How Search and Rescue Dogs Work

Yeah we could use more ghost producers, we could, you know, Yeah, I don't have to time benefits. No, you do not have to do anything. Yep. He just pretty great. Press a button and die? Oh so um, Chuck. Yes, I don't know if you remember. Several months ago we released an episode and it was a good one if you ask me. It was about search and rescue. Okay, do

you remember the episode right? And there was like you saw urban search and rescue, wilderness search and rescue, and in that episode I was like, man, we have to do an episode on search and rescue dogs. Well, by god, today is the day We're doing it. The only time we've ever followed up on a promise in our career. The prophecy has been fulfilled. It's right. So we're talking today about search and rescue dogs and this, first of all, this article is just genuine bona fide how stuff works,

quality from the olden days. Just checks all those boxes, done in't it? Every box that's that's that's Mark one in the favor of this episode that it's based on that article. Mark two is that it's about dogs and how much how great dogs are. And I just had a really good time researching this one. Yeah, it's funny, like during reading this whole thing and all this research in my head, I just kept thinking, good boy, good girl. I just kept saying that over and over. Yeah, just

petting them behind the ears in your mind. So, um, when we're talking about star dogs, we're talking about search and rescue dogs. Dogs that are trained to go find people. Right there, they do two things. There's two components to a search and rescue dogs job. It is to find people and then to let their handler know that they found the person. Right sure, because of a dog that just find someone doesn't let anyone know. They'll just be

sitting around licking faces all day. Right, you're like, yes, you you found me, know, go get help, and the dogs like, I don't know, although I did like seeing what was that one dog called that's trained to uh to like stay there instead of going to to alert

everyone else victim loyalty? Is that behavior? Yeah? And I think that's the case if there's if like someone is injured, they may need that dog to just stay there and start barking instead of saying, hey, I'm gonna run and find someone and let and let them know that you're not okay. Right. So, however they alert, as long as they alert, that's good. That's the second part of the job.

As long as they don't wander off and like find a craps game to engage in without telling anybody that they found the person who's stranded in the wilderness, right, which would not happen with the star dog because they can focus like nobody's business right, right. So star dogs are professional working dogs, right, just as much as like a herding dog on a farm who actually does that work um or a canine unit dog or one of the Beagle Brigade we've talked about them before. It's a

it's a working dog. But the the article that Julia Layton wrote points out and I think really just kind of changed my perspective on things and opened up my eyes that what the dog is really doing is playing. Yeah, right, so I mean the dog is not taking work seriously even though it appears to be. It's taking place seriously.

And I just love that. Yeah, And and it really hit home to me too, like when it pointed out that, um, if you've ever had a dog that will like run till their paws are bloody to get that tennis ball or that coong, right, I guess I just name checked a brand they should throw some dough for that. It's a good brand. Uh loves the little those tiny ones are so cute. Um that that that would make a good star dog. And I have had two dogs in my life that would be great uh search and rescue dogs.

My dog Buckley, who was no longer with us, and my current one of my two current dogs, Nico, And they both had a lot of Staffordshire Terrier on them, and they both from day one, if you threw something, ran and got it, brought it back, dropped it at your feet and looked at you as if if you don't throw that thing again, I might keel over and

die right now. Staffords your terriers and that Spuds Mackenzie And now I can't remember what kind of terrier that is, but it was some kind of terrier, and I thought it was an English countryside village name terrier. Huh. I mean staffies are I think a lot of people throw a lot of dogs into the pit bull category that aren't pit bulls. That's kind of a a bone of contention with pit bull owners is like, you know, a dog attacks that has any a terrier in it and

they say it was a pit bull. Um, So staffies are lumped in there. But I remember when we did one of my great memories of being in Edinburrow on our tour. I took a walk around Lovely, uh, the lovely town, and I ran into a lady who was walking one of hers And you know, when you're out of town and you're not with your dog, you just sort of like attack every dog you see. And so I got down. I was with this dog and I

was like, I love this dog. Your you know, your dogs are sweet or something, and she went, just a wee staffy that's so Scottish. A wee staffy that was a uh that like that town is magnificent. It's magic, it really is. I can't wait to go back one day. Yeah, we need to do that. We need to get on another UK tour. I could not agree more. Dude. Heck, yeah, okay, it's done. We're doing it in like two years or

three years if it's anything like our Australia tour. So with the Star Dogs though, Um, we cannot emphasize anymore how much time is of the essence because whether it is, and we'll get into the various types of rescues, but they're all pretty time sensitive. Whether it's a missing child, god forbid, or a collapse building, God forbid, or an avalanche,

