3-4 week old barred owl in High Falls, NY

Today I was doing a 60 acre area search problem with Quax and we came across a 3-4 week old barred owl baby.  His right wing was stuck in a downed branch.  I freed its wing from the branch and decided to leave him there to see if his parents would come back for him…. I continued my search to locate my subject.  One hour later I went back out to look for him to make sure he was alright.  He was tucked at the base of a large maple tree.  I scooped him up and brought him to Ellen Kalish, a wildlife rehabilitator that specializes in birds of prey (Ravensbeard Wildlife Rehab Center).  Ellen assessed the little guy and gave him a good report.  I then returned him to the location I had found him and placed him about 9 feet up in a hemlock tree using a long stick as a perch to boost him up to safety.  So if anyone asks— Eagle Valley Search Dogs gives a HOOT about all search and rescue missions!

6.5 hr. old night trail .85 miles, High Falls, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = Red

This was a really interesting trail! It was a 6.5 hour old trail laid at 4:30pm and ran at 11:00pm at night.  The subject sat out at the end for 1.5 hours and made a scent pool that was about 3-4 acres in size.  There was a little north wind about 1 mile per hour that you could hardly feel at all.  You can look at the weather report above.  I have placed circles on the chart when it was laid and when it was ran so you can see the weather during the time it aged.  Really amazing.  This shows that trusting your dog is ever so important once she has a solid foundation.  I don’t know a handler that wouldn’t of turned their dog around if this was a known trail.  The more trails I do the more I just believe that it can be 200 plus yards in any direction no matter what the weather conditions.  This trail makes sense when you look at the terrain and weather but it is still looked at as alien by non-believers.  She dragged me through this trail in 20 minutes.  What had happened was that once we started to head south we were in heavy mountain laurel on a logging road.  Maya stayed very committed to the logging road with constant headchecks to the west at least a dozen times.  Where you see on the map that she cut west for the first time is where she got off the logging road (that was gradually starting to veer southeast) and we went through terribly heavy brush in the middle of the night.  She hit a nice little scent pool that took us a good 4 minutes or so to figure out.  Really amazing stuff.  At our most distant point from the actual track we were 180 yards…. seen far more incredible just this one looks odd because she really had no crossover the track at all given the variables.  The subject left and re-entered directly from the west from a far distance.

]]> http://kylewarrendogs.com/2009/05/23/6-5-hour-old-night-trail/feed/ 0 kwdogs 6.5 hr. old nigh trail 6.5 hr. night weather http://kylewarrendogs.com/2009/05/20/16-hour-old-trail-in-hancock-ny/ http://kylewarrendogs.com/2009/05/20/16-hour-old-trail-in-hancock-ny/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 14:54:50 +0000 kwdogs http://kylewarrendogs.com/?p=601 ]]>

16 hour old trail, .99 miles in Hancock, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This trail was a 16 hour old trail laid at 9pm and ran at 1pm the next day. It was one mile long and I went 1.56 miles to complete it in 42 minutes.

My scent article was a headlight.  The start was contaminated by 180 students constantly walking about the school grounds for the entire time this was aging.  The winds were varied but 75% of the time the trail was aging the wind was coming out of the southwest.  Where Maya’s trail starts to head north, we were on a logging road and the whole time as it turns out the actual track was about 100 yards away to the west where she gave three head check during that time.  She stayed on the logging road and then where you see our track start make circles 100 yards on both sides of the subject’s track— you’ll notice that the contours start to spread out east and west and therefore the scent picture dispersed.  I believe that the logging road earlier in the trail served as a very definitive line for Maya to ride on until that point.  She was behaving as if it was a turn so I casted her 100 yards on both sides of the logging road and she would not commit? So I rested her for 5 minutes and then casted her again to the east, she then worked it out, with no thanks to me.  I didn’t think to surge her farther forward because she ultimately gave me a negative but what happened was the scent spread out.  I should of made one large circlular cast rather than to side-logging road casts and I would have been out of that mess 15 minutes faster.  But a nice job. At our most distant point we were 130 yards off the actual track.

