Winter is Here

Hey Tribe,

Winter finally arrived to our slice of The Last Frontier.  One day it was golden and crisp with fallen leaves and the next day, poof, 6” of soft white snow blanketed everything.

On Saturday, the KBDs and I happened to be out with the SAR team training when pitifully small and crusty flakes of snow meagerly began tumbling to the ground.  An hour after it began, someone looked about and remarked (to nobody in particular), “Hey, it’s snowing,” but nobody gave it much thought, because to label it “snowing” was rather generous.  However, the sky persisted and, as they say, practice makes perfect – by late afternoon it truly was snowing perfectly formed flakes that clung to the dogs’ backs as they worked their searches.  Then, evening fell and so did globs of snow and we found ourselves joyfully clearing several inches of the stuff off our vehicles as we packed up our training gear. 

With an entire Sunday free from responsibilities, we made the most of it and took the dogs down the road to an abandoned stretch of marsh road so they could romp and play – and boy did they ever!

It was such a pleasure to watch Rex experience his first snow day: his puppy body exuded happiness as he bounced, rolled, and dashed through the new powder.

The marsh doesn’t completely freeze during the winter and it hasn’t been cold enough for it to freeze much at all, so there was open water for the dogs to drink.  Swimming was also on Fly and Rex’s agenda, apparently, because both dogs purposely waded into the open water on separate occasions, much to my surprise.

Icy fur and snow packed feet didn’t slow them down all day.  It is doubtful that they even felt the biting cold, though my hands certainly did.

If this is any indication of how winter is going to be, we have wonderful adventures and a bounty of exploration experiences ahead of us.  I can’t wait!

Winter is Coming

Hey Tribe,

This intense, brave, and loyal boy...he is huge at almost 8 months old.  I occasionally wonder if he's actually a dire wolf pup.

Winter is coming.

Halloween, Solstice Style

Hey Tribe,

This past weekend my Solstice Search Dogs team held our regular training day, but we made it festive with Halloween spirit(s).  Our fitting focus was on human remains detection and we decorated our search areas with spooky spider webs, caution tape, and such.  To add to the vibes, the weather was foggy with heavy mist, and the property we were using had been subjected to wildfire a few years ago.

To get the dogs (and their handlers) warmed up, we began the morning with short, simple drills of finding the “source” in a jack-o-lantern.  Several plastic pumpkins were set out in the grass and I put some blood soaked gauze strips in a ziplock bag and hid the bag in one of the pumpkins.  Then, taking turns, the dog teams checked each pumpkin and the dog would alert on the pumpkin containing the blood.

K9 Phoenix gets a treat for identifying the correct pumpkin.

In another area, my teammates hid a body in the woods: the body was a composite of several sources, as well as items of clothing that had been worn by people at the time of death. *side note: we greatly appreciate the generous donations of such items for our team to use for training – our dogs are better prepared for deployment by using actual human remains.*  Many dogs are repulsed by the large amount of substance the first time they encounter a full size body and I wondered what Fly’s reaction would be.  She was entranced.  She sniffed and snuffled at the body camouflaged with tall, dry grass and leaves; I had to remind her that she had a job to do and prompted her to “speak” and tell me she’d found human remains.  Then she got really excited, and barked at me as if she was saying, “Loooook at all of THIS! See what I found here in the woods?!”  We were both very pleased.

Rex got a turn to stretch his legs by doing some quick run away drills: as Rex watched, a teammate ran off down the trail and hid out of sight; then, I gave Rex a scent article (my teammate’s hat) to sniff and said, “Find!” Rex took off like a bullet toward where the teammate was hiding and I ran pell-mell after him.  By the time I caught up, he was happily eating treats just as fast as our teammate could fish them out of a treat bag.  We did this three times and then had a big play session to celebrate Rex’s awesomeness.

No pics of Rex, but here is his sweetheart, K9 Phaedra, doing the same drill.

Then, my teammates and I feasted on hot moose soup and shared our morning’s adventures, before we were warmed enough to tackle more challenges and scenarios with our dogs.

It is always such a pleasure to help train my teammates' dogs: I love hiding and hearing the dogs work toward me and seeing their happy faces as they find me.  The dogs are always so proud after a job well done!

K9 Bandit, coming in hot!

K9 Sally loves her job (and her toy)!

Fly got another turn at searching, this time along a winding trail, to find four smaller sources hidden in the woods.  She enjoyed the search: running and leaping through the woods and hunting down the human remains scent.  Special thank you to my teammates for taking photos of Fly as she worked!

 

Fly on the search.

Fly telling me she's made a find.

Fly had a more difficult time pinpointing the exact location of this buried source.

Fly checks some above ground source.

Fly waits for her reward after a job well done.

At the end, Fly and I played with a new toy and had a nice walk together before returning to the truck to be reunited with the patiently waiting Rex.  We drove home in the fading light, happy with our progress and holiday time well spent with friends.