God forbid. None of these situations are awesome and the clock is ticking, especially you know in in those cases where you know there's maybe short of oxygen or they're buried in snow, Like minutes count. Yeah, for sure. I saw on a site for an organization that offers stur dog training, um for your dog, Like if you think your dog's got it, they say, come, we'll find out if your dog's got it. They were saying, like, um, you have to be out there, like you have to

treat this like you're an ambulance. Basically, when you get the call, you gotta be out the door. And it's interesting. You know, the dog doesn't have any job other than search and rescue, so the dogs ready to go any time, but you're their handler and they live with you, and you have to be out there with them. So you have to be able to leave your regular job at

the drop of a hat. And and Star dog handlers are on call twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, so much that um the dogs go on vacation with the handlers in case there's a call and you both have to go show up somewhere together. So you have to be very, very responsive. And it is like you're saying,

because time is of the essence. Because this article gives the example of avalanche victims, Like if you're an avalanche victor them, if you're covered in an avalanche, you probably will not want to be thinking about these stats. But most avalanche victims who are found within I think, is it ten minutes or fifteen minutes? I think of the victims are alive at fifteen minutes. Okay, great, what about thirty five minutes. Uh So between fifteen and thirty five minutes,

sixty percent of the of those folks will be gone. Right. And so you might say, well, okay, wait, wait, you guys are talking about an avalanche. How's the dog going to find you in an avalanche? Dogs can find you covered in snow, Dogs can find you underwater. Dogs can pick up your scent sometimes when you're five away, right. It's amazing. I was surprised to hear that because you always see in like those old timey chain gang movies, um,

you know that are my favorite genre. Obviously, when when they're trying to elude the tracking dogs they cross a river something like that, it's off the scent. And that probably works for for tracking dogs, and we'll talk about the difference between these dogs. But for for a scent dog, um, they can they can be trained to find your scent underwater, especially if you just happen to be decomposing. Yeah, and

especially if that dog is a bloodhound. Um. And in those old timey movies that you love, it seems like it's always a bloodhound or you know, a pack of bloodhounds and the and the dude you know who just escaped from prison. Is runs through the river, and usually in the movie they're they're like, you know, drat it all. They just threw us off the scent, right, somebody throws their hat to the ground. It's because of those kind of because of that whole thing, that whole um, that

genre whatever, that in prison escape thing. I unfairly associate bloodhounds with scary backwoods like redneck police officials. Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying, because they're always with them. But that that doesn't mean that the bloodhounds are scary. They're great, sure, good old hound dogs. Yeah, Elvis wrote a song about him. Yeah, but it wasn't favorable. Uh,

that's true, you know, lying all the time. I wonder, but Elvis wasn't talking about dogs, no, but he was comparing somebody who he didn't have in a high opinion or high esteem to a hound dog. I wonder who that was about. And he probably had no idea that he was giving them quite a compliment, right he was. He was trying to do the opposite. It was like that Simpsons where somebody calls somebody else a chicken and it chicken, and the top head appears and goes, he's

insulting the both of us. They Elvis should have said, you ain't nothing but a hound dog, which is actually the most talented scent dog of all time. That would have fit too. You ain't nothing but a hound dog. I hold you in deep admiration. And there goes the career of Elvis Presley. Uh So, smell wise, dogs have a sense of smell about forty times stronger than a human. And this is all dogs. It doesn't mean all dogs

make good star dogs. But just because a little Momo is uh, you know, like a little curly, cute lap dog, doesn't mean that Momo may not be a good star dog for obvious reasons. But that doesn't mean Momo can't smell a dead body in the ocean. No, and she does. She just she goes and finds a game of craps instead of telling anybody. That's because that's how you've trained her. Sure, now, Momo would not be a very good star dog. She would be a little sketched out on the scene of

a search and rescue mission. But she could she and she does. I'm sure pick up on the rafts are a T I'm sorry r A F T S which is, uh, it's gross. But these are the dead skin cells that are constantly flying off of our body that smell only like us, Yeah, like every individual. Apparently this is not proven, but they think they know that humans shed skin cells rafts, and that they do have a sense human specifically human scent, and that is specific to each person too, which is

all totally believable. Yeah, which is why they You know, like in the movies, they give somebody an old sweatshirt that that person wore the day before, and that's how they know how to go look for that person. Right, They'll they'll do that, they'll mash it in the dog's face and then go find it and they find the whatever, the person that smells like that. So they think that's how dogs are able to find specific human sense or any human scent, is that the rafts, the skin cells

