Training Your Dog to Sniff Out Caches
Many of us take our dogs geocaching. It’s an opportunity to go rambling with our pets and the dogs love to explore with their best friend. Unlike the routine walk around the block or the Saturday morning visit to the dog park, the search for a cache has an element of the ancient bond that originally brought dogs and people together. The dogs pick up on the excitement of the chase; it doesn’t matter to them that the quarry is a hidden container rather than a rabbit or a deer. Why not add another dimension to the adventure by making your dog a working partner?
Conventional caches, whether metal or plastic, give off plenty of scent. Chances are your dog knows when you’re in a vicinity of a cache although he may not be able to pinpoint its location. Scent is distributed by the wind and shaped by sun and water. If the sun is beating down directly on the cache location the scent will be rising with the hot air and settling in swaths across the landscape. When the wind shifts constantly there will be patches of scent everywhere. With a little help your dog can learn to sort out the scent pool and zero in on the cache.
Once a dog becomes proficient at finding caches, he won’t necessarily feel compelled to tell you about the discovery. My dogs are often so enthralled sorting out the interesting scents around the cache, especially when it is a popular spot and many hikers or geocachers have been traipsing though the area that they hesitate before indicating they've made the find. Dog trainers call the body language a dog exhibits when he makes a find an "alert." Alerts range from a tail wag combined with a glance back at the handler to the dog sitting or dropping into the down position next to the cache. If I’m out of sight my dogs will come find me and bark, and then lead me back to what they found. This is called a "re-find," I require my dogs to perform a “re-find” because their day job is looking for lost people and searching for evidence in criminal investigations. We often search at night and the “re-find” prevents me from missing an alert in the dark. Nosing or pawing the caches is sufficient for geocaching dogs. The more formal alerts such as a down or sit are impressive but they're harder for the dog to execute on a steep slope or on top of a rock pile.
Regardless of the alert you prefer it is important that it be reliable and consistent, not a tail wag one day and a bark the next. The alert is the foundation of a search dog. Long after your dog has become a great searcher you’ll need to work on the alert. Finding things comes natural to a dog; telling you about it is a trained behavior. In this sense training a dog is like training an athlete -- they have to keep practicing the basics to maintain the quality of their overall performance.
You can start teaching the alert at home. Pick one type of container, either plastic or metal depending on which conventional cache is most popular in your area. Later, after your dog is reliably giving you an alert on one material you can easily teach the alert on other types of container. If you train for metal, get an ammo box on the web or at your local army surplus store. Make sure the container has a sturdy lid that you can remove rapidly.
The training sequence I'm going to describe is based on rewarding with food. Food is a great tool for reinforcing correct behavior. We want the learning process to be fun and motivational. Some dogs react positively to toys, but they become too excited and focus on the toy instead of the learning process.
In the first stages of training, put the dog’s meal in a plastic bag and place it in the container. Secure the lid. At the regularly scheduled feeding time, present him with a few treats. Use small bits of some food he finds irresistible, not the kibble that he eats everyday. Get him excited; raise your voice with enthusiasm, using the same tone of you would use to announce a walk or a ride in the car. Now is the time to introduce the container. Put it on the floor at the spot where you normally place the dog’s food dish, set a treat on the box, and let the dog take the treat. Repeat this step at least a dozen times so the dog becomes completely familiar with taking the treat from the top of the box. End the training session by opening the box. Make an elaborate display of finding the food. Hold the bag over the container as your dog eats. What you’re doing is making the dog associate the container with food. Complete each training session with the regularly scheduled meal or several treats presented at once. We want to end each lesson with a jackpot reward.
After a few sessions where the dog removes treats from the top of the container, he will understand that there is food associated with the container. In the next stage of training put treats in the box, along with his meal. Place the box in the usual place and put one treat on top. After the dog takes the treat open the box and present him with a treat from inside. Our goal is to link taking the treat off the top of the box with you opening the box and finding another treat. Pretty soon the dog will start touching the box before you put the treat on it. At that point open the box and present each treat from inside. The dog will learn that nosing the box makes it open. Be patient. You may have to begin the next few sessions by putting a treat on top of the box to lure him into the touch that makes you open the box and deliver a treat. Work at this until your dog automatically touches the box when you put it before him. Always reward the touch. Now you can remove the container while the dog eats his meal or enjoys the final jackpot.
