts
sniffing the ground around it. Someone told me he was doing a border search and
let him work it out.”
Translation….we failed to
reward the dog when he located the strongest point of scent and in that created
an unwanted behavior of the dog leaving the source to fringe scent. How can a
dog work it out when we haven’t taught him what we want him to do yet??
“My dog gets confused if we hide it in blocks or cans. He
false alerts on empty cans.”
Translation…..we haven’t
taught the dog what the scent is we are looking for and he is testing the
parameters. He’s not false indicating. He is just attempting to determine which
scent he gets his reward for. Dogs smell individual components of the scent
picture. The best analogy I’ve heard is the beef stew analogy. If we walk into
a house where beef stew is on the stove, we think boy that beef stew smells
good. A dog would say, well, we got beef, carrots, onions, celery, potatoes,
and gravy. The dog smells the individual components. So, if we are teaching the
dog to give us an alert for one of the components and he smells the entire beef
stew picture, he will test to find out which component it is.
“Am I cuing my dog?”
The handler walked down the row of blocks and stopped when
reaching the hot block. The dog offers his alert behavior.
The handler walked down the row of blocks and stopped at a
clean block. The dog offers his alert behavior. The dog is cuing on the handler rather than the scent.
It could be pointing at the block, bending towards it,
slowing your pace, changing of your voice, stopping rather than walking on, or
using the clicker as an audible cue. All of these have cause the canine to
become confused and offer the alert behavior at clean blocks…
Most of the problems that I have witnessed in working
cadaver dogs can be traced back to the lack of foundation training during the
early training of the dog and handler. I am a firm believer that there is a
step by step process that needs to be followed to teach a canine and handler
how to locate the scent source and then reliably indicate on the strongest
point of scent. It is when these steps are skipped that the bricks are left out
of our foundation and our training has weaknesses that ultimately will be
exposed.
A dog can search all day long and find every sample, but if
that dog can’t tell you he has found it, what good is he? The most frequently
skipped step in this process is building the reliable alert. The reason: it is
work that requires perfect timing in order to teach the canine the behavior we
want them to offer. It requires quick thinking by the handler. The handler must
be prepared to physically react immediately upon the dog’s offering of the
target behavior. It takes coordination, patience, motivation and confidence. If
you skip this step, you have a dog that can search but can’t tell you he found,
and that doesn’t do us any good.
So, let’s do it right the first time.
The first step in cadaver work is to imprint the scent of
the cadaver material on the K9. Once the dog is familiar with the scent and a
command is attached to the scent, then it is time to build the alert.
During the imprinting stage of cadaver, the material was
placed in a line of cinder blocks, paint cans, minnow buckets, PVC tubes or
other containers, one of which was the hot can. The others were clean and had
no cadaver smell on them. Once the dog noticed the scent, he was rewarded.
During this process he might have offered a natural behavior. A bark, scratch,
dig, whine, something that we might utilize in the building the alert stage.
The first thing that you need to understand is what the dog
smells; the canine scent picture.
Scenario:
Cadaver material is stored in plastic lab cup with holes
in the top. That cup is placed in a metal paint can with holes in the top of
the can. That can is marked with red tape and placed in a line of cans in a
grassy field.
In the above scenario, the dog will smell the plastic cup,
the paint can, the tape, the grassy area around the can, the air quality, and
the cadaver material. This is important to understand when you get to another
step, which is called “proofing” and will be covered in detail in
another article.
The dog has been exposed to the scent and is now ready to be
trained to give us a behavior. I prefer an alert behavior that doesn’t
interfere with a crime scene. Examples would be the refind, bark or passive sit
or down behaviors. It is important that the dog is capable of doing the
behavior on command. The dog must also be familiar with the “check it” command
(smell right here).
The dog can be worked on or off leash and should sniff on
the downwind side of the cans. The handler should give the dog the command and
then have him check each can. When the dog reaches the hot can and notices the
scent (delay at can, sniff etc), the handler should command the dog to offer
the behavior (down, speak etc). When the dog offers the behavior it needs to be
immediately rewarded. This exercise should be repeated several
times approaching the hot can from different directions and also changing the
line-up of the cans by moving the location of the clean cans.
Exercise 1:
C
C
C
H
C
Exercise 2:
C
H
C C
C
Exercise 3:
C
C
C C
H
Notice how the Hot Can (H) physically stays in the same
location.
