Helfers NW Seminar

Yesterday I went to a seminar by Fred Helfers; it was great.  Before retirement, Fred was a police detection dog trainer, training all kinds of detection skills, including bomb, drug, fire accelerant, insect, and pipeline gas.  Now he's retired and naturally couldn't get totally out of dogs, so is teaching nosework and giving seminars.  My brain is still reeling from all the things I learned.  I will write more about the seminar this week. 

Still I wanted to share something.  I am reading "Cracker!", a novel, by Cynthia Kadohata.  There are two passages that struck me.  First:

"She lifted her nose to the air and breathed deeply, the way she did when she wanted to know what was going on.  This was different from the way she took in air when she was just breathing.  All she knew was that the air went someplace different when she was just breathing versus when she was trying to figure out a scent."

Interestingly this is one of the things I learned yesterday.  Dogs have the ability to direct the flow of air through their nasal chambers into different areas.  When a dog is sniffing scents, the air flows directly through olfactory sensors, sending information directly to the olfactory center of the brain.  When a dog is simply breathing, the air is detoured around the olfactory sensors.  

Fred told us there are only four species that can do this and of those, only canines are "useful" in this respect.  I find it interesting that an author who has written no other books featuring a dog would know something so specialized about how dogs process scents.  In fact, until yesterday, I would have considered this passage as just flowery prose.

Rick snapped back, 'People see what they want.  Dogs see what they see.'  That was a line Rick heard Cody use sometimes.  Humans saw in wholes, not in pieces.  They saw a total picture, colored by what they believed.  Dogs used their senses to 'see' all the details, uncolored by expectations and beliefs."

I am also reading "Animals in Translation", by Temple Grandin, this passage is spot on with her observations. Hers is a fascinating book that delves into how animals perceive the world around them, written from the perspective of someone who has autism.  Temple has become very influential in food producing industries and she designs facilities used worldwide for humane handling of livestock.  Her ability to "see" their world the way the animals do is instrumental in her success.

I recommend both books:
"Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam" and
"Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior". 

Scenting

Here is an interesting article I just read...  it's not nosework, rather its a Smithsonian article about bomb detection dogs, their training and related topics.

Check out this picture -->
To think we nosework training fans get a bit panicky if there are more than 25 containers and yet the professional dogs deal with whole hangars full of them.

Another article about  Scent and How Airflow Works with lots of interesting diagrams.  Of course all this is theory based on what we deduce by the dogs' behavior.  We humans with our puny noses haven't a clue.  Not really...

Did you know that your dog's scenting ability could be affected by Dental Disease? 

If you are as fascinated by this topic as I am... check out the following books:

Inside of a Dog, by Alexandra Horowitz.  She provides an analogy between a human's scenting ability and that of a dog, saying "We might smell a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee. A dog could detect a teaspoon in a million gallons of water—nearly enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools."  The book discusses the senses of a dog and gives you a good idea of how your dog experiences the world.

Scent and the Scenting, Dog by William G Syrotuck.

Soldier dogs: the untold story of America's canine heroes, by Maria Goodavage.

Red Dog Rising, by Jeff Schettler.

K-9 Trailing: The Straightest Path, by Jeff Schettler

There are also any number of good books about tracking...