that were shedding are being picked up. We leave them behind on the ground. They follow the ground. Um. If we run up against a bush or something, a bunch of them get scraped off, or they're just kind of floating in the air, and depending on the type of dog um, they're going to pick up those skin cell rafts and and it's probably about here that we should say that there are two types too general umbrella categories of UM search and rescue dogs. There's the tracking dog

and there's the air sent dog. And they do the same thing, they find humans, but they do it in two very different ways, one super targeted and one super general. And depending on the situation that you're faced with, you're going to call it one dog or the other, or maybe both. If you're just a county that's just flushed with extra taxpay or cash that you don't know what to do with, sure dog, county. Uh Yeah, so a

tracking dog. They also call those following dogs. Those are like when you think of a bloodhound with their nose down on a trail. Uh. They're the ones who who know and this is what these dogs need. They know the last scene point of this person. So like you know, if you went hiking in the woods and you parked your car at a trailhead, Uh, they know that that is your last if that is in fact your lasting point.

That is the last sing point. Here is a sweater that they wore yesterday, and uh, go at it right, And we talked about the nuts and bolts of that kind of stuff on the Search and Rescue episode. So go listen to that because we talked about the last same point, and we talked about how searchers like fan out from there. Sure there's like a quick response team.

The dogs are the ones that are brought out first because a scent, if it's a tracking dog and they're following the scent that was specifically laid down by that person, that tracking dog needs to be there very quickly, and they need to um, they need to be there before everybody else because once a bunch of searchers get into the area and start searching for the person, they don't know where the person's scent trail is, so they might be crossing all over it and ultimately ruin it for

the dog who can't pick it up anymore. So that tracking dog is going to be among the first searchers on the scene. That's right. Uh. The air scent dogs, like you said that, these are a little more like when you don't know, like somebody's just lost in the

forest or somebody is buried in the snow. They don't have that last scene starting point, uh, and they basically just say go out there and stick your nose in the air instead of on the ground and see if you can inhale some of those So some of those airborne rafts like fine seventies cocaine, right, the finest Quervo gold and the fine Columbian uh and those you know,

that's basically basically their deal. Um. You know, if it's a little more general, um, you're you're probably some sort of a well, they're all kinds of dogs, but you're not small. You're medium sized or larger. You may be a German shepherd or like a lab believe believe it or not, it's probably not a Saint Bernard um, just because they're they're just a little too big these days. Yeah,

cumbersome as how this article put it. Border collies are good. Uh, And of course the bloodhound because they're those big old ears and all those cute folds in their faces actually concentrate scent particles right into those uh, stinky, stinky, drippy nostrils. Yeah. It just kind of slaps the skin cells of humans right into the dog's nostrils. Amazing. So let's take a break and then we're gonna come back and talk about

different specialties that a search and rescue dog can have. Okay, Wolf, Sorry, Okay, Chuck, so we're back. We're talking now, if you'll follow me in this line of thinking, Okay, about the different specialties search and rescue dogs can have. Yeah, this one is sort of the saddest specialty. But the cadaver dog UM very very important though, because, uh, you know, people need

closure in their lives. And if you've lost a loved one, uh literally lost a loved one and you don't know where they are and they end up not surviving that ordeal, then you would still like to give them, um a burial of your choice or you know, however you want to do things in your family. But that that was a lot well I was saying a proper burial, but that means a lot of things to a lot of people. Sure it could be a sky burial, Sure it could be remember those Oh yeah, that was a great one.

I don't remember what that was on, but that was a good one. Buzzards right, just picking at your body yep. Up in the Himalayas. Uh So they are they are specifically trained to search for human remains and those uh decomposition gases uh and those skin rafts. Still. But that

that is pretty amazing because these dogs can find. It, says, a single human tooth or a single drop of blood they can detect, right right, because you know, first of all, they're they're truly um able to detect that kind of stuff. But then the training they receive really kind of narrows and and focuses that that natural ability they have. But when when I was looking up cadaver dogs, as of course they did, I was like, how would you train a cadaver dog? What are you? Where are you getting

the dead bodies? Weren't. Apparently if you are training cadaver dogs, you can't apply to get like decomposing human tissue. You have to you have to like get a license for it, I believe, or a license to have it um. But apparently it's hard to come by. So trainers will like use their own blood to train dogs to fine blood.

There's also a company UM that makes a scent of an artificial training scent called Sigma Pseudo Corpse Scent, and it comes in three flavors recently deceased, decomposing, and drowned. And you can train a dog on the UM on this sent It's close enough approximation that they will learn to follow the set and find decomposing human remains. So two people by those creeps creeps and uh star trainers, right and like, but just two people by the bottles.