If you feed twice a day but only have the time for one training session it's still important to deliver all food in the box. Make sure the dog sees you remove the food from the container. After the dog is finished eating, remove the box to a place where the dog does not see or smell it. This is very important. We’re giving the box a high value, and if you leave it on the kitchen floor or in the garage where the dog is around it all the time you will be undermining the value we’re trying to establish. Every time the dog sees the box, there should be a reward associated with it. It is better to train once a day for a few minutes than every three days for twenty minutes. When you don’t have time to train at all, presenting the dog's meals from the box will help maintain its value.
We're aiming for a session where the dog touches the box a dozen times followed by a reward you present from inside the box. Next session start rewarding touching the box with food from your pocket every couple of touches. Steadily increase the rate that you reward from your pocket. When the dog is reliably touching the box to get food from your pocket wash the box so it is free of any food scent. Stop hiding the dog’s meal in the box, and simply end the session by presenting him with his meal or a bonus of extra treats. We now have the beginning of the alert. I say the beginning because we won’t have a rock solid alert until the dog will reliably touch the box when there are sights and sounds that would ordinarily distract him.
Expect setbacks -- they’re part of the training process. The dog may react immediately to the box for a few days and then all of a sudden start looking at you in utter confusion when presented with the container. When this happens go back a step. It is the trainer’s job to construct the training problem so the dog understands and succeeds. If the dog doesn’t react within a few seconds, he isn't "blowing you off" -- he doesn’t understand what you want him to do. Often during the learning process the dog is experimenting and trying to figure out what you want, and what looks like willful disobedience is simply confusion. Just keep ignoring incorrect behavior and rewarding the right behavior and the dog will learn.
Once your dog is reliably touching the box for rewards from your pocket, it’s time to thoroughly wash the box to remove any food scent. After a few successful sessions using a box that has no scent of food you can start moving the box to different places on the floor. When the dog will alert on the box anywhere in the room you can introduce a gesture, like sweeping your hand toward the box, that lets the dog know he should move toward and touch the box. You can give a verbal command such as “search” or “find,” but make sure you gesture with your hand first. Dog understand body language far more easily than verbal commands. By making the gesture and then giving the command you're linking an easily learned element to a harder element, and your dog will learn the command faster.
Avoid the temptation to coerce the dog into alerting. We’re trying to teach the dog to react to the box, and if you bully him he’ll learn to alert only when he thinks you know where the box is. That isn’t going to help on a real search.
When the dog will alert anywhere in the kitchen start moving the container around the house. At this point you’re starting to teach the dog to search. Get your dog to lie down or tie him up for a moment, show him the box, and then go place it in the next room on the floor. Bring your dog in and tell him to search. Reward the alert. Repeat the search for the box in the next room a half dozen times before each feeding. As the dog progresses you can send the dog into the room where you’ve placed the box while you watch from the doorway. Start moving the container to rooms further from the room where you normally feed. Never let the dog out of your sight. Our goal is to be able to move around the house with the dog, searching as you go. Have the dog check rooms where he won’t find the box and next take him to the room or a closet where he’ll find the container. Be careful not to include the room where you store the container when you're not training. There will be residual scent in that room and the dog will get thoroughly confused. Dogs need a great deal of experience before they can distinguish between residual scent and the presence of the object.
The next step is to move outside. Pick a place where the dog will not be distracted. You want to see the dog work with as much enthusiasm and focus as he does in the house. This usually means starting close to home where your dog is comfortable. When you first move outside, most novice dog handlers get discouraged, so I’m going to give you some specific dos and don'ts:
• Don’t train when it's too hot. If the ground temperature is warmer than the air temperature scent patterns are erratic, and no dog learns when he's hot.
