Yaddaluvpoodles

Ah crumb! Did a huge reply and lost it.

Airscenting SAR work requires a partnership that is super rewarding and most pet owners never reach and are never really able to comprehend. As your relationship with Saydee develops.. you'll love it!

Learn to trust Saydee. ALWAYS trust your dog.. but... you are the other half of that equation, in order to set Saydee up for success, learn as much as you can about scent theory, as well as all aspects of SAR work. I haven't been involved in SAR work for a number of years. There used to be terrific resources at the NASAR website as well as CARDA. There also used to be a number of yahoo groups for k9 handlers, some better, some worse than others.

Remember that you are working a poodle.. and not all dogs are created equal. I have found poodles to require a much softer touch, more positive rewards than some of the other working dog breeds. Just my opinion, but I believe they are more highly domesticated which leads to a higher aptitude for verbal recognition as well as human body language and expressions... which makes for a better partner!

Not all training works for all dogs, if you are uncomfortable with anything that anyone is doing with Saydee... you are her partner, you are responsible for her and her training experience.. stop them! That tidbit comes from some bad experiences I put Vic through at the hands of a very knowledgeable and experienced trainer, with many credentials to back him up. He was an excellent training, but his training methods not only didn't work for Vic.. it made for a very unhappy, unmotivated girl.. who wasn't having fun. No motivation, unhappy, miserable.. does not make for a good SAR dog!

re: Chewing... Saydee is just a puppy and should be about done growing teeth, losing teeth, regrowing teeth.. fingers crossed that her chewing will decrease to a normal adult level soon! Like the idea that you are now giving her specific items to chew. Take care though, there are lots of hazards with chew items.... (my dogs get carefully chosen, whole fresh bones.. which I'm sure makes a whole lot of people here shudder!)

re: Kenneling (crating??) I'm missing the point of the kenneling as it's being done now to control behavior. Many of the old timey trainers used to use dogs as tools. Get them out when they needed them, put them away when they are done. As I've never personally owned a GSD, malinois, rott.. etc.. well.. maybe that's the way things need to go for those breeds. But with a poodle, I want my poodle at my side regardless of what I'm doing. I expect them to be "on" when we work, relaxed when we're not. I do support and believe in crate training and for SAR dogs it's important for a number of reasons, BUT.. I also expect my dogs to spend as little of time as possible in crates. I believe that crating can contribute to joint issues (especially hip dysplasia) as well as poor muscle and joint development and general poor conditioning. I'd love to hear more about the crating and how it works for Saydee.

Hmmm... re the game with the toy... When doing SAR work, I want my dogs to find people, not toys. When I was out with my SAR group, the focus was on humans, not toys. Vic loves people and toys obsessively and is highly food motivated. What that meant for me is.. I was able to do some training with toys at home that I could transfer over to SAR work. Vic used to be a royal pain in the ass (yes, I dearly love her.. but it's the truth). As a puppy she was totally obnoxious, always demanding attention and if she didn't have a job to do, she would find one of her own.. usually something I didn't approve of. She quickly learned names of individual toy items and bright girl that she is, also is able to generalize to some extent, so "ball" doesn't mean a specific ball.. it refers to any ball (for example). Some of Vic's commands and cues are:
"Do you want to be a workin' girl?" (This question totally excites her, she dances eagerly while she awaits the next command that she knows is about to happen)
"Get to work!"
"Find 'um" (I reserve this command for people only)
"Find the......" (fill in the blank with any of a huge number of items, ball, frisbee, glass, phone, etc)
"Get the ......" (same as above"
"Show me!" (used as is for humans, with the appropriate word tacked on if she's looking for an item... this is a great command for training refinds at home without a helper. Put something Saydee really wants where she can either see it, or smell it, but not get to it, then reward her efforts to show you what it is she wants".
"Pick it up" (an awesome command.. "It" refers to anything I want it to. I indicate "it" by cueing Vic with "yes" or "no". "no" is never a reprimand, just a cue that she hasn't gotten the right "it". )


Obviously, there are tons and tons more, but the "show me" and find commands are important.. and I do differentiate between human and non human.