They're like a million dollars each Yeah, and they go out on a tender date and they're like just a little dab of drowned body behind each year. I'm all set, Yeah, alright. Water dogs are the next, and those uh search for drowning victims. Obviously, Uh, they are generally in a boat at some point, and we'll talk about their training, but one of the one of the big parts of training is to make sure that these are dogs can ride in helicopters and ride in boats, and ride on a

snowmobile or whatever you know. And a t V one are those things called, yeah, a t V four wheelers? Remember they had three wheelers when we were kids. Man, those are so dangerous. Everyone's like, man, they sing, surety tip over a lot, right, Maybe we should add a fourth wheel. Yeah, there you go, and then now it's stable and it's a man. Those were so dangerous that I remember when they came out and it was like twelve year olds dying all over the place with those things.

I never read one of those. I didn't either. My mom would would not have let me near one of those. I was a go carter. Oh lucky I had. I didn't have one. You know, we never had any of that stuff because my parents are teachers, so they were like, draw a picture of one. Um. But my my really good friend growing up lived out in the in the woods in the country, and he had two sort of homemade go carts. Um, not sort of homemade. They were totally homemade. Uh. They weren't like the you know, the

super sweet things you could buy. But they had the land where their dad built like a dirt track and it was the most fun thing I ever did as a child. That's awesome. It was awesome. Yeah. It was always the friend out in the country that had the go carts. Sure, yeah, not a city folk, right. So I mean, if you have a really specialized um sar dog, maybe it is used to hiding in a go cart too, but it's gonna definitely be trained to ride in on just about anything that it will be called in for.

And in addition, Chuck, this is amazing to me. They are totally fine with being lowered down the face of a cliff in a harness on a rope stuff like that. Like they're trained to um as. We'll see their training to basically keep it together in some very weird situations for dogs. Yeah, and again with my dog, Nico the staffy uh have you know, two dogs, and they've both been on boats. And Charlie the uh the shelty mix kind of just hides under seats, whereas Nico is we

call her the hood ornament. She just sits as tall as possible front and center, and her nose is just I mean, I can't imagine the amount of sense that she's inhaling right, it's really impressive. Yeah, we took Momo and a kayak to see what she would do, and she loved it. She did not hide at all. She was alert, bark at fish, and I think she could find. She was like, yes, this is pretty great. That's pretty

fun stuff. So there was also, like we said, there's avalanche um search and rescue dogs, there's also urban disaster searching and rescue dogs, and we'll talk about them more in depth than a little while, but suffice to say that that is the UM, the pinnacle of search and rescue dogs. That's the toughest one. There are something like from what I saw. There's maybe a hundred search and rescue dogs in the United States that are officially qualified

to search in a disaster scenario in an urban area. Yeah, and I know we're going to talk about it in a minute, but there was one part of that section that just got me, like, these dogs operate on reward for doing what they're doing, and uh in urban disasters, like apparently a dog can get down if on themselves

if they just keep finding dead people. And so at Own zero, they were firefighters and rescuers that would pretend to be uh, people trapped just so that these dogs that have been working long days could feel like they had done something to help. Right. Can you believe that, dude? I totally can. That's just such like a firefighter thing to do. Oh my god, I love that too. All Right, So there's wilderness dogs self explanatory, and then something called

evidence article dogs. Yeah, they can find like pieces of clothing or or evidence in a crime. Yeah, got you, So go find the bloody hammer, right right exactly? Wow, that that turned dark all exec. So let's say that you want to start training your dog. Um, there there's it's actually training of search and rescue dog follows pretty established training principles and first of all, it's all positive reinforcement.

We eventually need to do an episode on UM negative reinforcement or dog obedience because it's just so fully discredited, but most people think that most people don't realize it. But you do not need to punish your dog for not doing something right. You just praise and reward your dog for doing something for when they do do something right. That's how you train a dog and that's the basis of search and rescue training is it's all positive reinforcement

and reward UM. And the whole thing starts out with just basic obedience. And it's at this point that Momo would wash out of search and rescue trail, just right out of the gate. Momo is her own person, and we treat her as such, like she's our child, so we don't treat her like a dog. So she has come to not see herself as a dog. UM. She's very good dog, very sweet and loyal and takes good care of us. But she Um, she would just get distracted and again a little freaked out and sketched out

when the when the distractions came around. Yeah, Nicos stairs at UM you know, we're living in a in a rental house right now because we're doing work on our house. So it's a very weird time for our whole family to all of a sudden be uprooted in living in a strange house out in the woods. But Nico just sits and stairs in the window which overlooks a big wooded lot, just movement, squirrels, birds or whatever. And the second you open that door, she's so fast. She's like

