So after months of training you finally make it to trial. You've put in the work. Listened to your trainer and friends/classmates. You've attend seminars and paid for webinars. You've listened to Podcasts with all the big names, taking notes and holding listening parties with your Scent Work obsessed friends.
At trial you role up in your vehicle kitted out with $1000's of dollars of kit, the back of your vehicle is a mobile billboard for Nose Work. You literally should be a
You're basically a sponsored pro now. You've got the gear, the swag, the tattoos, and the debt to show for it.
You get to the start line, rocking your GoPro and stop watch, maybe even a piece of surveyors tape to check the wind, and Pace Count beads to count the hides. You're as ready as you'll ever be.
And you finish the search in one of many awful gut wrenching ways ; "No I'm sorry." "Where? No I'm sorry." "Time." "No I'm sorry you missed one."
What happened? What was different about this sear
ch? The space? What could you have done differently? You did all the things you could remember. It worked in the videos. So then you go back to your car...forget it all and move on, preparing for the next search living to fight another day.
This scenario happens a thousands of times, at trials all over the world. Handlers train, going through the motions, pulled in a million different directions by dogmas, principles, and dreams.
The thing many of us never learn is that at EVERY training session or trial there is DATA we leave behind. Locard's Exchange Principle states that "something is always left behind." So in this case it's a ton of data that could help you understand what was different about this search compared to others. Data from this scenario can be used to prepare for the next time you search in similar environment. This data can be referred to as Data On Previous Engagement or D.O.P.E.
Like stated in the companion post; In the long range shooting community Data On Previous Engagement or D.O.P.E. is the process of collecting information about previous shooting engagements, training, or visits to the range. The goal of D.O.P.E. is to become a more effective shooter and to achieve consistency.
This information is kept in a log book. When the shooter goes to the range they can flip to through their DOPE book and look for the information that is similar to what they're seeing that day.
So how can we apply this to Scent Detection? When you look at the search area there's a ton of information present that we need to be aware of. Those that compete in tracking, or Search and Rescue know some of this data. One of the most important factors is weather.
Weather impacts SO much. From relative temperature (heat or cold), to wind speed and direction, relative humidity, barometric pressure, cloudiness (overcast), precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, hail), thunder and lighting, these are factors you can't control but will directly impact search outcomes. Knowing how your specific dog is impacted by weather conditions starts in training.
Wind direction gets discussed a lot. In simple terms, if you can, ALWAYS start on the down wind side of a search area. Down wind is the wind is blowing in your face. If you can't it's completely OK to process the start line/cones and move to the down wind flank. This allows odor, to be blown towards your dog and let them follow it back to source.
Humidity, such as dew in the morning, makes odor stay close to source. It gets stuck to things and doesn't move as much. The same is true with frost.
Also, what time of day was it? Just like us, dogs have a preferred time to work. Just like humans, dogs have a Circadian Rhythm. Circadian rhythms are the physical, mental, and behavioral changes an organism experiences over a 24-hour cycle. Light and dark have the biggest influence on circadian rhythms, but food intake, stress, physical activity, social environment, and temperature also affect them.
Knowing and training at different times of day is huge. Think about it too, if you wake your dog up just prior to a search it's just like a dog in a patrol car. Your dog may have been asleep. It gets woke up under comfortable conditions. It then gets up, disrupting it's cycle, and is exposed to whatever mother nature provides. Being rapidly introduced into an extreme environment to conduct a search can impact search outcomes.
Often times we as handlers know that our dogs performance is impacted by time of day and weather conditions. We care for our dogs and want the best for them. Day to day we care for them. One of the things we must consider is acclimatization. When the weather is warm, keeping them in cold homes and cars doesn't do this. I get it, we worry about a million potential bad outcomes related to temperature. I've seen the worst of them. From contact frostbite of a dogs nose to a metal door in Alaska at -37 degrees, to a dog dying of bloat in Turkey on a hot day. However, we're not doing our competitive search dogs any favors avoiding training in weather and temperature extremes. Logically so, dogs unaccustomed to hot/humid conditions show a substantial
reduction in search behavior and performance. Same as in cold weather, although most dogs work well or the same when it's cold. Dogs should be trained, exposed, and evaluated under as many varied environmental conditions as possible.
Systematic exposure and conditioning to environmental factors is essential to ensure positive search outcomes. Dogs take several moments to fully engage in a search, and performance during those first moments is often reduced. We need to take time to give dogs a "Warm-up" or "Cool-down" acclimatization period prior to searching. Letting our dogs settle into the environment from the car/staging area to the search may not always be enough each dog is different. Allowing them to roam for a few can surely help.
Collect data related to heat index rating at the start, during, and end, and throughout the day. Knowing how your dog acts in different weather prior to trial or operational employment is critical. Be mindful of weather conditions under which you and your dog have not been formally evaluated. Even with these precautions, note that performance under extreme conditions may be lowered even when dogs exhibit adequate search behaviors.
Other factors to keep in mind is you and your dogs age and physical abilities. These factors add to and exacerbate weather conditions impact on search outcomes.
One final thing to note is the RUN ORDER of your team. You may not have control of where you are in the run order but it can effect your dog. If your first there are advantages and disadvantages. Chiefly among these is that few or no dogs have searched before meaning there may not be any clues for your dog. They're working the search in its purest form.
The other end of the spectrum is being near the end of the day. You now must compete with maybe 30 dogs worth of concomitant, or contaminating, odors. From treat remnants, to slobber, to whatever they left behind, you now have a dog that is following other dogs. This is Locard's Exchange Principle in practice. EVERYONE who uses the warm-up boxes, will bring something to them and EVERYONE will leave something behind. This is why I OUTRIGHT HATE with the heat of a thousand suns, warm-up boxes. First, shouldn't need them...but I understand their use. Next, they are COVERED with the unruly remnants of whatever the last team did to them. Ever look at those boxes at the end of a trial? I've seen them pissed on and everything in between and teams still go use them. Not unlike priming a Bloodhound with the clothes of their target this primes our dogs to find that combination of odors, with target odor. Now our dogs could be looking for that picture in the search. This may cause them to run to areas other dogs have sniffed and offer behaviors that in a typical search they may never do. We need to know how our dogs interact with these contaminated environments.
Tracking all this data allows us to begin to understand how we can manage the next search like this one.
Look at DOPE like this:
Date: December day
Temp: 48 degrees
Weather: Overcast
Wind Direction: blowing from right to left at 10 miles an hour diagonal across the search area.
Search Start Time: 10am
Run Order: Fifth
You know the hides have more than likely been out for around 2-3 hours at this point. Now you can replicate this in training if there are any issues at trial.
It's not magical or hard, it's data driven decision making. For trainers we can develop instruction from trial debriefs with handlers. We can take time and look at this data and do our best to replicate it. This dovetails into Recognition Primed Decision Making. We can now stress inoculate our teams. When they see a similar environment, they will be more accustom to it, and less likely to move from stress to distress.
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