John,
Our primary purpose as a SAR team is live wilderness finds. Our cadaver dogs are usually used by L.E., not SAR, so it is a secondary skill. Cadaver is considered to be a more advanced skill than live wilderness, according to our guidelines. Don't know if that explains it or not. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Originally posted by John Haudenshield:
Originally posted by Lisa Swanston:
Also, our team requires that the dog be tested and mission ready in live scent *before* beginning training in cadaver. Lisa,
Could you explain the reasoning behind this? I've heard of a number of teams that require this, but don't really understand why. I am not Lisa but my team is the same way, for the most part you must be operational wilderness to do cadaver. The reason behind this is that the team is primarily Wilderness so we require it to maintain good depth on our team for our primary purpose. However in some instances we have allowed dogs to certify in cadaver only. But that is done on a case by case basis only.

On our team we have certifications for wilderness and water. We are working on seperate certifications for disaster and cadaver. As of right now we train wilderness first. I am in the process of training my dog to do both. We started a good foundation in wilderness first with one command which is to airscent. I have also started him in cadaver with a different command which tells him to put his nose to the ground and trail, while working much closer. Also, airscenting dogs can scent discriminate when there is an article available but if not they may alert on other "victims" but go back to work when the handlers encourage them to do so.

I think one of the biggest problems with cross training is that you loose something. If a dog only does one disapline then it does it 100%. If you start adding disaplines with different commands and different collars... it starts getting more difficult. For the handler as well as for the dogs.

I've done both. And had to figure out that human odor is human odor. Airscent is a technique to find that, as well as tracking.

Most Search and Rescue teams teach/require live certifications first, because they are Search and RESCUE teams not Search and RECOVERY teams.

The dog will use what it can to locate. If your team requires a way of how they do that then maybe someone needs to step back and look at things again... Does it matter if your dog tracked or airscented to the victim if you made the find? I'm sure that the victim isn't going to care.
I know it's all fun and stuff, but really think about it.
Not meaning to offend or make anyone mad. Just meaning to have people think about things a little.
On the original question: I believe that if you teach a tracking dog to airscent if you do not watch out the dog will start cutting corners in their tracking work.
JMO

One thing -- have a dog who was first trained to track and we decided to convert him completely to cadaver.

Because of his cuing in on tracks / trails we had to get very creative in setting out problems, which are often set out several hours or overnight, as he would simply pick up a track and follow it to the source of the cadaver scent, the alert as he was supposed to when he found it. I imagine most dogs could figure this out.

Wound up doing a lot of throwing or having the person setting up the problems (if they had to placed) stomp all over the place to keep the dog from tracking in.

My dog wasn't trained to track, but does so naturally. She will always look for ground scent when she can. Especially in training.
Sometimes it's an early morning for me trying to get a jump on her

Hi All!! Great topic you have going here, and one that is near and dear to me . . . we all know there are so so many opinions and strong feelings on this subject and it's great to address them and talk about them with each other in this venue! I'd like to share my opinions on these subjects . . . . First, I think to do multiple disciplines in SAR well, you have to have a combination of a dog that is very high drive, intelligent, has a strong work ethic and willingness to please/work hard for it's handler, very balanced with sound nerves, combined with a handler that understands how to clearly communicate with and teach the dog and motivate the dog to do it's best, always leaveing that dog wanting more and more.

I very strongly believe that SAR dogs should be taught to track first before moving on to air-scenting, etc., etc. I feel it really teaches the dog to focus and concentrate on scent, work out problems, ie. scent pools, victim direction of travel - part of searching is looking for clues, and most of all, teaches them to *THINK*, then being taught to air-scent first, and builds a strong foundation to build upon. The dog must also clearly understand and be solid and proofed on one discipline before moving on to another. If you think your dog is mediocre in a discipline, you shouldn't field it on a search doing that discipline . . . some dogs can't do more then one thing really well, not meaning there is anything wrong with them, that's just the way it is, the ability to recogize that is the handler's responsibility and should not be taken lightly.

I think you can also run into trouble by asking for 5 different alert styles too, stick to one alert style for everything, and it makes things easier and clearer for the dog -
Also, what is the teams main call-out base? Wilderness, urban, cadaver, etc. Do all the dogs on the team NEED to be crosstrained for everything, I don't think so, it's good to have a mix I think personally, not everyone on a team has the time to maintain a cross-trained dog . . . it's a ton of work and committment to do that right, that's for sure!
I have a (GSD) dog cross-trained (he is scent specific)in many SAR Disciplines and also does Schutzhund (yes, I'm a training junkie), and am starting a Small Munsterlander Pointer puppy for live find (not scent specific)only - she is really a cool little dog, she freezes into a point when she get's in a victim's scent cone during airscenting. She will be an air-scenting/collapse structure K-9 . . . she did three months of solid tracking before starting area search/air scenting.
I know our LE County Bomb dogs are also cross-trained for tracking, however their handlers do not really have the time to focus on that, their main training is Bomb Work. We don't have a FEMA team with the 3 hr. call-out radius in Wisconsin, so all of our dogs are comfortable manuevering about on rubble, etc., incase of getting called out to assist at a tornado site, etc., even the Bloodhounds on the team get agility training. to assist before a FEMA team could get there, if needed. Some of us have C.E.R.T. training, and specialty rescue skills for this and participate in county drills,etc.
About Cadaver, not all our dogs on the team do this either . . . and please define for me the difference between a Cadaver and a Human Remains Detection Dog, never did understand that separation of title, to me it's the same thing !??? (and hope I didn't offend anyone, but my opinion.)

So, WOW, I've really rambled on here and sorry for that, but I have another question for you all . . . how many of you do felony work (tracks after a robbery, etc. - not talking about Cadaver work) for your local LE? And what do you all think about doing that as Civilian dog handlers, and what do the LE people on this list think about it - Really??

Wendy, I like your post -- agree with what you say...

I do think *some* exposure to cadaver is valuable to wilderness dogs so that you have a concept of how they might react. I think a lot of folks wind up doing cadaver on the side when *their* LE does not want to crosstrain their own dogs........... perhaps we should think about that...I would rather have a cadaver dog that is nothing but and never has been trained on anything but cadaver.

I have thought about this very much and I wish that in a perfect world *of my own*, <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> I had 1 tracking dog, 1 area search dog, 1 cadaver dog, 1 evidence recovery dog, etc. etc. Then of course I would have to have the time for all of these dogs and training that many at once and not need any sleep either!!

We have discussed this on our team at many meetings. We currently out of 15 dogs have 7 that are cross-trained in two disciplines (either air-scent and cadaver or trailing and cadaver, out of those seven are 2 that are trained in more then 2 disciplines. We train as a team once a week and then have groups that get together once a week inbetween to train. And some of us train in-between that too, depending on the level of their dog ,or in other venues, etc.

Wouldn't it be grand if this is all we had to do in every day, was train our dogs . . . that would be heaven!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Tracking/trailing a felon is left up to LE. Our team will NOT do that even though most on it are qualified to carry firearms. The dogs are crosstrained in live find and cadaver. Live find is done first. Once the dog is solid in that, then we start cadaver. We spend aprox 2 years in getting the dogs ready. Cadaver is whole body find. HRD is looking for "parts" such as skeletical remains which are often scattered over a large area by coyotes, etc, or the criminal. This is a pretty basic description of the difference.