Tracking/SAR

From what I understand, competitive tracking, like in AKC or Schutzhund, utilizes many of the same concepts used when training a SAR dog (which may track, trail, or air scent) but is more stylized.  Schutzhund especially requires the dog to go footprint to footprint whereas in SAR you're going for finding the victim over style and thus the dog is allowed to range further off the path the victim took to find the scent where it is strongest.  A great book for learning scent theory is "Scent and the Scenting Dog".

As for evaluating potential, I'd talk to an expert in the field about what they look for.  I know our team looks for a highly motivated (toy, food, or play) dog that will search for a lost object (generally a toy thrown behind heavy brush) for a long period before giving up and one who LOVES people as well.

 Stardog, I meant to tell you that I finally started Lily in tracking. She loves it! I can see that she is going to be really good at it. We'll have to see about SAR

Tracking is both with humans and inanimate objects.  The SAR dog gets more training in dealing with human emotions and injuries.  The SAR dog is almost capable of judgment calls -- i.e., THIS human is injured ... that one is scared ... we go for the hurt one FIRST.  The handler may not know EITHER bit of information but the dog can smell it. 

i.e., your SAR dog won't be freaked by the full range of human emotions -- from fear and terror to the smell of blood -- or even the finer distinction of a human who may be unconscious vs. conscious.  Those things are primarily experiental ... but the dog develops those types of judgment calls along the way.  Also they will be trained to not be upset by, but know the difference when they have to recover "a body" rather than a living being.  Some dogs can get extremely depressed if they can't rescue living people -- they saw that a LOT during 9-11 recovery.

The organization we have typically used to certify our therapy dogs also works with SAR dogs (Bright and Beautiful Therapy Dogs, Inc.) -- it would be another avenue for you to check out.  They are national as well.

Callie I have to disagree with you about the whole detecting the most important person to find idea and being trained to deal with emotions. 

Our dogs are *not* specifically trained for either. All our training "victims" are healthy, "normal" people and thus there's really no way for a dog to learn what you describe except in the field.  They may pick it up on their own, but it's not specifically trained or rewarded, nor expected or required to do the work.

Many people think that the dogs at 911 weren't depressed about not finding live people, but more upset by the fact that they were working around a lot of emotions from rescuers and working long days without any rewards, unlike situations where their targets are found quickly/frequently as in training scenarios.

Additionally, live search dogs look for live victims and cadaver dogs look for human remains - some are cross trained but not all are.  Some live search dogs are actively afraid of the smell of decay and death and will actively avoid it if they encounter it.  Only dogs that show no reaction to death/decay are trained to detect human remains.

The orgs my group talks about a lot are NASAR and IPWDA - their sites are a wealth of info!

stardog85

there's really no way for a dog to learn what you describe except in the field. 

er ... I think I said that -- at least that's where I was going with that.  I didn't mean in ANY way that such skills were "taught". 

calliecritturs

Those things are primarily experiental ... but the dog develops those types of judgment calls along the way. 

SAR training is a process ... they start out training with healthy humans ... but experience and further training enhance that ... which is how a dog gets really good at what they do.

In some ways it's similar to pet therapy ... to a DEGREE there are things you teach .. but much of it is the bond with the dog and the interaction with the handler (who ALSO has to be trained) ... you can get tons of "training" in pet therapy but nothing really prepares you for the 80 year old male alzheimer's patient who is standing there petting your dog  and who suddenly straightenes up and unzips and whizzes on the medicine cart NEXT to you, never zips up but then bends over and pets the dog some more.

Real life is just plain unexpected.  So much of the work is specific techniques for working with certain equipment, specific commands, etc. and a huge amount of it is real life experience and the bond with the trainer and all that incredible training that goes on. 

But at the same time "tracking" can simply be training your dog, at home and then in other situations to 'find' a certain item.  I've used tracking techniques with deaf dogs to build confidence because it uses a sense they DO have and sharpens it.  It's a huge range. 

stormyknight

 Can someone tell me the difference between tracking and SAR? How does the training differ?

In tracking, the dog follows the sent trail left on the ground by the person. As an earlier poster said, Sch tracking is highly stylized. The dog is ideally expected to sniff each individual foot print. AKC tracking is a bit more liberal in what is considered acceptable, but the dog must clearly show that he is following the path that the tracklayer took, not just randomly wandering around until he stumbles across the tracklayer, or the articles dropped by the tracklayer. The focus is on the track, not the person. I routinely will lay a track and then have my dog follow it, with me right behind her. Obviously, she isn't looking for the person who laid the track, because she's well aware that I'm 20 ft behind her ;-). Of course in real life, a lost child or person who wandered away from the assisted living facility or the escaped convict is at the end of the track. But, as far as the dog is concerned, it's the track itself that he/she is working. The person at the end is just a bonus.

There are lots of different specialized types of SAR - wilderness, urban, rubble searches, cadaver searches, water searches..... In all of those the goal is to find the person using whatever scent tools the dog has available. So, a good wilderness SAR dog will follow a track if he encounters it, but he will also follow scent drifting on air currents back to their source. In tracking you generally have a start point and tell the dog, "here's the scent of the track I want you to follow, now go follow it." In SAR you tell the dog "we're looking for a person, now go see if you can pick up some of that person's scent somewhere and follow it to it's source."