a greyhound bolting for anything. And luckily she hasn't caught anything yet. But um, I'm telling you, man, she'd be a great star dog. Youlling reason I would not do this because I want her around, not on location, helping people. So I guess yeah, if I'm selfish, if it were squirrel search and rescue, I think Mama would be excellent, excellent at it. I agree, s S A R. Yeah, maybe there is a call for that. We just don't realize it because we don't speak squirrel. So yes, basic

obedience is level one, uh, just regular commands. Temperament is super important. They have to be good with um strangers, um other dogs. Obviously a lot of times there are a bunch of dogs on the scene and they can't be like I'm gonna go fight that dog or play with that dog. Uh. They have to be good on walks, on loose leashes, but be good with crowds, all of that stuff, I imagine really roots out and training a bunch of dogs right off the bat. Yes, for sure.

Um so that's just basic obedience and you have to you have to just knock that off the list out of the gate. Sure, right, then you move on to the you you move from you know, good well behaved obedient dog too. Now we're starting to get into the training a little bit, and you want to teach your dog, um something really important that apparently comes up in search and rescue that you are not the end all be

all in the world to this dog. This dog has to be able to um to to take instruction from people other than you, and to also show a tremendous

amount of concentration, self possession, non distraction. And the way that they test this usually when they're training search and rescue dogs is they will um take a dog over to a crowd of other dogs, and there will be other people milling about and all that, and um, you, the handler will will ask the dog to to lay down or stay or sit and the dog and then you leave, You go away at least out of sight. I think this article says thirty feet away, and so

the dog can't see you anymore. And then over the course of ten twenty minutes, other handlers come in and take over responsibility of tending to this herd of dogs that are all sitting around. And if your dog will listen to your command that you gave one time to stay here or sit or lay down whatever, the whole time you're gone until you come back and tell them that they can get up or whatever, then it's apparently the test for canine professionalism pretty amazing, and I'm sure

there's probably a lot of different tests. There's no standardization for search and rescue dog training except for the Female Certification for Urban Search and Rescue Dogs. Um so I'm sure there's different tests all over the place. But that's a pretty good glimpse of what you need to expect from your dog to to surpass the the second level, the second echelot, and move on to the third one. The second the second one is tough. I think the third one is genuinely tough, not not necessarily for you

training the dog. I think the third one is the tough one on the dog. Yeah, this is just raw physical and mental ability and agility. So I mean they're going through like an obstacle course. Basically, you can go through tunnels. You can climb uh and incline of more than uh I think a minimum of forty five degrees

on each side, like up and down. You can get into a a cherry picker like we talked about and go up really high without jumping out, or be in that boat or be in that snowmobile or a helicopter and not get freaked out like you have to. You know, they don't crank up the helicopter usually, like once you get in that thing and we've all seen mash you gotta run up to a helicopter whose blades are spinning,

a lot of people don't want to do that. No, no, so, but your dog needs to be able to like, come on, let's go, I'll all the man, all man the machine gun. Yeah, or hey, get in this harness. I'm gonna attach you to my chest and we're gonna repel down this mountain and you just got to be a good boy. They do. I mean once they reach a certain level of training they do and then the final is is tracking. Obviously, um, well, I mean this is this is after they passed those

three levels. But um tracking is urban tracking is level one, like you talked about that is that's the hardest thing to do in this test is just off the charts. To me. What they have a person do is they will be the target, like the you know, the whatever they're looking for. So they will do a half mile to one mile track from one point to another in high traffic area of a city, Like they'll go to like downtown New York and walk a half mile to a mile. This dog is sitting there the whole time,

you know, with someone else. Uh, they have to cross at least two intersections, make at least three right angle turns, go down two blocks of alleyways, leaving you know, a scent article along the way, like they're at least leaving little nuggets shutting off skin cells, I guess, or maybe dropping the comb in your back pocket. Uh. Then once you have laid down that track, another person crosses that track in at least one place, so they're adding scent

basically trying to throw this dog off. And then thirty minutes later, after all of this, and after the target is at the very end, they finally say, all right, dog go and the dog has to find this target and no more time than it took for the person to lay down that track. Right and like you said, waiting thirty minutes before they start after the person is finished,

that's impressive. That is super impressive. And there's distractions the whole way to righte Like from from what I gathered, this is actually done in like an actual city, Like they don't have like a fake city built somewhere in Colorado or something like that. Like this is a like you your real town, this is happening in. So the more distractions the better, yea. And they hire people who are wearing like um, drecar no wir and just to

