In the second step of training we only offer the dog its toy (ball in sock) in combination with a human being. In either rubble or snow, we will first work with the helper in an open hole; later on the hiding place will be closed bit by bit.

With the first step of training, by making the dog crazy for his toy, we have made the dog a strong searcher. This kind of playing, however, should not take place on rubble or in a wood without a ‘victim’, because then the toy, and not the human, becomes the object of searching.

The second step of training is designed to help the dog making the connection: Locating the human (human odour) means getting my toy. This toy (the prey) is still the same, namely, the ball in a long sock, with which the dog can let himself go by shaking it to death, playing, walking around, throwing it up and so on.

Disaster search

Start by throwing the toy low over the ground in the direction of the helper in the open hole, after which the dog can go directly to the hole to pick up the toy offered by the helper. If the dog is doing well, then the helper takes the toy with him before he goes to the hole and the dog has to go pick it up without the toy being thrown for him.

Then the hiding place can be closed bit by bit. If the dog momentarily backslides or forgets at this stage of training (especially when the hiding place is somewhat closed over) then the article should be thrown in the direction of the hiding place and one of the people who built the hole should put it in that hole and close it.

Wilderness search

With wilderness searches, the helper walks away with the dog’s toy in his hand and sits or lays down in the sight of the dog. The dog will be sent to the helper and receives his toy immediately. Like in disaster search the helper does not pull the toy, but lets the dog take the toy out of his hand. After that there is again the playing and the prey-sharing with the dog. If this is going well the helper next hides himself behind bushes with the toy in his extended hand. The dog will be sent and again receives his toy immediately.

Hwith its instinctunting behaviour

As soon as the dog gets his article he carries it around, full of pride. For him this is a living prey, this is a real prey. When the dog begins to chew on the toy as he carries it, the handler may not react. This behaviour comes from the wild dogs and hunting dogs of the past who found the prey and were allowed to press out the blood and body fluids as a reward while carrying it. This is no longer allowed for the modern hunting dog, for commercial reasons. Our future search and rescue dog, however, is allowed to do this. We have to pay attention to the fact that this prey, in the mind of the dog, is still living. This chewing allows us to gauge how much the dog is getting into its hunting behaviour.

During searching and later on, when the dog carries the toy, the handler may not interfere. He has to wait very patiently until the dog lays the prey in front of his feet for the prey-sharing.

Immediately

Important in this second step in training is that the dog receives his toy immediately from the helper. For some ‘careful’ dogs it is better when the helper does not look at the dog or move, and not pulls the toy but gives the dog the opportunity to take it out of his hand. This way of training the dog learns: Finding human odour means getting my toy! When the dog understands this very well, we go to the next step.

In a real pack understanding between handler and dog, the latter will after a while lay the prey in front of the handler’s feet. Why does he do that?

The dog, of course, still has the instincts of his forefathers, the wolves. They also carried the prey back to the pack, allowing the prey to be shared out, exactly as our dog is doing now. After laying the prey in front of his handler, the dog expects the handler, as a member of the pack, to divide the prey. This prey-sharing must not degenerate into an obedience exercise, like sitting in front of the handler and offering a dog biscuit, because the way the dog works out its hunting behaviour is always right.

For correct sharing the prey with his dog, the handler takes the ball in the long sock and lays a dog biscuit on it, held up with thumb and forefinger. Wait for a very short moment to make the dog’s excitement a bit higher and after that allow the dog to get the dog biscuit. Repeat this act one or two times. Of course, the reward has to be offered on the toy, because this forms a connection with the dog’s prey.

In the first step of training we try to engage the interest of the dog in a certain toy. We like to work with an article which the dog can shake like a prey, like a tennis ball in a long sock. A tennis ball without a sock is unsuitable for  that purpose.

With all sorts of prey and search performances a puppy can be brought to have a real passion for searching. However, to make it clear to the dog that he has to search for his hidden toy, we have to work with the dog in the right manner. An article laying somewhere without any movement will not be a hunting object for the dog; a moving object, however, is immediately a live event for the dog. For a dog, with its origins as a hunter, everything that moves fast will be recognized as prey and activate his hunting drive. When the toy disapears in high and thick grass and there is no track to this prey, then the search drive will be activated in the dog.

Search and prey playing

The dog will learn through this search and prey playing to use his sense of smell very intensively. Besides this, he can also work in the techniques of using air turbulence and odour traces, which are very important for his future work as a search and rescue dog. At the same time the handler has a great opportunity, while the dog works at searching and locating, to learn to understand the body language and alert behaviour of the dog.