1.5 hr. old trail .65 miles heavily contaminated. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This was an amazing contamination trail! Granted it was only 1.5 hours old but around the start area is where everyone at the conference was camping; totalling about 25 people; including Maya’s subject.  Most of the 25 people had walked back and forth within the black track circle that I drew on the map several times.  The most recent was within 20 minutes of when the subject laid his trail.  The other trails on the map were on trails that where ran before Maya’s was.  The yellow trail was laid by Nelson at 10am.  Marnie’s trail is dark green and that was laid between 11:30am – 12:00pm.  The dark blue trail was laid by Ryan at 12:50pm.  The light green trail was laid by Hal at 12:50pm.  Sally’s trail is light blue (Marnie, Wayne, and me all went out on that one too); that was laid between 1:15pm – 1:45pm.  The large black dots on the map is where they hid at the end of the trails.

I ran Maya’s trail at 2:20pm; our trail is in red.  At her furtherest point from the actual track she was 25 yards off of it. Winds were mostly out of the WSW 5-10 mph. She was very studious and mega-focused!  She sorted through all the contamination around the camping area, which included the subject’s scent from camping there and all of the days earlier activities.  She wizzed through all of the contamination without difficulty.  When we popped out onto the road she quickly gave a negative past the turn and cruised up the side of the road with tremendous excitement.  She gave two headchecks to the west side of the road then cut into a 1-2 acre scent pool in really nasty brush that is difficult to manuever through.  Maya did great!  This trail was .65 miles, we went .87 miles in 29 minutes.

20 hour old trail, .72 miles in Gardiner, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This trail was 20 hours old, .72 miles long with no registerable wind until the last 5 hours of aging and then it was predominantly a south wind up to 5 mph.  I had one person contaminate the start about 20 minutes prior to running the trail.  This person went 100 yards up the trail then veered to the road and back to the vehicle.  It was cleared when Maya and smelling that person and she immediately came off of it all on her own. My scent article was a shoe sole that was two weeks old.  I never used an article that old before…. we also had a poor idea of where the PLS actually was so I’m not sure if the dog had to adjust to the dramatic age difference of the article to the trail or if we had a hard time getting started because we were a good distance from the actual starting area.  Rita was my spotter on this one and the subject had not saved her track at the start of her track so where she entered the road was an unknown all around.  I just kept casting Maya until she committed.  Every place she was right on the actual track was an area that is shaded 100% of the time and all other areas were open woods.  The wind seemed to drag the scent uphill despite the overnight aging with no wind…. one would assume downhill drag.  As we progressed throught the trail the road eventually sucked the scent down.  We traveled 2 miles and completed the trail in 60 minutes.

21 hour old trail, 1 mile, French Woods, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red

This trail was 21 hours old just under a mile in length.  Maya and I traveled 1.58 miles in 40 minutes to complete.  At our most distant point we were 195 yards off the actual track. The winds were variable up to 8 mph during the time this trail was aging.  The start was contaminated by a handful of people, as it started at a daycare building.

Kyle Warren with three of his dogs at his Stone Ridge home.(Photo by Kathryn Heidecker)