wander around everywhere to confuse the scent and everything. It's it's a it's a crazy jam for the dog's gross. So let's um, actually, man, when's the last time you smelled dre car no are? Oh? I don't know. I have smelled it within the last year, and I gotta tell you it holds up, maybe even more than it I realized before. You know, how I feel about cologne. Um, So I say we take our second break and then come back and talk about what we've talked about. At

this point, it's just like basic training. Now we've got to get into specialty training. Okay, yeah, we'll be right back. Okay, So Chuck, your dog has been through Star training or basic basic training for Star, but they haven't actually been taught the star part yet. It's just they've just shown like, Okay, I got it, I got what it takes. Let's you know,

put me in there, show me what to do. And the way that you you train a dog to um sir and and rescue by by alerting is just basically taking their natural inclinations and again like focusing them and amplifying them. And you do that through reward. And the way that you train a dog through reward I'm having trouble saying that for some reason, is that you identify what that dog wants more in the world than anything else, whether it's a tennis ball, whether it's a nossages, whatever

it is. You figure out what that dog wants, the thing that they will do anything to get, uh, and that's what you use as their reward, and then you

can start the star search and rescue training. Yeah, and the reward is important to to be consistent with that, with that reward because you can't even uh and they pointed out even in horrible situations like nine eleven or if they find like your family member, you know, their body out on the woods, you need to discreetly take this dog off to the side and give them the reward. And even if that means, you know, toss a frisbee, like, if that's what it is, then that's what you gotta do.

Would should be a really just odd thing to see somebody playing frisbee with their dog, with the crying family and a dead body in the woods with bloody hammers sticking out of their forehead. Discreetly is the key word there. I don't think you're like leaping over the body or anything like. You just find a nearby area and then go kind of discreetly carry out your reward, let's just hope.

So uh yeah. So it takes um about six hundred and this is generalization, of course, but about six hundred hours of training, which is a lot of hours for a dog to be field ready. That's for the dog, yeah, Yeah, the humans have to go through what like a thousand hours, that's what That's what this article says. Yeah, so that's six hours of training between humans and dogs, which is hilarious because it means that humans require more training than the dogs to to do the job. And then and like,

I don't know, are humans rewarded? Are they like, here's your martini, Chuck, You're like I would crawl through an avalanche to get to a martini. That's my reward. So, um, you the the whole way you start this again, you're using their favorite thing in the world as a reward, and you teach them that they can go find their rewards somewhere. They normally want to find things, so if you show them, okay, come find me is a good

way to start. And usually this takes two people. And this article uses avalanche training as an example, but it kind of generally applies to anything. Whatever your whatever specialty you're training you're star dog to engage in. That's what

that's kind of what you would teach them. So if you're if you're training them under avalanche um guidelines, you would go dig a hole in some snow and in perfect perfect line of sight with the dog, you would go no, no, no, no, and like go run and jump into the hole in the snow, and you would have your assistant holding the dog back. And then after just a second after you make it into the hole,

they let the dog go. The dog runs after you, and when the dog comes to get you, you just praise it and love on it and give it its ball or its snausages or whatever it is. And the dogs like, okay, if I go find human, I will get played with, I will get a reward whatever it is that's really important to me. And now the the kernel, the seed of search and rescue training has just been planted in the dog. And dogs are smart, so it doesn't take much more to kind of fluff it up

into bona fide full search and rescue professionalism. Yeah, it's kind of funny because dogs are super smart but also very dumb in that, like it's just a simple reward situation like find person, get treat. Yeah, and that doesn't mean dumb, but it's simplistic. I guess okay, good, I'm glad you said say. It sounds more like dogs have it figured out rather than being dumb. I've had some dumb dogs. Well, sure, there's things dumb dogs the best.

There's dumb people too, so dumb shrews, dumb camels, dumb plants, interesting point, dumb everything. Uh So, in the case of the avalanche, you jump in the hole and that's great. First first part accomplished. But then they'll do it again. But the person handling the dog holds onto them for say five or ten seconds, then makes them go. Then they just increase that time up until the point where it's like five or ten minutes and the person has buried themselves in the snow. And then the dog like

that's the true test, Like it's been ten minutes. I saw the person go and disappear, and now and imagine this isn't very fun for the person to bury themselves in snow completely, but it's got to be done. And then the dog finds a person and they get that snausage or that frisbee play yep. And so each time they're associating this new thing um, the increasingly complex game of find the human um with their reward. So they're

learning this this new stuff. Holding the dog back increases the amount of attention span and memory that's required to to remember this game, and so over time the dog learns if I go dig under snow, I can find a person that I smell there and they'll probably play with me. Um. Again, depends on how soon the dog was led off on the scent of the person covered by the avalanche. But that's what that's the game that they learned. Yeah, and and they talk a lot about

