Breeding Dogs for Sickness and Early Death

"The rarest 50 AKC Breeds total just 3 out of every 2,000 U.S. dogs."

If you compare the UK Kennel Clubs 2004 breed health survey with their 2014 survey, you find that the deleterious effects of inbreeding and selection for defect continue unabated.

As Jemima Harrison notes over on her blog

Across all the breeds, median longevity has dropped by 11 per cent in a decade. Kennel Club registered dogs now live on average to just 10 years old - down from 11yrs 3 months in 2004.

Terrier breeds with special tumbles on health include Bull Terriers, which now die at age 7 instead of 10, and Border Terriers which now die at age 12 instead of 14.

The Labrador, Americas favorite dog, is now dead at age 11 years in the UK, as compared to 12 years and 3 months in 2004.

To be honest, within individual breeds, sample size is small, and reporting variances can move a number.

That said, when looked at across ALL breeds, it is very clear that the Kennel Club has woven the basket that makes "basket case" dogs.

Breed-blind show idiots will protest as they always do.  Let me see if we can get out in front of that and summarize their position:

I love my doggies, and you are being MEAN by asking questions based on "data" which I am sure is totally biased, or maybe a complete lie put together by "AR" people who hate doggies and are trying to force us to eat wood chips. Doggies forever and ever!!

Dysplasia is not a problem, but a FEATURE, as so many people are old now, and crippled dogs cannot move fast or pull down their crippled owners as easily since it is CRUEL to train doggies. Same with Bulldogs for people with that awful cellulite and diabetes virus. Doggies have to change with the times, and you are wrong, mean, and probably a liberal for even asking about canine health. Doggies forever!!!

Doggie training is cruel, because if you train a dog to obey, you are going to be mean and then you are NOT a doggie lover, but a fascist worse than Hitler.

Why do you admire Hitler?

Why do you hate doggies?

Why do you want to force everyone to eat wood chips?

Does that about cover it?

Ah well, carry on! 

The American Kennel Club continues to tumble down the rat hole, with a 75% decline in total canine registrations over the last 35 years.

In fact, AKC dogs now represent less than 12 percent of all the dogs in the U.S., and that number is continuing to decline as Americans are acquiring more dogs than ever.

More than half of all AKC dogs are in the top 10 breeds, with the bottom 50 breeds summing to 1.2 percent of all AKC-registered dogs (which is only 12 percent of all dogs) .

|To put it another way, the rarest 50 AKC Breeds total just 3 out of every 2,000 U.S. dogs.

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Why Was a Dog Honored as Cat of the Year

By Linda Cole

Mozart, one of my cats, loves Dozer, a foster dog weve been caring for. Mozart follows Dozer around, giving him love bites, rubbing against him and standing on his hind legs to give him hugs. Its not uncommon for animals to form close bonds with different species. In 1998, a dog named Ginny was honored as “Cat of the Year” by the Westchester Feline Club, sponsor of the annual Westchester Cat Show, because of an extraordinary desire she had to rescue stray cats in desperate need of help.

Ginny and her three pups were discovered locked inside the closet of an abandoned apartment. She and her pups were taken to a shelter, but when vets saw her, they were afraid she was too far gone to be saved. They concluded it would be kinder to put her down. But something made them change their mind, and they decided she should be given a chance to recover, and did what they could to help her. Ginny did recover, and she and her pups were put up for adoption.

Philip Gonzalez had been wrestling with depression after he was injured on the job while working as a steamfitter in Manhattan. His right arm had been severely injured in the accident and he could barely use it. A determined neighbor told Gonzalez he should adopt a dog from the local shelter. He finally gave in and agreed. As they looked over the dogs at the shelter, a purebred Doberman caught Gonzalezs eye. But instead of pulling the Doberman out for Gonzalez to take out for a walk, a shelter employee handed him a leash attached to Ginny, a two year old Siberian Husky/Schnauzer mix, and invited him to walk her first.

Gonzalez wasnt happy; he wanted the Doberman, not some scruffy looking mixed breed, but he did what the worker asked. He tried to hurry Ginny along so he could get back to the Doberman. Now, you can call it fate or something else, but Ginny wasnt going to be rushed. She sat down in front of Gonzalez and refused to move. Sometimes its the dog that picks us. As he stood looking down into her eyes, something tugged at his heart and he forgot about the Doberman. He walked out of the shelter with Ginny. Gonzalez didnt know at the time how that little dog would change his life, and the lives of countless homeless cats.

