Konnie Hein

A friend of mine (also a FEMA canine handler) and I have been tinkering around with a new method for training disaster search dogs. After going to a few Randy Hare seminars (and my friend also went to his trainer's course), we decided to adapt his method to train our dogs. The method requires high drive dogs, and no corrections are used in the training. The dog is allowed to make mistakes to learn for itself what actions bring reward.

Lucky me, I'm the training coordinator for CTTF-1 and we just so happened to get a new bunch of handlers and dogs at around the same time I wanted to start using this method. They were willing guinea pigs and the experiment has really paid off. Here's some of what we're doing...

This Malinois has been worked in this method since the end of January. He's already doing searches on the rubble with ease, despite only doing search training once a week. This video was taken for demo purposes the other day...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZMD-g9njEc

This Dutchie has only been worked on the barrels a handful of times. Nice, high-drive dog who learns fast. The Lab is my FEMA certified dog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ceKISNJSlE

All of the barrels usually contain distraction items and, as you can see, we try to add distractions on the outside too.

We're giving a seminar this weekend here in CT to a few fellow FEMA and SUSAR folks. Hopefully they'll be as excited as we are about our new method.

(and, for those of you who don't know, disaster search dogs are air-scenting dogs who search for live humans buried in rubble - thus the training with the person in the barrel)

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www.youtube.com/focusedscenting