That dog wont hunt............seriously folks.

Despite having many years of dog training experience, I found quickly that SAR Dog training is a whole other world. For all endeavors I have ever trained for, my goal was to have my dog comply to my command. I did not want them to think for themselves or problem solve, just comply with my command. SAR dogs must go a step further. They MUST think for themselves. They must be so committed to their odor that they will go through hell and back to get to the source of their target odor. This takes the right dog. Any dog can be taught obedience. Any dog can learn to target agility objects. How good they become is a combination of the handlers skills, the dogs personality, and circumstances. So it is with SAR dogs, but the dogs personality, the innate lump of clay the handler is tasked with molding into a working partner is far more important. I can take a dog with a shy temperament and make them into a great obedience dog, teaching them to focus on me and only me in the ring, despite all the scarey sights and sounds going on around them. But I promise you when I retire from the ring, the dog will fall apart unless I continue to heel them all the way back to the car or their kennel. My SAR dog cannot do this. He must adjust and quickly to whatever situation I throw him in. The SAR dog must have a soundness of temperament that many other performance dogs do not, and especially more so than most pets.

Hence comes the problem of people joining a SAR team with their "pet". Pets are selected for our enjoyment. They are not selected for nerve strength, drive, focus.......in fact many a good SAR dog prospect comes from cast offs rescued from shelters across the nation because the family "Just could not DEAL with the dog". Many pet owners see news articles and become invigorated at the possiblity of using their dog to help people. That is great. What is not great is the efforts it takes to convince them that "rover" is not cut out to be a SAR dog.

If you are in a position on a team where you assist in the evaluation and assessment of new team members you are going to have to cross this bridge at some time. How you handle it will have a significant impact on everyone involved. Sometimes you will get great potential handlers with lousy dogs. Other times you will get great dogs with lousy handlers. It has to be a package deal. If the handler has potential but the dog does not, will they get another dog? Will they train themselves until they can? or is their ego tied to the dog at hand. This business is not about egos. It is about the mission. Handlers who cannot separate the two often unwittingly do damage to the SAR community through their interactions with law enforcement and other responsible entities. But I digress.........

What is even worse is when a team accepts a sub-standard dog who does not have the right stuff to start out with. It does a myriad of damage to the team, the handlers, and even to the dog itself. How many of you out there have stopped and asked yourself, does my dog have his hand raised for this? or is it me that has my hand raised?

I am not saying anything that has not been said before, by a myriad of experts and master trainers who have spent their life training detector dogs. I am simply repeating it in hopes that if their words did not reach the minds and hearts of handlers who need to hear this, mine will.

The old saying my Great Aunt has said always comes to mind. "You cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear". Dogs are born with innate qualities. They have a genetic predisposition for behaviors. While it is true we can guide, mentor, and even enhance their genetics through raising, we cannot create something that is not there. If a dog is scared of things in it's environment, no amount of exposure is going to make the dog good enough to be a SAR dog. Now, I am not talking about the quirky developmental stages puppies often go through. I have seen many a great SAR dog be a squirrel for a day at a given point in their development as a pup. However, a dog that is scared of people, scared of trees, poles, grass, etc is not going to make it. Continuing to pressure the dog in SAR dog training imho borders on abuse. The dog is stressed, the dog is not happy, why force these conditions down the dogs throat?

SAR dog candidates should have the the drive, focus, and nerve strength required for the job from the get go. Like nerve strength, drive cannot be created if it is not there. You can manipulate what is there to your advantage and do what appears to be "drive building", but what you are really doing is only channeling the drive to a purpose. You are pulling out all the innate drive that dog has and focusing it on a task. This requires that drive to already be present. You cannot create what does not exist. This is a huge mistake made by many novice handlers, myself included.

My first dog was a good dog and had fair drive. I made many mistakes with her which definitely undermined the drive she did have however, I had to stop and re-evaluate everything when I obtained Pete because he showed me the level of drive I would require of all my future SAR candidates. Mistakes were not as big an issue with him because his drive was so strong it could counter my screw ups. Now, my first dog had a find in her short career and she taught me many things however, once I had a "better" dog I immediately retired her.

