Lou Holmes and Brock

Many thanks to Lou Holmes, who trains with my Amersham group group, for allowing herself to be "persuaded" to write the first article for this page. :-)

MOTIVATED TO SAVE LIVES.

I am sure that at some point everyone has felt that moment of fear. It may be your child or an elderly relative but for a few seconds you have no idea where they have gone. Your child might have been playing in the park and suddenly they are gone. Panic hits you. You have called round to your elderly mothers house only to find she isn't there. Again panic. It's a feeling that everyday nationwide thousands of people in the lowland areas of the UK will feel. For most it's over in a few seconds. The child emerges from behind the bushes or your mum arrives back from the local shop wondering what all the fuss is about. For some however this feeling doesn't go so quickly. These are the hundreds of people who will report their loved one as missing.
Luckily for most the person will turn up whilst the initial police response is still underway. For some however they may face a long day, night or possibly even longer of not knowing where that person is.
These missing people are the ones whose lives could potentially be in danger.
For most of these people the police will be involved in searches for them and for 12 lowland regions of Great Britain they will be assisted by search team volunteers. Volunteers like me and my dog Brock.
Brock is a 3 year old Border collie cross Australian Shepherd. He is a fully qualified Lowland Search Dog. He will be called upon by the police to assist in searches for missing people.
The police do have their own dogs but they are not specifically trained for search work and often are off on other operational duties. Correctly trained search dogs can cover huge areas of land in small spaces of time searching for human scent to try to locate the missing person.
Whatever the time of year, whatever the time of day, whatever the weather all over the place search dogs will be called along with their handlers and other team members who search on foot without a dog to look for missing people. On average over the year our teams will be called twice a week to assist with searches. That's a lot of missing people!
Thankfully most turn up safe and well completely unaware of the panic they have caused. Child abduction in this country is still thankfully quite low so most missing children turn up at their friends house having forgot to tell mum or dad where they were going. Most of our work is looking for elderly people who may suffer from some form of memory loss. These are the people who wander out of their homes at night completely unaware they are doing so, often dressed inappropriately for the weather. These are the people most at risk and who sadly will be in great danger without realising it.
Often we are also called to look for people who are classed as despondent. Those who it is believed have gone off to commit self-harm. These will often be the most distressing finds the teams will have to deal with.
So back to Brock!! Brock is my pet dog. I have had him since he was 8 weeks old. I got him to do obedience with and I train with Joanna Hill using clicker training techniques. His arrival at my house coincided with me joining my local search team as a volunteer. Having grown up in Lancashire in the middle of the Pennines I lived next door to a man who had search dogs used on the hills and mountains. I learnt a lot about the way dogs search from him and would spend many happy hours getting lost& waiting for his dog to discover me! Obviously he always knew where I was really just in case the trainee dog didn't find me. I think I was only once left behind and forgotten about!!
I wanted to do something for the community and I had looked around on the net and found my local team. I used to be one of those who thought why do we need a search team in Buckinghamshire there's no mountains (or even hills- at least not what I call hills!) so I was surprised to find that a team did exist. Little did I realise how busy this team would keep me with searches and so forth. So I joined the team then a few weeks later along came Brock.
Having quickly become quite involved in the team I realised how much of a benefit having dogs to search with would be and so I set about to train Brock.
At this point lowland search dogs were a very new concept and were met with some resistance from the police who believed their own dogs were much better.
Brock was trained all of his search work using a clicker. All of his air scent work, his tracking and his scent discrimination work was taught using a clicker. He was at the time the only Lowland dog to be taught that way and the fact he is one of the best is testament to this method working. (And no im not biased! You ask any of my police force and they will all tell you the same!!)
Initially Brock was shown the person running away and was clicked when he found them. This was built up to him not seeing them go and he would be clicked when he found them. The clicker was also useful in that it allowed me to mark the right attitude or good effort. Alongside this I did a bit of target work with him with human hair in a ball with holes in. Use your nose to find the ball get the click when found and then play with the ball. Much the same as teaching a dog scent on articles.
Gradually this built up and the length of time Brock searched for was lengthened. Next came the alert. Once Brock has found the person I need to know. Often he will be a distance away from me or in thick woodland where I cant see him so I need to know he has found. For this I taught him to speak. I didn't want him to bark at the person incase this frightened them or I couldn't hear him so I taught him to find then he learnt to come back to me. Initially he was clicked for coming back to me. He was taught to speak using the clicker and once he had the idea of what he was doing he was clicked for coming back and barking at me.
He then had to show me what he had found so he would be clicked again for doing what we call a refind.
His tracking work was also taught using a clicker as was his scent discrimination work.
Brock is a very keen and motivated dog. He loves his search work way above anything else. This is I am sure due to the way he was taught it. The behaviours I taught using the clicker are by far his strongest and he will always resort to them when shown a treat and asked to do something for it.
Having the ability to be able to reinforce his behaviour at any point during a search is of tremendous benefit as on long searches he can be clicked for doing something and this ups his anti a little and always seems to make him try harder to get another click and a reward.
In the summer of 2003 Brock and I were called to assist on a search for a missing person in Abingdon. This search resulted in Brocks first live find and the discovery of one of the most crucial missing persons in recent times. That person was Dr David Kelly. A government scientist who committed suicide and launched a hugely publicised public enquiry chaired by Lord Hutton.
This was the first time Brock had ever found someone who was dead and who would have smelt different to a normal living breathing person. This had an affect on Brock and when he alerted me to his find he didn't want to go back from where he had just come running and barking. I knew he had found something and so went to look at the place he had come running form and there was the person we were looking for.
After that discovery Brock was a bit funny at training and didn't seem to want to find as much as he normally did but the clicker soon helped him get over this. One click from a missing person for finding them and all his worries were forgotten again and his confidence rose even more.
Both Brock and myself were awarded a Chief Constables Commendation for the work we did on that day and for me giving evidence at the Hutton Enquiry. Brock is the only civilian dog ever to have been given a Chief Constables Commendation in the Thames Valley Police force area. He is a dog who has a job, a job that he loves.
The clicker training that Jo teaches for obedience has been very very successfully applied to this job. Many more dogs are now trained for search work using a clicker and you can defiantly spot the ones who have been. They are always much more into their jobs and they seem to ooze attitude and have an abundance of willingness to work.
So hopefully you can see that the clicker isn't just about teaching your dog the correct heelwork position or teaching it to do tricks or routines for heelwork to music, It's about saving lives also and who knows when we might need that kind of service?

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