New job for a scientifically-minded BC

[Ooky]

This is SO cool! Here is a way Odin could *really* help me at work. Or at least, it gives me incentive to try tracking skills! His nose seems very good, at least compared to my parents' late husky. I assume the main way a dog could identify a plant would be through smell. Even though human botanists have terrible senses of smell compared to dogs, it is still one of the things we use to identify plants to species! A lot of them have very distinctive smells even to me.

 

Actually, the dog in the article is not a BC, it is a Belgian sheepdog. But it gave me ideas... DH said I was crazy for already trying to teach him Toxicodendron (= poison oak!). This proves he can learn to leave it automatically! The president of our company sent our an email with this link saying we might need to invest in kennels, and I wrote back that I've already got a crate under my desk. My coworker offered up her Catahoula leopard dog's services as well.

[alligande]

First I am new, but I had to respond to this. I don't see why he can't my neighbor has an expolsives sniffing german shepherd who is amazing, but she has had an awful lot of very expensive training. The state uses mostly german/belgium shepherds and labs but the thing they look for in a dog is high prey drive as the need to be motivated to work.

The reason they use bigger breeds rather than beagle type dogs is they have a greater range and climb onto things when hunting bombs.

[Alaska]

the thing they look for in a dog is high prey drive

Actually, dogs need to be obsessively high drive, and generally not prey-driven but object-driven, to succeed at this kind of work. Dogs like this are not easy to live with - they are usually obtained from shelters where they have ended up because no one wants a dog like that for a pet.

 

Here is a link if you want to learn more about what goes into training one of these dogs: Conservation Detector Dogs

 

Look at the kinds of dogs they chose for their program. I don't think it's a coincidence that there aren't many border collies working in this field.

[Ooky]

Interesting! Well, *I* look for the plants now so we'll get 'er done no matter what, at least. I'm still going to try and teach him poison oak, though, no matter how crazy DH thinks I am.

 

On that note, I did see a BC working the US/Canada border. This will sound very bad, but I want to point out it was nearly a decade ago, and we aren't all super-smart in our early 20s (no offense meant to any 20 y-olds on the board, I'm sure you ARE smart). A friend of mine had had some *illegal rare plants* in a metal Altoid mint container, in a little bag mixed in with the mints. She took it out before we crossed over. When we got to customs, they pulled out people for search. This guy came through and the only reason I remember he had a BC was that my friend said, "Hey, that's like the dog in Babe." The dog delicately nosed in her open purse and knocked the mint container (which now only held mints) onto the floor. Then looked at the handler VERY pointedly. The handler looked into the tin, rolled his eyes, asked the dog, "what's that about?" and said we could go on.

 

I REALLY wanted to tell the guy to tell his dog, "good boy" but was much too scared to.

 

This message not meant to condone or advocate the use of (or search for) illegal plants.

[afrancis]

Then looked at the handler VERY pointedly. The handler looked into the tin, rolled his eyes, asked the dog, "what's that about?" and said we could go on.

 

I REALLY wanted to tell the guy to tell his dog, "good boy" but was much too scared to.

 

 

Behold (and never doubt) the power of the border collie!

Ailsa