First Steps to Search Dog Training

The first step in training a search dog is to start with an appropriate dog. You will want a puppy if at all possible. Dogs which are rescued from shelters and so on are not necessarily your best candidate, for they may have issues from the past which will make your job much more difficult. The dog you select may be any breed but a breed with a large nose is preferable, for the nose is the most important part of the dog's ability to scent and as a general rule, the larger the nose, the more scenting capacity is available.

The first thing to consider is that the dog must be well socialized. To "socialize" simply means to assure that the puppy has received as much exposure to all kinds of things as is possible. Begin early to get the puppy out into the world. Think of any circumstance you want your dog to be in...from the wilderness to the urban scenarios , to thunderstorms, to large crowds, to flapping flags, to noisy construction sites...and take the puppy into these environments. Begin to teach the puppy especially to love people and to insure that it receives the most joy in its life from its exposure to people. You will want to make sure that the most fun this dog ever gets is the fun it gets from being with people, for in the end the whole focus of this dog should be to find a human being.

a moving object or a toy that you have thrown? Is he afraid of anything, such as cats, other dogs, noises? Evaluate the puppy before you begin by setting up a few simple tests: is he happy to be with people? Is he brave and courageous? (will he follow you or someone else into strange rooms or strange places?) Will he go into underbrush after a toy? Will he retrieve, or at least chase and follow

The search training actually begins when you set up a "puppy runaway". The first few times you set this up you should be the person who runs away. Use a harness because you do not want the puppy to be choked with a collar in this process and he will struggle mightily to give chase. (If he doesn't then perhaps you need to consider a different dog.) Have someone else hold your puppy. Pick a windy day and make sure you know which direction the wind is coming from, for you will run away from your puppy into the wind. You then squat down and give him a "lovey" and a smooch, then turn and run away from your puppy, a distance of anywhere from 30 to 100 feet depending on the size of your puppy. Drop down into tall grass or hide behind a tree or bush. Then have the person release your puppy with the one word or command that you have chosen to use as the command word. A simple command: "Search!" is fine. The puppy should run after you and find you quickly and efficiently. When he does, give him lots and lots of affection, kisses, belly rubs, all of these things are preferable to food, but a food treat will do if this is the only thing that turns your dog on. This "puppy runaway" should be done two or three times a week, no more than twice each time, gradually switching to different people and YOU will handle the puppy. Do not proceed further until you know for certain that the puppy will give chase and has begun to know the meaning of the word "search" . Set it up so that he will not always run directly to the person, that there will be obstructions in the way, or very little wind, or something that will ensure that he is beginning to use his nose rather than just rushing blindly to the place he saw the person disappear. (You can even turn him around so that he can't watch when the person is running away.) When it is clear that he is using his nose and when he understands that the word "search" means to find someone, you are on your way to the next step, the puppy's first real "search" when he has NOT seen someone run away from him.

Training The Trailing Search Dog

When training a dog for a true trailing dog to be used in the area of search and rescue there must be a definite understanding that you are NOT training for an A.K.C. title. Often the attainment of an A.K.C. title has nothing to do with following human scent nearly as often as it has to do with following the requirements that the handler sets up for the dog. Also, the motivation usually is pieces of hot dog which are laid on the track by the person who "sets" or "lays" the track.

A person training a dog for trailing must learn first the theory of scent and skin rafts; that a human being will constantly drop skin cells and that these cells form a "raft" which will drift with the wind and fall to the ground as the person moves. It is this trail of skin cells, which the trailing dog must be trained to follow. How and where the skin cells land on the surrounding vegetation or surface will determine how and where the trailing dog will locate the scent. The length of time that the scent may be picked up by the dog will depend on the quality of the training and the natural abilities of the dog, along with the effects of weather on the trail. The other requirement for successfully training a trailing dog is that the handler motivates the dog so that he will not deviate from the trail under any circumstance.

A person training a dog for a tracking title is not concerned with the life and death scenario of a true search "mission" but rather is concerned with the attainment of a title, which can only be earned by following a prescribed "track" which has been laid in a specific manner for the dog. Training for this title often involves the use of hot dog pieces laid in the track of the human, thus encouraging the dog to follow the exact foot impressions on the ground.

A person who is training a dog for certification as a "trailing dog" in the search and rescue area recognizes that the dog MUST be motivated to follow the trail of the rafts of skin to the source. The use of food, if used at all, must be limited to a reward after the trail is correctly followed. The major emphasis on training the trailing dog must be one of setting up many many different scenarios and using many different "victims", all the while recognizing that the task of the handler is to learn to recognize how the dog is reading the trail and to train the dog to identify the trail correctly through scent discrimination.

The best motivation is without a doubt the strong desire to find a human and the old standby from the beginning for this type of motivation is the "puppy runaway" which has been the basis for the training of search dogs for many many years. The difference between training an area wilderness search dog and a scent discrimination trailing dog is simply that the dog's exposure to air scenting is limited as much as possible during his early training. The human's task is to learn to "read" the dog and also to discover how the wind carries and distributes the skin cells and lastly but most importantly to motivate the dog throughout the training to want to follow the trail to its source.

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