focus and concentration. But these dogs, I mean, it is amazing because in a in a lot of these searches, unless you like you're the first one on the scene, there are people everywhere. There are sirens, there are bullhorns, there's equipment making loud noises, there are any distraction you could think of that would freak a dog out is

on the scene all at once. And they say that star dogs can get so good that they can not only ignore all this, but they could they could walk by a cheeseburger on a trail and just keep following that scent. Yeah, which is where my dogs would fail. You want to identify the star dog at a disaster area, find the dog that's just casually filing its nails. That's the star dog every time. Yeah, there's no way my

dogs would ignore that. The food thing that would I'm always got this thing where her eyes get real big and kind of bug out of her head and she like uses a paw to kind of like gently like tap you, like, hey, I'm right here. You want to share some of that. So, UM, there's a couple other things we should mention about this. This training, the avalanche training we just mentioned, you can you can do that

with anything you can do with underwater training. Apparently it involves the handler in the bow with the dog, but also a scuba diver hiding underwater. That's the best way to train dogs on water. Um, you can do it with um simulated disaster like collapse buildings, that kind of stuff. So you can take this this idea that you're training the dog that if they go look for a person, the person might give them their snausage or their ball,

and that's what they're doing. So even when they're out there searching for dead bodies in the woods, to the dog, they're just playing a game. There's a bunch of people around, there's a lot of sirens and like crying humans, and um, we're like shovels and back house and all that stuff. But the dogs just in the midst of all this, the dog is playing a game of go find it, which is why that reward is so key even in the face of tragedy. Yeah. So, um, that that's the

dog training. We have to talk about training you because in in Soviet Russia, sorry, training trains you. Uh yeah, I mean you know most of these star handlers. Uh well, we'll seek out this dog probably from the get go um at a shelter and kind of start from from day one as like this is my next star dog. Um. Like we said earlier, they spent about a thousand hours of training as a human. Um, this is training the dog. This is also like you've got to be good in

the woods. You've got to know weather patterns. You've got to know how to communicate on these radio comms and know how to work a compass. And most of these people are a lot of more e m S certified. But the very least you're brushed up very well in your CPR. Because if you're a couple of miles away and you're the person that comes upon the scene, you've got to administer some some aid right there. One might call it first aid. Yeah, you would. You gotta look

good in cargo pants, yeah, for sure. Uh, you gotta have a nice pair of hiking boots. You gotta be able to wear a boot. This article UM quotes a search and rescue handler UM who who says, the chief thing that you have to be able to do is to know where you are at any given point during

the search. UM. You have to precisely identify your coordinates, which means you have to know that GPS, the compass, the map, all that stuff you said, But you also have to know it while you're following your dog with a flashlight at night, because apparently at night is the best time for a dog to search. So you have to be really, really good at at identifying your coordinates. And the reason why is because dogs will often UM give a sign, they'll alert that they found something even

though there doesn't seem to be anything there. But if your dog does that, you want to note down the coordinates and you keep searching. And if some other star dogs come along and they note the same area and everybody compares notes afterwards, there you're going to go back to that same area. But that that you need to know exactly where the area is so you know that there's something there and how to get back to it. So you really need to know what you're doing with

with um self coordination is what I'll call it. Yeah, I would fail even if Nika was great. My my legendary sense of that poor sense of direction would disqualify me. Yes, so that's why I don't do this. Didn't you get trapped in a cave one? Uh? No, I didn't get trapped. You just didn't feel like leaving. What are you talking about. I went caving, and I went in and I went out. Okay, there was no problems. I thought there was a problem. No,

I mean the problems were. It was kind of scary, right, but I was I was with experienced speed lunkers who got me all through it. Sure, but yeah, that was that one pancake part that you've freaked out when I even told you about it. Yeah, I don't want to talk about it. So. Uh, if you are a star team or you have a star dog, um, you are, like you said, on call at all times, even if you're on vacation. That's why you travel with your dogs a lot. Um You're always ready and I imagine it

could ruin a vacation. But if you're sitting around, you know, pushing papers in an office, you you probably look forward to that call to get out in the in the woods and do what you were trained to do with your with your best pal. Yeah, exactly. So you get the call out, Uh, you load up all your gear, you you head out there. Um. It depends on what's going on. You might be hopping on a helicopter or

a boat again, depending what's going on there. Um. And this is where the obedience and all those distractions come into play, and you're you're you know, it's up to you as the handler to be the alpha. Even though your dog needs to be good awfu leash and on loose leash, it's still you're still in charge. And that's

