Konnie Hein

My educational group IDK9 hosted a building search workshop for USAR handlers and their dogs this weekend. The workshop was held here in Connecticut in an old mental hospital building complex. Its a really creepy place to train, and we can set up some very complex scent problems for the dogs. Here are a few photos from the workshop...

A FEMA dog's alert = FBILS (Focused Bark Indicating Live Human Scent). The human "victim" is hidden in the metal cabinet here:


A FEMA GSD showing off his agility skills. This dog is a big boy (80 lbs.) for a USAR dog, but that doesn't seem to stop him from climbing onto everything and anything.


The same FEMA GSD climbing around on some junk. Can you see the hidden human "victim" here?


And, another good hiding place. We shoved this poor IDK9 staff member into all kinds of crazy places this weekend:


Being a "victim" (aka helper) for training sessions like this is really tough. The woman pictured above spent about an hour in that cabinet while several dogs worked to find her (on an individual basis). I spent about 2 hours hiding on top of a row of metal lockers. It wasn't fun, but that's all a part of the training.

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