It wasnt long, however, before Gonzalez discovered that Ginny had a unique ability to find stray and feral cats in peril. Three days after he brought her home, Ginny suddenly darted down an ally to rescue a kitten being abused by some men. She had a remarkable instinct to locate injured, sick and disabled cats living in feral colonies, in abandoned buildings, alleys and around construction sites. She could locate kittens and cats trapped in drain pipes, dumpsters, glove compartments in cars, and in hard to find places. She even dug through a pile of broken glass, ignoring her cut and bleeding paws to reach a kitten trapped under the glass. An astounded vet said the injured kitten would have died if Ginny hadnt found her.

The cats Ginny searched for, and found, were trapped in life and death struggles, and she was the only one who heard their cries for help. She led Gonzalez to them so he could rescue them, and he followed Ginny as she searched for cats in need.

Cats living in feral colonies are skittish. They dont give their trust to a human feeding them let alone a dog. The amazing thing about Ginny was her uncanny ability to instill calm and trust in a colony as she searched out the cats that needed medical attention for one reason or another. The cats acted like they knew her, and showed no signs of fear. Ginny sought out cats that were sick or injured, blind, deaf or had other disabilities. Somehow, she knew if they werent found, they would die.

No one really knows why or how Ginny was able to locate cats in peril. Animal behaviorists believe its possible her maternal instinct was overactive, and thats how she was able to create trust among the cats. Maybe it was because Ginny had been a stray herself, trapped in an abandoned apartment building trying to feed three hungry pups while she was starving. Gonzalez put it more simply as “her radar of the heart.”

Gonzalez estimates he and Ginny rescued 900 to 1,000 lost and feral cats, many of them disabled or close to death. Thats why Ginny was honored by the Westchester Feline Club as their pick for Cat of the Year in 1998. She risked her life at times to locate kittens and cats in dangerous situations.

Angels come in many shapes and sizes. Philip Gonzalez adopted Ginny in 1990 and found his calling because of her, and she saved stray and feral cats that society had turned its back on. Ginny did what she did on her own and without any training. She died August 25, 2005 at the age of 17.

Read more articles by Linda Cole

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Cat and Dogs seeking solutions with sniffing canines and science

Hi Mia and Julie, 

First of all, I LOVE your blog! 

After meeting at SPARCS this past summer (summer for us in North America.. I take it summer is just beginning in Australia!), I’ve followed it closely. 

You do amazing things for the promotion of  canine science. Serious love.

A bit of background for the readers: I’m currently doing my PhD at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Simon Gadbois. 

Dr. Gadbois has an amazing amount of knowledge and experience in the science of sniffing (just check out Gadbois & Reeve, 2014 link below!). 

He’s trained sniffer dogs for the conservation of ribbon snakes and wood turtles, to track coyotes, and to detect invasive pests in lumber. He and I have taken on a different type of project and are studying the intricacies of biomedical detection dogs, specifically, the very interesting phenomenon of Diabetic Alert Dogs. 

Cat Reeve at #SPARCS2014 where she won the Best Emerging Researcher prize

I say interesting because there’s anecdotal evidence suggesting that some dogs alert their owners to hypoglycemic events (low blood sugar). In 2008, Deborah Wells published a series of case studies where dogs were reported as signalling (barking, licking, pawing etc. the individual) while their owners were awake, while they were sleeping, and even when their owners were in a different room with the door closed! And this is with no previous training! 

Isn’t this fantastic! Severe hypoglycemic events can be extremely dangerous for individuals with diabetes. If not treated, they can lead to seizures, comas, and even death. The fact that dogs may be able to alert an individual before a serious hypoglycemic event means less worry about hypoglycaemia unawareness, and blood sugar dropping over night when individuals are unconscious.

Given that dogs are signalling through closed doors, it is assumed that the dogs smell something that alerts them to a change in the physiology of their owner (as opposed to behavioural cues, as is believed to be the case with seizure alert dogs). There are many companies that have taken advantage of this supposed ability, and have trained Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADs) to sell to individuals with diabetes. 

In my own searches, I have found no company that publicly provides information as to how they train their dogs. However, according to recent studies (see Gonder-Frederick et al., 2013 and Rooney et al., 2011 below) these trained DADs dogs contribute greatly to the families of individuals’ with diabetes; they signal consistently and, consequently, significantly reduce the number of hypoglycemic events an individual experiences. 