If the dog is now interested in the article, we can combine this with different searches, for example, in the house. The toy will at first be hidden in a corner of the room under a little carpet. The dog sees the direction, but doesn’t exactly know where the article is hidden. Then he will be activated to search. He locates his toy very quickly and the handler, of course, should be very enthusiastic about it. The dog may play with this article, as it comes out of his natural way of life. With young, inexperienced dogs you see them shaking it, throwing it up high, carrying it around, etc. They experience the article as prey they have caught while hunting.

When the dog lets the article fall somewhere, the handler should immediately get the article moving again. The most favorable way is by throwing the ball in the sock low over the ground, by which the hunting drive complex will be motivated and activated. In this game the handler only has a supporting role; and he may not decide how the game is played. When the dog’s interest is built up, the prey-sharing takes place, and the handler will exchange the prey (ball in sock) for a dog biscuit. Then the handler keeps the toy.

These searches will become more difficult and at some point the dog doesn’t know where the article is hidden, for example, because he has to wait in another room. The searches can be done, of course, also in a garden, somewhere in a wood, a park or someplace like that. Always follow up locating the toy with comprehensive playing and prey-sharing. That way the dog becomes very strong in searching.

Passion for searching

By making use of his drives, we introduced the dog to the behaviour we required. He was not forced by us and we also didn’t help him. Both are very important, because the dog learns to search of its own free will. At the same time he discovers the finer points of search work by trial and error. Ultimately, it is important that this toy never be the goal of searching of the search and rescue dog. This article should never be hidden under the snow or under rubble without making a connection with human odour. It is only during search playing, as described above, that the dog can be allowed to search without human odour, since these searches are only intended to create a passion for searching in the dog. When the dog is realy crazy for the toy, we take the next step.

Question to Ruud Haak

What is a big mistake we can make in search and prey playing?

If we don’t pay attention to the drive behaviour of the dog, then our attempt to train might look like this: The prey-object is the ball in a long sock. When we for the first time hide that article without the dog looking, and we expect an untrained dog to search, then this dog would not know what he has to do. He will do everything except search. When we now attempt to bring the dog to the ball’s hiding place, maybe impatient by now, and tell the dog where the ball is, then a misunderstanding between handler and dog is clearly going to occur. Formerly the dog will already sometimes have heard our grumbling and always accompanied by something unpleasant. To the dog it looks like this: The handler is grumbling because of the ball. So, searching for the ball is not allowed!

A search and rescue dog has to search for humans laying on or under the surface, and than locate and indicate this place to his handler. The method used to get the dog to that point has to work with the character of the dog; by trial and error, and in particular by working into the right drives, he has to learn to search and alert.

We are of the opinion that the training of a living being never can be enforced by tightening the rules. Rather than by a rigid system, what the dog likes to do has to be worked out. Training of a search and rescue dog must be flexible, but clearly focussed on a certain goal. The biggest problem with the training of search and rescue dogs is always the handler, who, shaped by his environment, first has to understand the difference between a common dog training and training search dogs, and than switch to a new way of thinking. When the handler understands the difference, you can call them a very good team: two colleagues, each with their own speciality!

Inspiring training

Some handlers slave away to train their dogs to give certain alerts. For months they train on the barking exercise. However, it will sometimes happen that they don’t make any progress, or that the dog resists or completely refuses to search. Using that method does not take the dog into account. The question is, why don’t people choose the method that fits the dog, instead of trying to adapt the dog to the method?

Training that takes into account the dog’s own characteristics is in fact nothing more than a favorable way of making use of the hereditary characteristics of the dog. This way of training has the clear advantage that the dog, in learning to search, locate and alert, does not experience feelings of uneas and because of that, will always be a happy worker. Searching is learned and worked out with a greater reliability. Besides, this way of training is a lot more fun; yes, it will even inspire people!

A search and rescue dog is normally required to work long and intensively during a mission

‘Dog-like’

A search and rescue dog normally has to search, during an actual mission, long and intensively. So, to achieve this, he must be brought to the point during training where searching becomes a real passion. The most effective and succesful training is that based on the natural ability and drive complexes of the dog, when acts of instincts transform into the desire to work until the end. It is good to realize that hunting was the first task that mankind used dogs for, to serve us. Hunting is the dog’s strongest specialization. And hunting is searching! Besides, the hunting drive complex can be stimulated until the dog is almost physically exhausted, even in non-hunting dogs. It is easy to encourage this behaviour by using the right drives, without offering pressure or improper support. By following its own learning method, trial and error, the dog could discover by itself the right way of working. ‘Dog-like’ has to be your guideline.

The dog wants to find the toy and thus will clearly alert the handler when its substitute is found

Learning process

The learning process for search and rescue dogs has the following important steps:

1. Focussing the dog on a toy.

2. Making a conection between the toy and humans.

3. Introducing a search area with human odour.

This way we teach the dog using his natural way to search for people. A moving object stimulates certain drives in a dog; it becomes a prey. We make use of these drives to teach the dog to search with enthusiasm and motivation. First we get the dog to focus on the toy, and than we offer that toy in connection with a human. He then learns that human odour in the search area means finding his toy. The dog likes to have the toy whatever happens and becomes for us loud and clear in his alert.

