The name bit was easy, but just what kind of dog do we want to train as a search dog? There is a heart and head component to this so bear with:
The Heart bit: we have only had collies or collie-crosses, and having spent the last decade with them about the place, other breeds can seem a little, well…dim. That’s clearly a very skewed perspective, and I’m sure they are all lovely in their own right…but you gotta love a collie.
The Head bit: The wolf ancestors of domestic dogs had to find, track, chase down and kill their prey, and these traits exist to a greater or lesser extent in most dogs. Selective breeding has accentuated one or more of these traits in modern working dogs to enable them to perform their allotted tasks, so dogs for flushing out game-birds are trackers, herding dogs are to all intents chasing down their prey, and terriers are finishing the prey off. Logic says a dog working with its nose should come from breeds designed for the task.
The Compromise: In some circles, these job-demarcations have become dogma such that the only dog considered for the job has to come from the appropriate breed, but it seems to me that the breed is at best just a pointer to a potential for a disposition towards the task in hand. Certainly the vet’s notice board and local ads seem to have a plentiful supply of collies who will not herd, or who want to do the terrier bit a little more than the shepherd desires. It is also not only the case that some dogs won’t work like they’re supposed to, but that they can also excel in areas not traditionally considered suitable; a recent episode of “For the Love of Dogs” also had a rescue staffie who went to work as a successful sniffer dog.
So in short it can be a bit of a lottery even with what looks to be the right breed. I’m pretty confident that from a time-perspective, I’m only going to get one shot at training an operational search dog, so it seemed reckless to go too far off-piste with breed selection. In the end, and despite the sometimes appalling example set by Kip, we opted to go with a another collie-spaniel cross and hope we can encourage the right interests from an early stage. We shall see.