Both types of scent work have their use. If one is seeking a crime suspect, tracking can be useful because the dog will follow the path the suspect took, and may detect discarded evidence along the way. On the other hand if you want Lassie to find Timmy, if she picks up a wiff of Timmy in the well a couple hundred yards away, you want Lassie to go straight to Timmy, not waste time following the mile long meandering path Timmy took to get to the well. A good SAR wilderness or urban search dog will home in on air scent that he picks up, but if he's upwind of the person and encounters a track he can follow that scent clue to locate the person as well. If the SAR dog is searching a collapsed building there is no track to follow and the dog will seek air scent exclusively. And of course a cadaver dog may be looking for a body long long after there is any trace of a trail left. I know one tracking judge/SAR trainer who had a cadaver dog called out to search a portion of the a large lake where police had received a tip that a body had been dumped six months prior. The dog indicated an area of scent, and divers found the six month old corpse - enclosed inside a plastic lined sealed metal box.

I don't have a huge amount of direct experience training for SAR, but I suspect that the same type of temperament is desired for both SAR and tracking and I know several people who do both with the same dog. You can't force a dog to follow scent. So the dog has to be easily motivated. A mellow laid back couch potato is not going to be a good candidate no matter how much he might love to sniff the ground on walks. You need a dog that loves to do stuff and to be active. The dog should also be one that likes to solve problems. As tracks become more complicated the dog has to really want to solve the puzzle of where did the scent go. Dogs that give up easily when faced with difficulty might be fun to train as a hobby, but they won't do well in more advanced scent work. Obsessively neurotic, or neurotically obsessive can be a virtue for scent dogs. For hobbyists, breed doesn't matter. I've known some terrific papillons and toy poodles that can track up a storm. But for real work, the dog has to have a enough physical stamina to cover ground for long periods of time, and has to be athletic enough to be able to negotiate a variety of obstacles, bust through underbrush, crawl under fences, jump irrigation ditches....

And honestly, SAR is about finding the person. I've yet to meet a handler who cared if the dog keyed in on the emotional state of the potential victims. Not saying that some dogs don't do that, just that that's hardly a goal or concern. It's all about finding the person.

buster the show dog

stormyknight

 Can someone tell me the difference between tracking and SAR? How does the training differ?

In tracking, the dog follows the sent trail left on the ground by the person. As an earlier poster said, Sch tracking is highly stylized. The dog is ideally expected to sniff each individual foot print. AKC tracking is a bit more liberal in what is considered acceptable, but the dog must clearly show that he is following the path that the tracklayer took, not just randomly wandering around until he stumbles across the tracklayer, or the articles dropped by the tracklayer. The focus is on the track, not the person. I routinely will lay a track and then have my dog follow it, with me right behind her. Obviously, she isn't looking for the person who laid the track, because she's well aware that I'm 20 ft behind her ;-). Of course in real life, a lost child or person who wandered away from the assisted living facility or the escaped convict is at the end of the track. But, as far as the dog is concerned, it's the track itself that he/she is working. The person at the end is just a bonus.

Awesome explanation -- sumarized better than I was trying to formulate.

I don't think dogs are looking for "sick" or "person needing help", even SAR dogs are tracking something they are meant to find.  Give your command "Scent" (hand them a sock of a missing person) "FIND IT!" and off they go. While it's more romantic to think the dog wants to do this to help, or is thinking "someone is trouble, let me find this sick person..." is, I think very heroic, but, not true.  Ultimately they are hunting down the hotdogs or ball or whatever it is they will get when they get to the end of the track.  .... which also happens to be where the person is.  Cadaver dogs are doing the same "smell of death" = REWARD.  It's a job, and driven dogs enjoy it.  Often after an unsuccessful job (no human remains, can't find avalanche victims, etc) trainers will set them up to succeed... lay a track they can "win" on, give them their reward and call it a day.

I track my dogs, and like Buster's experience, they are tracking the scent, they know I'm right behind them (as I laid the track, if they wanted to find the person, they know where to find me. I'm attached to the other end of their 20ft leash! :).... when they've gotten off track and my newer scent is over the top of the old scent, I used to worry that it would confuse them.  But, all I can say is it's clear they know the difference, they track the older scent, how they can differentiate is just amazing.  The sniffers on dogs is really incredible!

To answer the question I think they both start out similarly... getting them to follow the scent is the foundation (I'm not talking about alert dogs, like cadaver dogs, avalanche dogs, drug dogs, etc. Strictly speaking of SAR dogs who track missing hikers/hunters/etc) I know of several methods used to start dogs on this.  Depending on what your ultimate desire is.  Some people want the dogs nose to the track moving very methodically, some like a bit of air scenting, some want their dogs to cast out (search around) a bit more.  Depends on your goals. I'd imagine a true SAR dog (not looking to get AKC tracking titles) would want a bit more air scenting mixed in.  Since AKC is more about the dog following the route the track layer took (prove they are following a scent)... you do not want to encourage air scenting.  But, out in the wild, you'd want to get to the object (missing person) as quick as possible and often time there is a more direct route than the one the missing person took. 

Are you looking to get into tracking or SAR?

stormyknight

 Can someone tell me the difference between tracking and SAR? How does the training differ? They seem to have alot of similarities, but I'm sure there are fine points in the training that make them quite different.

I only do SchH tracking and it is different from SAR, AKC tracking, and police type tracking.  NO air scenting is probably the main difference.  My understanding of SAR and police tracking is that they aren't as picky on technique as long as the dog finds the person/dope/weapon/whatever.  In SchH, it is very styalized because points are assessed.  The dog "footstep" tracks meaning he is trained to keep his nose on the ground, deep in the track and track each footstep.  Pups do foundation work to learn that disturbed ground = treat, so they are tracking the physical ground disturbance as much as the scent, where as I don't think a SAR dog or police dog needs to keep his nose shuffling in the in the track in order to be accurate.  In SchH, the dog downs on the article with the article between his front paws.  I've seen police dogs indicate and they each kind of do their own thing (whine, sit, pant....it seems as long as the handler knows they are indicating it doesn't really matter what the behavior is).  We basically use a dog's "hunt drive" (for food) as a way to train specific behaviors that *we* want from the dog.