that's a big part of it. So I think we said that search and um urban search and rescue is the hardest um kind of search and rescue for a dog to do, not just because um it's it's difficult, but because it can be it can really get a dog down to find nothing but dead bodies. It's also extremely hazardous. You know that dogs poking around a collapsed building, that's a precarious place to be looking for survivors. UM. So if you're an urban search and rescue dog from

what I saw. You don't want a dog that's over three years old entering this or that's just too old, So you want a younger dog. You want to start training them early on. But if you're an urban search and rescue dog urban disaster search and rescue, UM, you're probably not going to have an extremely long career in that. It's just too exhausting and it's too demanding. So you may as your as you kind of move towards retirement, UM, get moved to different types of search and rescue that

are a little less demanding. And apparently the last step before retirement is wilderness search and rescue because to a dog, it's just a great day out in the woods. That's it's as good as it comes. Yeah. So after after four or five years on the scene of collapsed buildings, you get to run around the national forest and uh and look for folks yep. And then after you finally are retired, you get to lay around all day and

chase those squirrels you've been wanting to chase that whole time. Yes, and unsurprisingly, UM, I would say most all of the time you were probably sticking with the the trainer as their good boy or girl. But if that is not possible for some reason, there are plenty of people that will line up to adopt this sur dog. Oh yes, because they are just as as um well trained as they come. That's right. Uh, you got anything else now? Man?

I love these dog cats. So dogs. Yeah, I'd love to do something about just breeds and the original dogs and how they evolved and all that good stuff. Okay, have we not done how dogs works? I'm sure we have, yeah, but I don't know if we got into all the Uh. You know, there's that movie out about the original dog,

the original domesticated dog. Um it's called Alpha, and I think it's not true, but I think it may be based on what people believe might have happened, like one human bonded with one wolf and that kind of started the whole thing. Are you talking about dances with wolves? Yeah? That's it. Oh no, no, no, that it was water World. That's funny you bring that up. I was thinking about that movie the other day and just how perfect the casting of Dennis Hopper was, because whoever casted him was like,

this movie's off the rails before we even started shooting. Yeah, let's get Dennis Opper and Gary Busey in here? What's Gary Busey in it too? And I don't want to make fun of Gary Busey. He said you shouldn't real troubles. Well, way to end this on a downer, will just stop right here. If you want to know more about star Dogs, just start looking it up. There's all sorts of training

resources and everything you could hope to find on the internet. Um. And since I said at it's time for a listener mail, Uh, this is about Pando. Yes, um, And I have to say that since we did that episode, I've often listened to brown noise here at work while I'm trying to concentrate on my my earbuds. But I have since switched to Aspen Forest, Oh and and wind. There's a great like hour and a half recording of In the Field of a It maybe Pando for all I know, but

it's really really lovely, highly recommended. Cool. So all right here we go. Hey guys, Uh and Jerry, I hope you're having a wonderful day. You really enjoyed hearing episode on Pando. My family has been taking an annual camping trip to Fish Lake, Utah since the early to mid nineties, which is only a mile or two down the road from Pando. It's like, how do you go a mile from Pando that's that big and just not going to Pando? All right? You know, maybe they don't know about Pando.

Oh he knows, he said. I've been hearing stories about it since I was little and have always been astounded by the magnitude and resilience of an organism like that. The ungulate fences start right on the side of the road, and it's like night and day. You're driving along in a fairly sparse aspen grove and then bam, there's a wall of tall, dense aspens on one side, surrounded by a fence. The other side of the road is offence as well, but there's often cattle roaming, and the tree

population is considerably thinner. I'm an oil painter by trade and recently did a commission of a nice little spot in Pando and included a little picture here in the email of the finished piece. It is wonderfully gorgeous place. Saddens me to hear how much danger it's in. Thanks for getting the word out there, guys. Hopefully something could be done. Hope all is well. That is from Lawson Barney in Colorado and asked him if people could view his art, and he said, just go to Lawson Barney

on Instagram. L A W S O N all one word capital b A r n E y on Instagram to see some of this stuff. Yes. Uh, Instagram is a great place to find artists these days. That's what I hear. Are you're not on I don't know you know me? You gotta check it out. While you're there. Check out an artist I love called the Christian Rex fan minute amazing. And I'm gonna check out laws and Barney too at the very least because he's got a

pretty awesome name. Uh. If you want to talk about artists that you love on Instagram, turn us onto some. You can go to our website Stuff you Should Know dot com find all of our social links. I also have a website called the Josh Clark Way dot com and you can send us an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com.