Now, if it is in fact an olfactory cue that dogs use to identify a drop in blood sugar in their owners, one would expect that if you presented one of these trained DADs with the “scent” of hypoglycemia without the individual present (just like having the owner with diabetes on the other side of a door), the dog would still signal. 

Dehlinger and colleagues recently tested three DADs in a lab setting, presenting the dogs with human biological samples that were obtained identically to the way the samples used to train the dogs were obtained. In this study, none of the three dogs could pick out a hypoglycemic sample from a normoglycemic sample! DARN!

So what is it that these dogs smell? How is it that some DADs are accurate at signalling hypoglycaemia but evidently cannot signal in the lab? 

Enter ME! This is what I’m trying to figure out!

One possibility is that, at least in the study outlined above, the use of sweat samples was misguided. Maybe the volatiles are more strongly present in an individual’s breath. I am currently in the process of testing whether there is one channel more likely than others to expel the volatiles needed to detect a change in blood sugar, i.e. breath, sweat, or saliva. 

So far we’ve found that, after being trained to detect extremely low saliency scents, our dogs can detect and discriminate between human breath samples with incredible ease and accuracy (see the video of Koda discriminating between breath samples). 

Little Koda discriminating between breath samples. The jar that has the check mark on it is the target sample. The jar with the x+ is a different breath sample. When Koda first enters the room, he smells a jar that is the “sample” (it matches the target sample)... This is the smell we want him to find amongst the three jars that are closer to the camera. He chooses the right one!

Preliminary tests with patient samples suggest that our dogs can also tell the difference between breath samples taken from the same individual when their blood sugar was low, when it was normal, and when it was high (unpublished). 

Also, it’s possible that in the Dehlinger et al. (2013) study, the sample collection procedure was simply not sufficient enough to contain the volatiles produced during a hypoglycemic event. With the help of a fantastic chemist at Dalhousie (Dr. Peter Wentzell), we have perfected a procedure that coats cotton balls in silicone oil. This is believed to help contain the volatiles through the *magic of chemistry.  

*may actually be science, not magic - check with the chemists

Another potential is that these DADs are simply responding to a general stress response in the body. It’s possible that DADs (and untrained dogs who signal to their owners) are picking up on the physiological change associated with stress (changes in cortisol, adrenaline etc.). Kind of how people say animals can smell when you’re scared. 

If this is truly what’s happening, you would expect to see DADs giving a lot of false alarms. 

And in fact, personal communication with friends of friends who own DADs tell me that their DADs alert to not only hypoglycemic events, but to asthma attacks, anxiety attacks, etc. If you read carefully, few studies ask owners of DADs if their dog gives a lot of false alarm signals (dog signals to their owner and after the owner checks their blood sugar, they discover that they are not low). 

Isn’t this fascinating? 

The dogs I work with are incredible (shout out to the amazing owners that let me work with their dogs every week), and have incredible work ethic and sniffers. 

Our dogs are extremely motivated to work (because we make it super fun!). This is Nutella on her “break”. She doesn’t want a break. She wants to keep working! She’s whining and pawing at the door of the work room.

With the assistance of these amazing dogs, hopefully Dr. Gadbois and myself will be able to shed light on how exactly DADs do their job in the near future - Ill let you know how we go!


Cat Reeve
PhD Candidate
Dalhousie University
CANADA

Follow Cat on Twitter

Follow the Dalhousie Canid Behaviour Research Team on Facebook

Check out #DogsOfDal on Instagram

Further reading:

Brown S.W. & Strong V. (2001). The use of seizure-alert dogs, Seizure, 10 (1) 39-41. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/seiz.2000.0481 

Dehlinger, K., Tarnowski, K., House, J.L., Los, E., Hanavan, K., Bustamante, B., Ahmann, A.J., & Ward, W.K. (2013). Can trained dogs detect a hypoglycemic scent in patients with Type 1 Diabetes? Diabetes Care (Observations), 36, 98-99. 

Fier, B.M. (2004). Morbidity of hypoglycaemia in type 1 diabetes. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 65, 47-52. 

Gadbois, S., & Reeve, C. (2014). Canine Olfaction: Scent, Sign and Situation. In A.  Horowitz (ed.). Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. New York: Springer. 

