CHAPTER 9: BASIC DETECTION TRAINING AND LINE-UPS

It’s time to look at the nitty-gritty of how to begin training your dog in detection. First, we discuss the process of imprinting your dog with new odors to detect. Then, we look at the concept of alerts, the pros and cons of active and passive alerts, and how to train these behaviors alongside the basics of detection and using line-ups.

IMPRINTING ODORS

When imprinting odors, the basic principles of detection training—incentive and association—must be front of mind. We’ve already learned different methods of incentivization, and we’ve seen how to associate incentives with a bridge signal (Chapter 8). Now we will learn how to incentivize your dog to have interest in the specific odors you want him to find.

Dogs generally aren’t naturally interested in the odors we want them to detect, so as handlers we must stimulate the dog’s emotional desire to achieve this search work. As a training method, we choose to first help the dog learn an odor and develop an interest in it through reinforcement. This can be done by giving the dog food or play in return for his interest. Later on, we turn this interest into a duty to find the trained odor (or odors).

To create the all-important association between an odor and a reward, ensure that every time you give your dog a reward during training, it is closely related to the odor you are training him on. One of the best ways to do this, in our view, is to ensure the dog perceives the odor alongside the reward at an early stage of training. For example, begin by hiding your dog’s favorite tennis ball alongside a cache of the target odor so your dog can immediately take his reward upon finding the odor he is searching for. Later on, only hide the odor. If your dog finds the odor, throw the tennis ball from behind your dog, over him, so he can fetch it.

Learning how to find caches in this way will also help your dog focus his passions for searching and retrieving his toy, which is now strongly associated with the odor. This process can also be adapted to food rewards and bridge signaling. It is not, however, the only way to imprint an odor, and it may not be the right way for your dog. Throwing balls over a dog can be risky; if the dog is very enthusiastic, it may increase the chance of injury. Some dogs may also lose focus on the target odor when they notice the trainer is about to throw a toy—they begin to focus backward (toward the trainer) instead of forward (toward the target odor). Always pay attention to your dog’s character and choose a method that works best for him.

IMPRINTING MULTIPLE ODORS

Detector dogs can be trained to detect more than one specific odor. While it is possible to train multiple odors simultaneously—and while this is certainly an efficient approach to training—we prefer to introduce our dogs to different odors one at a time. Only when our dog does well with one odor do we begin to train another. When we do begin training another odor, we continue working with the first odor while simultaneously introducing the second.

We find that this step-by-step method is more effective than the all-at-once method. This is because the all-at-once method risks training a dog to recognize a mixed odor profile rather than multiple individual odor profiles. A dog trained this way may have difficulty detecting its trained odors when they are present individually. While it takes more time, the step-by-step method gives you confidence that your dog is able to recognize each trained odor individually.

CANINE BODY LANGUAGE AND ALERTA

On the job, the handler must pay attention to every little change in his dog’s behavior over the course of a search, both before and after the dog detects the target odor, and when the dog has located the odor. These changes may be in the quality of the dog’s movements, its pace, its posture, and so on. Even subtle changes can be crucial to understanding a search. Handlers must attend to all of the dog’s body movements and behaviors, and learn which specific behaviors their dogs use to indicate that they have detected the presence of odor. Handlers will, of course, learn a dog’s behaviors over the course of training. However, to really understand a dog’s subtle cues, the handler must be thoroughly acquainted with the dog both in training and work contexts and in normal situations such as relaxing at home. This knowledge requires long and close cooperation.

Every dog’s behaviors will be unique, but there are a few common signs that many dogs give when they first catch wind of the target odor and begin hunting it in earnest:

• Suddenly changing direction, making a curve, or otherwise deviating from a generally straight line during searching
• Changing search tempo, becoming faster or slower
• Changing attitude, shown through subtle movements of the ears, tail, or small but detectable changes in behavior
• Lifting the head, tilting it in a certain direction, or standing on hind legs and raising the head to smell the air
• Showing interest in a specific area of the search for somewhat longer than other areas
• Standing still, staring at a certain place, or pointing like a hunting dog
• Scratching or biting at a particular spot, often to remove debris
• Being very excited and making intentional movements to bring the handler to a particular area such as walking back and forth between the handler and a particular spot

The behaviors listed above, and any that the handler learns over the course of their training with the dog, are critical information in detection work, as they tell the handler that the dog is near the target. Crucially, however, these behaviors do not necessarily indicate that a dog has actually found the target. For instance, if a dog scratches or paws at an area only a few times, it is likely still orienting itself and hasn’t yet found the right place. To clearly distinguish between these orientation behaviors and the dog actually finding an odor’s strongest source, we teach detection dogs to alert.

An alert is a specifically trained behavior that a detector dog performs in a search when, and only when, it has found the strongest source of the target odor. There are two broad categories of alert you can choose to train: passive and active. A passive alert may involve a sit, down, or freeze response from the dog, while an active alert involves barking, scratching, digging, biting, or other more hands-on behaviors. In detector dog training, we see both active and passive alerts—so what type of alert should you choose?

As with reward systems, make sure you train an alert that suits your dog’s behavior and character. In terms of reliability, neither type of alert is better than the other. If your dog has well-developed drives, and you’ve done your job in training your dog to associate his reward with his target odor or odors, you can trust the alert. Nonetheless, it’s important to carefully consider the pros and cons of different alert styles and the preferences of your dog before selecting the alert you’ll train.