Dogs speaking to a body !
08. 05. 2001
I have been saddened and quite surprised recently on talking to many handlers from different countries who are reporting quite disturbing problems with their dogs when going out on open searches after attending training in ruin searches and listening to some of the trainers and being talked into getting their dogs to SPEAK to the Body and not return to the handler. When these people take their dogs back to open searches the dogs then want to speak to the body and do not return to the handlers causing various reactions from anger to frustration to panic among the handlers. Of course to the dog it is all so simple. You have put the picture into the dogs head for many months that he finds comes back indicates to you and takes you back to a casualty and therefore gets his reward. NOW al of a sudden you change the picture but the dog still gets the reward at the end of it so the dog deletes the old image and goes with the new .
So what do you do? Change the image again?
Let us look at the earlier statement made by every one of the handlers and the trainers i.e.
THE DOG STAYS AND BARKS AT THE BODY!!!!!!!!
This is totally the wrong attitude and should never be allowed to happen. Before people start to send abusive e mails let me explain my reasoning for this statement. We have already seen the dangers in allowing any dog to have any sort of contact with the body on its own , it can cause the dog to begin to see that it does not need its handler especially if any form of reward from the body is allowed, also if the body moves in any way even to turn his back on the dog this is taken by the dog as a sign of weakness and if the dog is of a guarding breed it will see this as a sign that it can make this human flee from its territory and a bite will surely follow at some point, if not a guarding instinct then the dog will still see that it does not need the handler to help as it has cornered and subdued this body on its own leading to a reluctance to obey redirections in the work area and eventually defiance.
If you want a dog to stay with the body the dog must STAY WITH THE BODY BUT BARK NOT AT THE BODY BUT AT ITS OWN HANDLER TO ALERT HIM OF THE FIND!! The sequence then is as normal with the handler taking the role of pack leader and making the kill. Dogs which are trained this way will stay at a body if the handler is in sight but if he/she is not in sight they will go and look for them to indicate to. The body is never allowed to interplay with the dog as was recently tried by an instructor who I obviously did not get through to as well as I thought because his method of getting the dog to stay and bark at a body was to use a squeaky toy , guess what happened next, the body now has a new jacket!!. If you are going to use your dog in more than one discipline you must think very carefully before changing any of your original training as it can have disastrous effects.
Skotlandi 2001
Tom Middlemas