I probably would reject her now as a candidate based on what I have learned and she is far above most dogs people bring to the team for evaluation. As a very wise woman has told me, if the answer is maybe, say no. (thank you TMac and ShirleyH)

Perhaps that seems harsh. It is. This is a serious job we are doing. Someone's life may one day depend on the dogs we train. Explain to a family member whose loved one has died in the woods because that "maybe" dog decided today it was too hot, too cold, too wet, too stickery...(etc ad nausuem), and missed their loved one. Because that "maybe" dog has always struggled to stay up with the rest of the dogs, but the handler is so good, we don't want to loose them. Explain that "maybe" dog to the family who has lost their loved one........died, gone, not ever coming back. Maybe doesn't look so good now does it?

If I just offended you then my words are lost on deaf ears. Don't bother to read on, it's only going to get worse. If you are offended then you are one of the ones who NEEDS to hear these words because if you are offended you are probably training or fielding a "maybe" or worse...........a "WTF are you thinking!"

So back to the dog that should never be admitted as a candidate to begin with. Yes, I call those "WTFAYT"
 (what the F are you thinking?!). These dogs lack the drive, lack the nerve strength from the get go. Everyone says we can work on it. NO WE CAN'T. If it does not exist you cannot create it. See the definition again of what to do with Maybes.

How does taking on one of these dogs damage the team? Well, it causes splits. Those that are knowledgeable enough to say WTFAYT? are ostracized and accused of not being team players because they do not want to waste the team or the owners time, let alone, stress the dog all to hell over months and months of meaningless attempts to force the dog to be something it is not. Needless to say, this is not good for building team unity, morale, and dedication.

How does this damage the handler. In essence, you are lying to them (and yourselves) if you tell them "we can work on it". Somewhere deep in your heart, you KNOW the dog is not going to make it. Telling the handlers this only causes them to have false hope. And..........and it will happen................and when the time comes that the owner finally has to be told that the dog will not make it, ANGER. You have told them for months, maybe years, that the dog is going to make it. Now you say, ok, we were wrong, lets stop training. How much time and emotional investment have they made? This is where team splits often come from, to the detriment of the SAR community. This now ANGRY handler who is thinking they are being screwed, perhaps your jealous of their dog, instead of the truth, now takes half the team and goes and starts a new one, with even less knowledgeable leadership and even worse dogs.

Someone once told me a team achieves competence only as high as the team leader does. I believe this to be very true, especially with smaller teams. So, you have your new split off former teammate guiding a new team with their very bad SAR dog.........what do you think THEIR candidates are going to be like?

Now now, I'm not saying all teams are that way. I split off from a former team because I did not agree with the training methods and philosophies, nothing more. However, often split off teams are the case quoted above.

Now, what about the poor dog? The prisoner in all of this. This dog is forced to do something it does not want to do. These dogs show signs of stress, drawn back lips, grass eating, body carriage, you name it, get a DVM Behaviorist on the scene and they can point it all out to you, but the handlers never see this. Sad, because it is upon this poor dog our whole hopes rest. If the handlers manage to certify the dogs, the dogs will still never perform as well as a dog that wants to do the job, and will often shut down. Some handlers literally will continue to run through evaluators until they find someone who will pass them or the dog has a good day. This of course are for external certifications. Split off team from above will probably do their own standards and evaluate their own dogs. Need I say more?

The bottom line is the mission, the victim. They are who this is most unfair to. Those of us who train SAR dogs have a moral obligation to train and field the best. Someone said to me last year, "well, not everyone can have a super dog". Well I sure as hell hope they can! Please do not bring your sub optimal sar dog to look for me if I ever go missing. Bring the SUPASTAR! I want the dog that WANTS to find me. We owe the families of our victims no less, and if you are not going to go for that level of SAR dog, please.........go do flyball or something where someone's life is not on the line.

Cheers!