Konnie Hein

Recently I've had this discussion with a few people and I thought I would bring it up here and see what the other SAR/detection folks on this forum think.

When choosing a puppy for SAR, I look for very high drive pups. The desire to bite and tug (and the persistence of that desire) is one of the most important things for me to see in a pup. If the dog has a high desire to bite and tug on the toy, I can channel that desire into hunting for a person.

However, there are some SAR folks out there who don't care about the pup's desire to bite and tug and instead focus soley on hunt drive. In my experience, pups with high hunt drive who lack a strong drive to bite or play with the tug do not typically pan out into strong search dogs (at least, not to the caliber of dog I would accept). If the dog doesn't care about the reward (biting and tugging on a toy), then what motivates it to push through distractions and stress to continue hunting?

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