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Telephone: (+61 3) 5995 7147 giday@alphalink.com.au |
Tia is owned, trained
and loved by Maree McCabe, Victoria
Australia
~
LIZETTE ~
Certified Visiting Therapy Dog
Pretty
In Pink at a Hounds In Hats Fundraiser
in New Orleans Louisiana
Sire : Canadian Ch
& UKC Hunting Retriever Ch Bibelots Silver Power Play
U.D., M.H., W.C.X. & Canadian C.D. ~
STERLING ~
Certified Cadaver Dog
Dam : Aust Dual Ch Neiger Circus Rose U.D., J.D., E.T., A.D.
and American U.D., N.A., N.A.J.
Sterling,
Lynne Benson-Colbert's Standard Poodle, on 10 April 2002,
became the first Standard Poodle to be certified a
Human Remains Detection Dog by the California
Office of Emergency Services. Benson-Colbert is a volunteer
dog handler with a non-profit search group, California
Specialized Search Team, which is a resource of the Santa
Clara County Medical Examiner's Office. On
3 June 2002, Lynne wrote: "I
became interested in search dogs four or five years ago. At
the time I only had my female Poodle, Luna. We were doing
some tracking and I became fascinated with watching that
special magic of a dog using her nose to follow invisible
trails. She was so good at it, and it really built up her
confidence to be doing something where she was calling the
shots and I was following behind. "I
didn't meet up with a team until I got Sterling a year
later. I didn't pick Sterling as a search dog. I was looking
for a dog who could be a top Obedience competition partner,
and maybe do some tracking on the side. One thing led to
another and I ended up using Sterling as my working
dog. "I
used to wonder what the breed-ring folks meant when they
described a show dog as having an attitude that 'demanded
the blue ribbon.' Most of the dogs looked the same to me.
Well, Sterling demanded to be the working dog. He had a
confident attitude and desire to please and to just do more
than the next dog. He made this clear to me the day he
charged into a room where I was working another search dog
candidate and in a matter of seconds had found the scent
items I'd hidden in the room which the other dog hadn't
found in over 10 minutes of searching. We joined a team
called Canine Specialized Search Team and began our long
road to certification as a cadaver dog
specialist. "We
train with a group of about 15 other handlers, five days a
week. Dogs are first taught what the clicker means (click =
treat). We imprint the dogs on the cadaver by placing a
variety of scent sources in containers out in the open in an
enclosed room with no distractions. We allow the dog to
simply wander the room. When they investigate a container
they get a click and a treat. It takes only a few
repetitions before the dog understands that good things
happen when s/he finds the source of those odors. We
gradually make the problems more difficult by hiding the
scent items, placing them up high, burying them, and varying
the size and age of the scent items. We also introduce
negative items; that is, items which we don't want the dog
to bother showing us. That would be things like animal
remains, clean clothing, and clean containers similar to the
ones we use to store our scent samples. The
dogs learn how to methodically search rooms and vehicles.
They also do a great deal of wilderness work as well as
learning how to search in the event of a mass casuality
incident such as a plane crash, where there are mulitple
tiny fragments. Sterling is able to find a single tooth in a
garage, strands of hair in a garden or dried blood smears
and droplets, even if the surface they are on has been
painted over or washed with bleach. We also take great care
to teach the dogs not to mouth or dig up items. It is not in
a dog's nature to leave remains, any remains, untouched.
They naturally want to taste and uncover remains. Our dogs
are taught to not disturb what could very well be a crime
scene. "When
Sterling finds something, he returns to me and swats me on
the knee with his paw. That is called his alert. When I ask
him to show me what he's found he returns to the item and
points at it with his nose or touches it gently with his
paw. Other team dogs perform a down or sit at the item as
their alert. One dog has an unmistakable alert: she flies
through the air like superdog and cannonballs into her
owner's thighs or stomach! Since Standard Poodles are
retrievers, their ability to remember where items are is
phenomenal. We have several Border Collies on the team and
they aren't very good at marking, or memorizing where an
item is located once they can no longer see it. They are
better suited for a sit at the item alert. "Sterling
had to learn many other things besides searching. He also
had to become proficient at agility. We call it 'junkyard
agility' because that is where we get the items we train on.
It isn't competition-style agility, with a lot of jumping
and speed. The dogs are taught how to safely negotiate
obstacles you might find while searching a trailer destroyed
in a tornado, for instance. They have to learn how to walk
on slippery surfaces, wobbly items and how to crawl through
tunnels and up and down ladders. "Obedience
is mandatory. The dogs normally search off leash and you
must have a good recall and a good 'leave it!' Sometimes we
are called to search the homes of people suspected of
criminal activity and if they know we are coming it is not
unheard of for them to plant rat-poison-laced meatballs in
closets and places where the dogs could get to them. We
teach the dogs to leave food where they find it. The dogs
must also be able to work around a lot of other dogs,
strangers and loud machinery. A good search dog must be able
to handle other dogs and people 'in their space' while they
are working. "Certification
tests vary depending on the state you are in and the agency
you are affiliated with. Here in California, the Office of
Emergency Services has a standard Cadaver Dog test. The test
takes place in one acre of land, with one to two scent
sources placed somewhere in that acre. One is buried at a
depth of 15 inches and the other is somewhere above ground,
no higher than 3 feet off the ground. You have an hour to
search and the handler does not know where the items are. I
realized when we took our test that an acre of land looks
tiny when you are thinking of buying it as property, and it
is huge when you have to cover it in an hour to pass a test!
In spite of my fears we did pass and now we are an official
team. "However,
nothing has really changed. We still train five days a week.
We are still learning a ton. We are now starting our water
cadaver search training. By the way, Sterling is also an
obedience competition dog. He has his CDX and we will be
hitting the trials in Utility A sometime in the fall of
2002." "Sterling
was bred by Linda Johnson of Australia. His registered name
is G'Day Walkabout In Silver, CDX, CGC, TT, Certified
Cadaver Dog. His dam is Australian Dual Champion Neiger
Circus Rose ('Rosie'), Aust. UD ET, Am. UD NA NAJ His sire
is UKC HR Ch. & Can. Ch. Bibelot's Silver Power Play
('Pie') UD Can. CD WCX MH. Sterling is four years old now.
His favorite things are females of all species, sleeping on
the bed, pizza and stealing the foam off the top of my cafe
mochas." --
Lynne Benson-Colbert, June 2002
"On
April 10, 2002, my dog Sterling made a bit of Poodle history
by becoming the first Standard Poodle to become certified as
a Human Remains Detection Dog. We started our training 11
months ago and it all culminated in a test that took less
than an hour to complete.