The airscent dog works off lead, ranging back and forth in an area to pick up thehuman scentleft by the subject. Ranging often takes the dog out of sight for several minutes at a time, so the handler must trust his dog and listen for an alert. Calvert K-9s also equips their dogs with GPS collars so we can always see the dog’s location. Once the dog gets the subject's scent, he moves in to its source. The dog must then "alert" by either barking while staying with the subject or by returning to the handler and "indicating" in some way that the handler should follow. The dog then "refinds" the subject and leads the handler to the subject, usually with a ”show me” command after the dog tags the handler indicating the find.. Team members start with short runaway searches for the new dogs. We continue with the runaway searches increasing either distance or adding terrain variations. Soon the dog is ready for "blind searches" where the subject hides without the dog watching. As the dog becomes more accomplished at this, we make the searches longer and vary the terrain. Next we use subjects unfamiliar to the dog and add variables such as length (distance and time) and new terrain. We also begin starting the search in another place than where the subject started from.The team needs to be ready to search for long periods with short rest breaks, covering a wide variety of terrain in all kinds of weather. In spite of all the work, we ensure that the dog finds searching fun by doing a variety of searches, from short fun runaways, to the 1 - 3 hour search in large woodland areas. The dog’s motivation for finding a victim is the “party” we have at each find. This entails lots of praise and either food or favorite toy reward for the successful search. A search, no matter how short or long, is a big game to the dog, so it is always "party time" when the dog finds the subject.

Last updated on August 12, 2009 by Ted Carson