I’ve been putting off writing this entry for most of the year so far, but looking back I note it was seven months waiting for the last one, so I now don’t feel quite so bad, although I don’t have a global pandemic to blame it on this time.
The first delay in writing continued to centre around our 3-person line-up performance (see previous). At the end of last year it felt like there might be light at the end of the tunnel (albeit faint) and we continued to build on successes through January. At the SARDA training weekend in February, much, I suspect, to everyone’s relief, Venn finally got signed off on this, the final stage of her scent discrimination training. Phew. So now we are formally able to embrace trailing, which feels like the real-deal at last.
Trailing is the act of following the pattern of scent thrown off the passing target in order to a) establish a direction of travel and b) find the body. Outcome B is a usual endpoint in training, but outcome A is operationally important too; if the direction of travel can be established, the search managers can redeploy closer search assets which may locate the target before the dog arrives. Being a pattern of scent deposits shed by the target, the scent-trail is greatly influenced by the wind and weather, and may be some distance from the line the person actually walked, so it can be very different from tracking (which looks for signs of where the person actually walked). Of course, dogs do this naturally when they hunt; being able to detect the subtle difference in age of the trail to the left compared to the trail to the right seems like a massive achievement, but is essential to catching the rabbit running home rather than ending up in the carrot patch.
The trailing process consists of two phases. The “pick-up” is where the dog establishes whether the target scent is in the search area, and then the “trail” is where she follows it to its conclusion. I guess you could add a third phase, the “indication” where she finishes off by telling me what she has found, either at the end of the pick-up or the end of the trail.
The pick-up is essentially a development of the swab searches we practiced earlier on, but with some key differences in that a) the scent will be in a line rather than a single point, and b) there will be times when we are searching in the wrong area and she will not find anything. In this instance a “negative indication” is a useful if hard to develop behavioural tool. All phases of the process are conducted on a long line, but for the pick-up, it is attached to her collar. If she finds the scent and gives a positive indication, then the line goes onto her harness and she is free to follow the scent. Once she locates the dogsbody at the end of the trail and gives a positive indication then its tea and medals for everyone.
If only it were that simple….
Anyway, we are underway!
As a handler, there is much to learn and consider about scent behaviour and movement. The dog may be correctly indicating the presence of scent in an area away from the route taken by the body if the wind has blown it there, or traffic has dragged it, or the air-currents above flowing water have sucked it along. It is a lot less like a linear process than I had imagined and can involve a lot of elimination of options before you hit the right one. Anyway after many months of needing Venn to be brilliant, it was a relief to let her be able to try and fail, and learn, and try, and succeed. We all needed a break.
The second reason for stalling off on writing relates to our training buddies, Paul and Bryn. About a year ahead of us in the process, they were up for their Novice-grade assessment in November. Unfortunately things did not go their way, and they failed, at least in part to their urban trail. Urban is possibly the most difficult environment for a dog to work; the hard surfaces do not hold scent well, and as mentioned above, the passage of traffic can send scent all over the place. The pair took the news stoically, and set about preparing for their retake in March this year. I wanted to hold off writing in order to share the good news, but alas the urban trail got them again, and they once again failed. A couple of weeks later, and after much careful consideration about the way forwards, Paul dropped the bombshell that they were calling it a day.
The news hit hard. The vast majority of the training we had managed through lock-down was with Paul and Bryn, and we had spent much time taking it in turns to encourage the other when things were not going so well. We also took it in turns to set up training, drawing on our respective networks to source dogsbodies for line-ups and trails. Without this it was hard to see how we would be able to maintain morale and the momentum of sufficient training for Venn. I became paralysed with inactivity, and for about a fortnight Venn and I did no training whatsoever. It coincided with a particular low spot in my own processing of the post-lockdown brave new world, and for a while the viability of own progress hung in the balance. A well-timed holiday took us away for a week or so, with long walks to help consider the path forwards.
Bit by bit, and with Paul’s help on occasions, we have started to find alternative ways of making opportunities, but we still sorely miss our training muckers.
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