Gonder-Frederick L., D. Warren, K. Vajda & J. Shepard (2013). Diabetic Alert Dogs: A Preliminary Survey of Current Users, Diabetes Care, 36 (4) e47-e47. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc12-1998  

Rooney N.J., Morant, S. & Guest, C. (2013). Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type I Diabetes, PLoS ONE, 8 (8) e69921. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069921

Matyka K.A. (2002). Sweet dreams? - nocturnal hypoglycemia in children with type 1 diabetes, Pediatric Diabetes, 3 (2) 74-81. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1034/j.1399-5448.2002.30203.x   

Wells D.L., Lawson S.W. & Siriwardena A.N. Canine responses to hypoglycemia in patients with type 1 diabetes., Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.), PMID: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19040375

© Cat Reeve | Do You Believe in Dog? 2014

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The First Miss America Is Not as Cute as the Dog

The dog is Long Goodie. The woman is Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., the very first Miss America in 1921. This picture was taken in 1925.

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Dogs and Babies Blog Has Moved

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that the Dogs and Babies blog has moved. The blog contains excellent articles by dog behavior consultant and dog/child relationship expert Madeline Gabriel. If you have children and dogs or are expecting a new baby with a dog in the home, we recommend that you check out the information in this blog. Here is the link to the new location: http://www.dogsandbabieslearning.com/blog/

 Here are some recent posts:

should dogs lick babies

life with baby just another day at the office

your dog is not your baby ... and thats ok

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Doggone Safe Named as Finalist for a Classy Award!

The CLASSY Awards is the largest philanthropic awards ceremony in the USA, recognizing the most outstanding philanthropic achievements by charities, businesses and individuals nationwide.

More than 2,000 nominations were submitted to StayClassy for consideration. After a vetting process, StayClassy posted each nomination as an article on the CLASSY Awards Achievements Blog (www.stayclassy.org/stories) to put a national spotlight on amazing philanthropic stories. Doggone Safe rallied their supporters to generate at least 100 Facebook ‘Likes’ on their article to qualify them for the judging round. Out of thousands of nominations, the judges narrowed the list down to the Top 25 most inspiring and impactful in each category. Doggone Safe is a finalist in the category: Most Effective Awareness Campaign.

The Top 10 Finalists will be determined by public vote and announced on August 30th. The winners will be recognized live on-stage at the Oscars-style CLASSY Awards ceremony in San Diego on September 17th.

A Charitable Event to Remember

The 3rd Annual CLASSY Awards competition will culminate at a red-carpet awards ceremony on Saturday, September 17 in San Diego, California. It will feature celebrity appearances, chart-topping music talent, nonprofit and technology leaders, and thousands of CLASSY Awards supporters. More than $150,000 in cash and prizes will be donated to support the charitable efforts of the 12 National CLASSY Awards Winners.

This year’s CLASSY Awards weekend will also feature the CLASSY Collaborative, a day-long networking event on Friday, September 16 at the W Hotel San Diego. Participants will have the opportunity to meet, mingle and share ideas with some of the foremost leaders in philanthropy, technology, innovation, and entertainment.

How You Can Help

Doggone Safe needs your vote in order to make it into the top 10. Doggone Safe is a finalist in the category: Most Effective Awareness Campaign. You may also like to vote in some of the other categories to help support other terrific charities. There are two others who are helping Doggone Safe with promotion and we hope that you will take a look and consider giving them your vote as well. These are:

Rock to Stop Violence - Rock N Roll movement to end violence and abuse and to seek support for survivors of violence and abuse. Finalist for Best New Charity

Amanda Evrard - Amanda is the the volunteer coordinator of Helotes Humane Society, and also volunteers with Homeward Bound and San Antonio Great Dane Rescue. Finalist for Young Non-Profit Leader of the Year.

CLICK HERE to vote

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Do As I Do Copy Cat Social Imitation in Dog Training

Join us for another guest post, this time from Claudia Fugazza of the Family Dog Project in Budapest. Claudias here to discuss her recent publication in Applied Animal Behaviour Science on the efficiency of new methods in dog training.

Hi Mia and Julie,

Formal training methods used until now rely mainly on the well-known rules of individual associative learning. These methods work perfectly well for a very wide range of animals — pigeons, rats, dogs and even crabs — and human and non-human animals can learn by ‘click and treat,’ as noted in the popular training book by Karen Pryor.

However, recent research has found substantial evidence that dogs could be predisposed to acquire information socially via the ‘Do as I do’ method. Do as I Do is a relatively new training method for people to use, based on dogs’ social cognitive skills, particularly on their imitative ability. 