I never let Vic play in her vest. That was strictly her workin' girl outfit.. and part of what triggered her excitement for "the job" as she soon associated it with finding people. After training times, we used to have dog play time (as well as our discussions of what we did/how we did, things we needed to improve on.. etc). All vests always came off at play time. Vic's working vest had places to attach glow sticks and as Vic is dark blue, I also kept a bell on her vest which helped with knowing where she was after dark.

As I had very cooperative family and friends, Vic learned early on that humans are silly critters and get lost at every opportunity. It helped to keep her focus on me (if she didn't.. I disappeared), as well as the people around her. It was a very rewarding :"game" for her and she always looked at it as such. Vic was retired at an early age due to health issues (Addison's and epilepsy) but has remained my partner.. although her roles and jobs have changed, much of what we did in SAR we have been able to put to use in other ways.

Some of the most critical traits I found in SAR work for the dogs:
Must love huimans and human attention beyond all else. A dog who doesn't care much about people is never going to work very hard if at all to find them.

Must have an extremely high level of confidence. This is developed through lots of public exposure and socialization. I took Vic to construction sites, the end of airport runways, etc... places with lots of noise to do basic obedience training exercises. I also took her to shopping mall parking lots, costco parking lots, etc.. Just to meet, greet and be greeted. We did lots of different surfaces, swiimming in all sorts of water, jumping, running, you name it, she did it. I learned that you should never teach a dog to climb up a ladder.. until you have first taught said dog to climb down a ladder. It makes people who are working on the roof REALLY unhappy when they have to carry a 45 pound poodle (who was delighted to find them all the way up on the roof) back down to the ground.. only to have her try to find them again. Sigh. SAR dogs need to comfortably tolerate being handled by anyone, anywhere, in case both of you are injured. All of that takes practice, confidence.. and lots of play and great rewards.

Learn to trust your gut instincts with Saydee. If it "seems" that maybe Saydee is trying to tell you something, believe me, she is. Part of being a K9 handler is learning to recognize dog cues, that little "pop" of the head and tail when they hit scent, that "follow me" look, etc. What at one time seems to be.. "I think she wants me to.." "I think she is maybe trying to..." After a time becomes a strong communication that you will not be able to misunderstand. Many times have I told about having a bone spur removed from my sinus (yuck), being released from the doctors care as fully recovered.. and making an appt a few weeks later with the same doctor. Why? Because Vic said my nose stunk. She didn't say the words, she didn't have to. There was simply no misunderstanding her body language. The ENT doctor was.. probably to put it really politely.. incredulous (yeah, we all know what he was thinking about the crazy poodle lady!) and offered to let me leave his office without billing me, if I left right then. I told him that I would trust my dog with my life and that if Vic says there's a problem, I believed her and he needed to check it out. It turns out that during the original surgery, a piece of bone had lodged in a different part of my sinus and had an abcess formation around it. Believe me it's not something you want going on anywhere, but when it is in such close proximity to one's brain.. well that's scary. I had been totally asymptomatic up to that point (eventually it would have gotten really ugly medically) and will always be grateful to Vic and her alerts so that the situation could be remedied before it became critical. Despite the ENT doctors disbelief, the confidence I had developed in Vic through SAR work, made me not doubt her or have any hesitation what so ever that there was something bad going on. The ENT doctor asked for a photo of Vic. <VBG>

Do keep a journal of all of your training with Saydee. This will become important as time goes on and should there ever be any question of training, you can produce your journal to document your efforts and you can't go back in time and remember what you worked on when.... I wasn't told about journaling.. and lost a lot of time that I should have been keeping records. It can also help you if you are writing your SAR related expenditures off on your taxes....

Hope that all helped, it's been several years since I've been involved in SAR work.

Best to both you and Saydee!