Timing of reward is everything and the location of the
reward should be at the scent source. If the dog is commanded to do a down, as
soon as he hits the ground that reward must be given. This means the handler
must be ready to immediately reward the dog. If the reward is a throw toy, it
should be thrown to the dog immediately when he hits the ground. If it is food,
it should be given to the dog immediately when he hits the ground. The reward
must be immediate and at the scent source and when the dog is physically
performing the alert behavior.
Let’s say your alert is a down and your dog enters the
scent, pinpoints the can and then downs. At that point it takes you 30 seconds
to dig the food out of you pocket and the dog sees it coming and meets you half
way to receive the food. What have you rewarded??? You have rewarded the dog
meeting you half way and not the behavior.
Timing is everything.
If you are using the clicker in this process, then you click
immediately when the behavior is offered. You do not click in order to get the
behavior or else you have turned the clicker into an audible cue. The purpose
of the clicker is to tell the dog you recognized that he did it right and buy
you time to reward with the food or toy.
Once the dog is locating the scent in the cans and doing the
behavior on command, then move to another set of cans, minnow buckets, cement
blocks or pvc tubes. Again command the dog to give you the behavior when he
comes to the strongest point of scent. Do not let him leave the scent source
without offering the behavior. We are training the dog, not letting him figure
things out. If the dog attempts to leave the strongest point of the scent, call
him back to the container and reward him at the container. Don’t let the dog
get into the habit of fringe scenting.
Changing the container changes the scent picture. The dog
will begin to learn that it is not the container that he is alerting on. It is
the scent of cadaver. The more you change the containers, the more he realizes
that the one thing that is always present is the cadaver scent. The one
constant in this process is the cadaver scent.
If you started on cinder blocks and the dog is reliable in
giving your trained alert on the hot cinder block, now run the same exercise
using minnow buckets as containers. This changes the scent recipe. You can use
two lines, one of blocks and the other of minnow buckets. Once the dog is
reliable with his alert, then add a line of PVC tubes. Then add a line of paint
cans. Then a line of smaller paint cans. Then a line of cricket cages.
When the dog can successfully alert on the cadaver scent
when it is housed in different containers, he is ready to move to field
problems. This means taking a number of these containers and utilizing them in
the woods.
A successful, reliable alert is one that is not prompted
by the handler and is offered by the canine at the scent source.
The Field Experience
Pick three different hot containers: one PVC tube, one
cricket cage and one paint can. Throw the hot PVC tube in a small wooded area.
Then place two clean tubes in that same area.
Hang the Hot Cricket cage in a tree in a different area.
Place the hot can under a brush pile and then place another
clean can at the edge of a brush pile in the same search area.
These three areas should be small; no more than 50-75 yards
square.
The purpose of these exercises is to teach the dog that the
cadaver scent will be in other places besides containers and we still want the
dog to give us the alert behavior. The area is so small that there is
relatively little “searching” going on. We want the dog to understand he must give
us his trained alert behavior in the field.
We have changed the scent picture. Now, we have added the
wooded environment to the mix.
The PVC tube should not be retrieved and the dog should
ignore the clean tubes. If he gives the trained alert on the clean tube tell
him wrong and command him to search again. When he gets to the hot tube, if he
doesn’t offer the trained alert, then command him to perform the trained alert.
Once the trained behavior is offered, reward immediately and at the scent
source.
At the hot can under the brush pile, it will be normal for
dogs with a drive to dig to try to dig at the brush. If your dog does this tell
him wrong and command him to offer the trained alert behavior. Make sure you
reward at the scent source and during these exercises if the dog leaves the
scent source immediately bring him back and command the alert behavior.
Don’t let the dog leave the scent source.
The purpose of the hanging cricket cage is to get the dog
used to giving a passive alert even when they can’t find the source on the
ground. This also gives the handler the opportunity to watch a dog work a scent
pool and have difficulty identifying the strongest area of scent. Remember,
with a breeze there will be a void near the tree so the dog will not smell the
cadaver at the base of the tree, but rather down wind. Again, we want to
enforce a passive indication.
Once your dog is capable of offering the trained alert
behavior without being commanded in these three scenarios, then we are ready to
teach the dog to search for it and extend the search area, time and distance.
If at any point in the training process, our alert goes to hell in a hand
basket, we digress and work these exercises again to reinforce the expected
behavior. We give the dog the opportunity to do it right and be rewarded for
the behavior.
With the alert block of your foundation securely in place,
you can have confidence that your dog will perform reliably when called upon to
conduct a cadaver search.
by Jonni Joyce
