Search & Rescue Dogs

Hi Everyone,

I am a member with south wales search and rescue with john, les, philipa, louise etc, can anyone give me any extra advice on how to encourage my dog cole (black lab) to indicate after finding a body. He will jump up on me any other time when indicated but when he has a found he is too frustrated to show me where is and only comes close enough to me as indication but always stays about 3 foot away and wont come close to me or jump up. Any advice would be great!

Thanks Amy

Hi Amy and welcome

Sounds like your dog is far too excited and just hasn't got time to run right up to you and jump.

Can you tell every time when he runs back when he has found something? If so, then you can have this as your alert and just explain that you know he has found by his body language.

One of our dogs, Guinness, used to jump up as an alert but that took too long for him. So now he runs at us at a million miles an hour turns on his heels near our feet and dashes off at a million miles an hour. He will only do this when he has found and also you can tell by the position of his ears and tail. They will always be up when he is searching but when he alerts they will be down. If you too can say this every time then that is ok. Just shows how well you know your dog.

I know how hard training an alert can be. i am training Scrumpy to jump but sometimes he gets over excited and jumps up and false alerts. Grrrrrr

The rest of our gang are at training at the mo but I'm sure you will get more hints and tips soon.

As Niki said, Guinness's alert changed from a jump up, to a turn on my feet, because it was quicker.

If your dog isn't alerting to you, but alerting infront of you, try walking backward as she runs towards you. Also do not follow her for the refind, or reward her (depending on which stage you are at) until she has alerted properly.

having read the answers to this one thing jumps out at me, are your dogs trained to jump at the handler as an alert ? does this not cause any problems if your working on rough ground etc with handlers loosing their footing. mike

Hi Mike

The dogs are normally trained to jump 'up to you' rather than 'at you', this soon changes to the dog putting his paws on you or not even jumping as things progress - normally as the dog wants to refind quicker. Therefore the dog doesn't tend to push you (although this may happen initially).

This has certainly not caused me any problems in the past 6 years, also the type of terrain that we search in, whilst can be uneven, often isn't as uneven as in a disaster or mountainous scenario.

This isn't too common an alert, however it is normally seen in dogs that don't bark or have difficulty in forcing a different type of alert.

On some of the ground i train on it may cause a problem having my 31kg black lab jumping at me, which he wont do, but i dont really know of what else to do with him.

You could try the bark alert, however have him bark at you not the Misper.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EzREc2x87 ... re=related

Check this 'YouTube' video out to see what I mean.

This would be quite easy to train as long as you can have him bark on command.

Pete.

my dog is an absolute none barker no matter what methods i try. He has no voice box

pete its a lab, they will do anything for food!!!!!

is it worth taking a step back with the training and play with him when he comes out to get the 'jump up' or will thus confuse him more as he knows the show me to go back into the body and am currently working on the left and right signalling and fear he might forget all this.

argh so frustrating