By KATHRYN HEIDECKER, Correspondent

“Dog Finds Man,” is the title of Kyle Warren’s popular blog about adventures with his search-and-rescue German shepherds, Quax and Maya. It’s also an apt description of his life thus far. A training officer for Eagle Valley Search Dogs (online at evdogs.org), Warren is a search-and-rescue handler, a member of the New York State Federation of Search and Rescue dogs and owner of Canine Instinct, a Stone Ridge-based dog-training company through which he has successfully trained more than 2,300 dogs. “There is no aspect of my life that is not 110 percent dog-centric,” Warren said proudly. Warren, a lifelong Hudson Valley resident, described an idyllic childhood experience growing up on a small farm in Glenford. He admits he hasn’t strayed too far from his roots. The 1999 Onteora High School graduate has moved “a total of nine miles in my life,” he said in a recent interview at the Vly Atwood home he shares with his girlfriend and their eight dogs. But it is vocation, not location, that inspires him. “My dogs are my family, they are my life,” said Warren. Dogs are also his livelihood, in an animal training career that he began pursuing when he was still a teen. In between making the high school honor roll and participating on Onteora’s wrestling team, Warren earned money with an unusual part-time job: training dogs. At age 10, the family dog, a German short-haired pointer, captivated Warren’s interest and energies as he experimented with training techniques. By the time his peers were getting their driver’s licenses, he had established a flourishing business called “The Pack of Northern Pride” (now Canine Instinct), specializing in training difficult-to-manage canines. “I even trained my teacher’s dogs,” Warren recalled with a smile. “I converted my farm barn into a dog kennel, and I would work with the dogs every day.” At the same time, Warren worked at The Barnyard Feed and Pet Supply Store on Route 28 in Kingston, where he focused on soaking in as much knowledge as possible about animal nutrition. Later, he worked as a vet technician at the Animal Emergency Clinic of the Hudson Valley, where he gained experience with the medical aspects of dog care. After dabbling in higher education at Ulster County Community College, Warren was sidelined from dog training with a severe back injury. He put the time he spent in bed to good use, writing about the subject he knows best: training dogs. At age 21, he penned the training tome, “Stay. Come. Heel. Every Time: The Warren Method of Dog Training Using Love, Trust, and Respect.” The book is dedicated to Jake, a Hungarian vizsla Warren owned before it died at age 6 because of a blood disorder. “I was bed-bound for two weeks,” Warren said. “I’m a busybody. I’m always on go, so I sat there with a pen and a paper and I started to write.” He later self-published the book, and today uses it as reference material for the (human) students in his dog-training classes. In his book, he outlines “The Warren Method.” He describes it as a common-sense, simple, straightforward and natural way to communicate with the dogs, without the use of treats or bribes. In 2006, Warren decided to plunge into certifying Quax as a search-and-rescue dog. “It is a huge time commitment, and you don’t get paid or reimbursed for anything,” Warren said. “But it takes my ultimate passion of spending time with a working dog for a cause.” In the three years since he began working with search-and-tescue dogs, Warren has chased down dozens of leads. In addition to Quax, who is a certified live-find and cadaver dog and trained to find both living and dead subjects, Maya is certified as a trailing dog and used to follow the trail of specific person based on the scent of a clue like a sock. Missions with Quax and Maya take Warren all over New York state. They are also are expensive, time-consuming and exhausting. To Warren, however, it is a worthwhile endeavor. “It has reshaped my life, but the finished product can save people’s lives.” Recently, Warren and Maya searched the acreage surrounding The Family Foundation School, a boarding school for teenagers that owned and operated by Rita Argiros (also the president of Eagle Valley Search Dogs) and were successful in locating a runaway teenager. Warren’s success with training aggressive dogs — his self-described claim to fame — can be equally rewarding. A 7-year-old black lab was brought to Warren for lessons to curb a dangerous habit. “The dog had been confined because it was unpredictable, unreliable and randomly bit certain people,” he said. Lessons with Warren were a last-ditch effort to save the animal from being possibly euthanized. Warren successfully rehabilitated the dog, which is now happily living with its original family. The key to approaching these aggressive dogs, according to Warren, is “an organized approach.” Is he ever scared? “Not really,” he responded, “It is a useless emotion in the heat of the moment.” Warren’s “family” plays an instrumental role in training his clients’ dogs. “I will put Hazel in a sit-stay, and have dogs run around her,” he said, “I use them for demonstrations and distractions.” The brood also helps provide a little extra income. A litter of puppies between Quax and Lee produced Drago, the newest member of the K-9 narcotics team for the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office. Purebred puppies like these can fetch between $1,800 and $3,500 Warren said. The members of Warren’s dog team are treated with top-notch care by their owner. Each dog consumes a raw-food diet of organic Bells and Evans chicken, organic raw sweet potatoes and 1,000 milligrams of salmon oil each day. Currently at work on a second book based on canine psychology, Warren received national attention for his dog-training skills when he graced the February cover of Field and Stream magazine. The avid outdoorsman said he was excited about the exposure, but more enthralled that his pride and joy — Quax and Maya — were on the cover next to him. Over the past several years, filmmaker Nick Goodman has been documenting Warren’s adventures with his dogs. He is set to release a documentary movie in the near future. With all this media attention, can Warren live up to his reputation? More than 2,000 dogs later, has he ever met a canine he couldn’t train? For this animal lover, dogs are perhaps the fairer species. “I’ve worked with people that could not be trained to handle their dogs,” Warren says with a laugh. “I can always train a dog.”

Photo by Kathryn Heidecker

Courtesy of Mental Properties Productions, Inc.