• Train your dog when he’s fresh, not after you’ve gone for a walk or he’s spent the day barking at passing cars.
• Don’t train around other dogs, including other dogs that live in your house. One of the most common mistakes new handlers make is leaving a dominant dog in the car while they train their search dog. Every training session fuels a jealous rivalry and the dog you're training starts to associate searching with the inevitable confrontation that follows.
• Look out for cats, squirrels and other fast moving creatures; they trigger a primordial chase instinct.
• Avoid people that the dog is attached to -- he’ll gravitate toward them rather than working. In general it’s better if your first few sessions are without other people around. Both you and your dog will react differently when people are watching and wondering whether your dog is really up to the task. Your stress will flow down the leash and upset the dog. You're trying to build a working relationship with your dog, and it’s best to keep other people out of it.
As your dog’s alert becomes reliable outdoors, start searching for the box. Don’t hide the box yet, but put it behind a tree or a rock so you can be sure the dog is using his nose rather than his eyes. Have the dog find the box in the same place a few times, approaching from different angles so he’ll learn to interpret scent gradients on the wind. Watch closely so you learn to read your dog. After several successful sessions start hiding the box as if it were a cache, take your dog within ten feet and have him search. Don’t expect perfection. If your dog shows interest (by now you should understand his body language) within a few feet of the cache, help him by pointing out likely spots, and then, if necessary, point out the cache itself. When he alerts, reward his alert with food and lavish praise as though he found it on his own.
Make sure you place some of these training caches in locations that are a few feet above the dog’s head so your dog learns to recognize a scent source coming from overhead. At this point start training your dog to find pieces of plastic and metal smaller than conventional caches. I use small plastic containers that could hold an egg and similar sized metal boxes. These containers will be harder to find than conventional caches, and they hone the dog's scent detecting ability preparing your hound for small cache hunting.
Some dogs are natural trackers and will follow the footsteps of the last person to visit the cache. When you start looking for real caches check the log to see when the cache was last found so you learn how your dog reacts to the presence of fresh human scent around the cache. Most dogs use the residual scent of human to zero in on the cache. The human scent on a cache container will be strong for a week, and may linger up to three weeks under humid conditions. Hot dry weather may zap the human scent in a couple of days.
Once you start asking your dog to search for real caches, try to maintain the feel of your training sessions. If you’re preoccupied with your equipment and keeping track of where you are the dog will sense the difference and be distracted. The more the dog wants to please you the more he’ll react to subtle changes in your mood and body language. Start by asking the dog to search when you know where the cache is, but before you have touched it.
When you return to an area to find newly placed caches, you might want to revisit nearby caches that you have already found and let you’re dog find them again for practice. Always carry the small plastic or metal container you used for training. If you can’t find the cache, hide the small container when your dog is not looking and have him check the location. When he finds it reward him. We want the dog to have a success even if the human geocacher gets skunked. Good search dogs are instilled with the confidence that they're always going to be successful and to ignore the mood change and subtle body language of a disappointed human. By rewarding your dog at this time he’ll start to believe that he can still find something when you’ve given up.
Once your dog starts finding caches on his own resist
the temptation to stop training. Dogs aren’t machines. Even a working
search dog with the most illustrious track record will have bad days or
come up against scent conditions they cannot resolve. Keep training, and
always make a clear distinction between training and testing a dog. If
you’re bound and determined to find twelve caches in one day you
probably should not take your dog. You’ll end up being impatient.
The dog should have the sense that when you give the search command he’s
in control and you’re willing to let him take the lead. If you want
your dog to stay focused on the search you have to stay focused on the
dog. Have fun and you’ll inspire each other - that's why you started
taking your dog geocaching in the first place.
Peter Harrington trains Search and Rescue tracking dogs, Human Remains Detection dogs and Firearm Detection dogs in Northern California. You’ll find more information on training your geocaching hound at www.geocachingk9.com