To the dog, human odour in the search area means it has found its favourite toy, which is why it alerts the handler loudly and clearly

Question to Resi Gerritsen

Is the adult dog trained in the same different phases of training like the puppy?

When the dog to be trained is already an adult, then it will be important to see how his behaviour is worked out and how strong a bond the dog has with his handler. If the dog’s behaviour has become connected with a sense of frustration, or if he has not bonded well with his handler, then one can be sure that it will be a lot more difficult to train this dog, than one which has the optimal physical and mental characteristics: steadfastness, not aggressive or frightened, good endurance and strong drives (search drive, bring drive). In fact, a ‘normal’ dog. Anything that deviates from the norm must be compensated with knowledge and with a lot of patience.

As with the young dog, the adult dog follows the same different phases of training. His play and prey drive is, however, already more active, and because of that, the next phase of the training most of the time can be started after a shorter period.

Training can only lead to success if the starting material is good. So, we have to look carefully at the characteristics of the dog we want to train. Search and rescue dog training is physically and mentally the most challenging kind of training. It requires a stable, adult mentality of both the dog and its handler.

To know which requirements dogs need to work out, it is good to look at the tasks of the search and rescue dog. A search and rescue dog must search intensively and with perseverance for the odour of people who are trapped beneath the rubble or snow, or people who are lost in wilderness areas. The search and rescue dog must not allow himself to be distracted, because he has to work in almost every kind of area and under almost all circumstances.

On the place where the human odour concentration is the highest, the search and rescue dog has to report his handler with a clear and reliabe alert that he has found a victim. Even after hours and days of intensive searching!

From all this we can conclude that the best working dogs are also the best search and rescue dogs. Of course, dogs without pedigree, just like dogs that don’t belong to an official working dog breed, are in principle usable as search and rescue dogs. In addition to hunting dogs, we have seen handlers get excellent results in search and rescue dog work with mixed breed or not-official working dogs. The breed and the size of the dog hardly influences the suitability and requirements for search and rescue dog work. Small as well as middle sized dogs can be trained for special tasks.

The search and rescue dog, here a Malinois, must give the handler a clear and understandable signal that it has found the human odour concentration is highest

Conditions for succes

But sometimes there are misunderstandings about the suitability of dogs for search and rescue dog training. Often people accept without question that every dog that belongs to the so-called working dogs, hunting dogs or herding dogs is suitable for this very special training. That is, however, not true, and therefore we have to make a careful choice. Nervous and frightened dogs, for instance, are not in the picture. With a lot of perseverance, an experienced handler may achieve something with such a dog, but for the dog itself it most of the time is a mental torment, which will be expressed sooner or later in serious disorders.

Only mentally and physically healthy dogs can be used for this heavy training. Many kinds of illnesses and medication affect the nose. Training the dog while his sense of smell is not optimal will lead to all kinds of unnecessary stress situations that are detrimental to the training. In relation to the physical health, we don't want to discuss dog breeds that have several problems, for instance hip and elbow dysplasia, which prevent the normal movements of the dog. But other hereditary physical defects like epilepsy and all the different eye disorders also make a dog absolutely unsuitable for work as a search and rescue dog.

Search and rescue dog training is physically and mentally the most challenging kind of training

Physical characteristics

For a successful search and rescue dog training we demand that the dog:

• be complete health, and sound in life and limb;

• walk and move correct, easy and fast;

• have a strong and muscled body;

• have an optimal sense of smell, sight and hearing;

• have a good mouth (incomplete teeth are not a problem);

• be in optimal condition and have very strong stamina;

• have strong legs, and feet with strong soles;

• be adapted to the weather and climate in which he has to work;

• have a coat suitable for that purpose.

Question to  Resi Geritsen

Is it equally important to look at the characteristics of the handler who is going to teach the dog?

With search and rescue dog work, a lot will be required of the handler, both mentally and physically. Dog handlers, female or male, must have knowledge, or obtain it during training, of modern dog training methods, and also have the ability to work in teams and to absolutely accept direction. To crown it all, working as a search and rescue dog handler requires both real and financial sacrefices too. How many weekends will be spend on stinking debris piles or in dirty wet woods? How much money will be spent on long trips to the less training fields? You should weigh whether you have the ability for this heavy and difficult work that requires people with perseverance and willpower; through physical as well as mental training, the handler has to become a well-balanced and confident dog expert with the right mentality. It is not only that handler or that special dog, but the whole search and rescue dog unit that succeeds during a mission, that’s the way it is!