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.