This video is a brief demo on building drive and focus and the fundamental principles behind it.  There are several major drives or as I like to refer to them as — instincts.

I break them down into the following: Chase, Retrieve, Fight, Defense, Possession, Hunt, Food, and Social.  These are all primal instincts that dogs have and as working dog handlers, we want to prompt these drives depending upon what the dog’s task(s) will be.  For myself, all of these instincts are very valuable other than the defensive component for search and rescue.

When anyone ever hears me talk about maximizing the dog’s genetic potential I’m talking about building drive and focus through various exercises to develop these instincts.  That’s what makes a highly motivated dog that has a good work ethic!

*************************************************************************************

Below are notes that I wrote for the 2009 Spring Federation K-9 Training weekend.

Building Drive and Focus by Kyle Warren

Accomplished in developing a solid reward system

1.  Ball on string

2.  Tug toy

Play with these types of toys can stimulate and build all the instincts listed in the following section. I prefer to do roughly two-thirds tug play to one-third retrieve play.  The tugging is very connected engaging with the handler and the dog is consciously thinking about its handler (or subject) and the fun involved.  The retrieving is more energy release even though the dog knows the handler (or subject) is needed to throw it for them. This combination has worked well for me.

Spectrum of Instincts important for K-9 SAR

If we can say one is more important than another. This is my personal order of importance among all the instincts listed.

1.  Retrieve: dog returns its toy to handler.

2.  Hunt:  dog searches for its toy for an extended period of time.

3.  Possession:  dog carries toy everywhere and refuses to give it up.

4.  Social:  dog is positively excited to engage with people.

5.  Food:  dog ravenously devours snack or meal.

If your dog rates high in these behaviors then it is the handler that is preventing success.You must evaluate the genetics of your dog and understand what it’s raw genetic potential is based on its breed, breeding, and specific personality.

Blue track is subject's, red is Maya's, yellow and black are Jana's and Sarah's

This trail was very abusive on my body…. it was 8 hours old, 1.1 miles long, the terrain was moderately to densely wooded with pines, the snow depth varied from one inch to one foot and there was an crazy scent pool at the start in this creek and drainage area that had steep sides and very rocky.  It took me 47 minutes to complete this trail.  Anyone that thinks that they want to do trailing should of been on this one with Maya and I… I had my sidekick Liz that kept up with me here.  Poor Rita had to take it easy bringing up the rear due to her sprained ankle.  My ankle didn’t feel so hot either but I had a GSD with jet fuel up her ass to move me through the woods.  The most interesting part of the trail that I only find interesting now… haha — is we had a woman, Stacey along for the trail…she hung back with Rita, but there was one time when I waited for Stacey and Rita to catch up with Maya, me and Liz.  After that rest for a few minutes, I sent Maya back to work and she was obsessed with not going anywheres.  Now, this trail was laid at 8:30am and at that time most of the trail the subject was walking on top of the snow.  I had identified the subject’s footprint that was just visible on top of the packed snow, Maya keep sniffing it then going back to where we came from but frantically in scent not casting looking for scent…. I was confused  — until…. Stacey asked, “would it confuse her if I was wearing the boots that Jen (my subject) wore on the way down to training today (they were Jen’s extra boots that she had worn the same day) ….. I kept my cool and said, “you stay hear until we are several hundred yards ahead of you.” Yep, that’s what is was… Stacey wasn’t Jen but Maya was obsessed with going in circles in this one area and backwards a bit, like I never have seen before? Jen’s shoes were still emitting odor of her that were relatively the same age as the trail with fresher crushed scent of the shoes.  That was a first AND A LAST time for this scenario.  Live and learn I guess.  It took me about another minute to get Maya back on track then she cruised to the end with ease.  The objective for this trail was to have two hot crosstracks of people that Maya always trails pretty much on a weekly basis in Jana and Sarah.  The more Maya trails a person the more she associates that person as high value in terms of reward.  So I will try to use these individuals as crosstrackers occasionally too.  As it turns out —Maya thoroughly investigated Jana’s trail but pulled off.  When doing this exercise it is best to really make 90 degree intersections from the subject’s trail in hopes that dog will be fairly true to the trail for this experiment.  Make the crosstracks pretty hot… these were less than one hour old.