With this training technique, dogs learn new behaviors by observing and copying their handler. The dog is a copycat. This method relies on social learning, and it was recently introduced in the applied field of dog training. 

As this method has started spreading in the dog training world, we felt that its efficiency and efficacy needed scientific testing. We were also wanting to know whether this method would be more or less efficient than other current training methods in training for particular behaviors.

We expected that dogs would more easily copy object-related actions from a human demonstrator so we tested dogs’ efficiency in this kind of tasks. To do this, I travelled across Italy and the UK with my video-cameras as well as a heavy Ikea cabinet filled with objects (you can imagine the weird looks I got from security personal at checkpoints!). I used these objects to test dogs learning to open or close drawers and lockers, pick up items from it etc. Since training methods can be affected by the skills of the trainer, only experienced dog-owners pairs who achieved a certificate either for the ‘Do as I do’ method or for shaping / clicker training were included in the study. Each pair was tested using ‘his’ method for teaching three different object-related actions in three testing sessions.

We expected that the ‘Do as I do’ method would prove more efficient for teaching complex tasks, compared to the shaping method that relies on individual learning. This expectation comes from what we know in humans: we tend to rely more on social learning when required to learn something difficult.

Our research found that the ‘Do as I do’ method proved more efficient for teaching dogs complex tasks, like close a drawer, open a locker and pick up an item that was inside (i.e., the time needed by the owner to obtain the first correct performance of the predetermined action was shorter with the ‘Do as I do’ method compared to shaping). We did not find a significant difference in the efficiency of the methods for teaching dogs simple tasks like knocking over a bottle or ringing a bell.

Now that we know a bit more on how to efficiently teach complex object-related actions, we are curious to know what happens when we want to teach different kind of complex actions, like body movements. We also want to know whether introducing social learning in dog training could have an effect on learning cues for trained action. 

We are aware that learning rates can be influenced by many factors, and we acknowledge that this study is just a very first step towards a more scientific approach to training paradigms. However we believe that this kind of information can be very important for the practitioners working in the applied field of dog training. We hope that the readers will not misinterpret the results and will not extend them to different actions and situations that were not tested.

Furthermore we would like to emphasize that, despite being efficient for training some kinds of actions, the ‘Do as I do’ method does not replace the methods based on individual learning (for example think of how many actions are not imitable at all if the demonstrator is a human and the learner is a dog!). Instead ‘Do as I do’ is a useful (and fun!) addition to existing training paradigms. Experienced dog trainers may find effective ways to mix the different training techniques in order to obtain the best results with each dog. 

Claudia Fugazza
Do as I Do Book and DVD
http://www.apprendimentosociale.it/en/claudia-fugazza/
Family Dog Project 

Reference 
Fugazza C. & Miklósi Á. (2014). Should old dog trainers learn new tricks? The efficiency of the Do as I do method and shaping/clicker training method to train dogs, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 153 53-61. DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2014.01.009

© Do You Believe in Dog? 2014
p.s. Check out this dogs excellent jump!

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Women as handlers of blood tracking dogs

by John and Jolanta Jeanneney

updated November 13, 2013
 

Many women love to work with dogs, and we  have long wondered why they have dominated the field of Search and Rescue but rarely became involved with dogs for tracking wounded big game. Now the old pattern  is beginning to change, and some of the most active "blood trackers" in the USA are women. Some of them are taking calls and finding deer in numbers that any man would be proud of.

For male hunters it may come as a surprise to learn that the majority of female trackers are not hunters themselves. So how did they become involved in blood tracking in the first place? And what keeps them going? We asked the question some women handlers who are very active in the field and included their answers below.

For some women their starting point was a deep love for their dog. They tried to honor and realize their dogs full potential. Willette Brown, who is not a hunter, described it well in her post about Trackfest when she said: "I have this totally awesome dog, and when I watch her work my pride is bigger than all of my misgivings or fears, and all I want is to understand her more deeply and help her become the best she can be."

Later the challenge of  finding the game might motivate the women trackers even further. Males who hunt can well understand and appreciate the psychology of this.  Tracking together in cooperation with a  dog is important for these hunter/trackers too, but they also find that tracking becomes, in a way, an emotional extension of hunting.

Lets make it clear that the new wave of  women cant be boxed into a single category as non-hunters. Some women are passionate hunters, like most men who track. Pam Maurier, Paulene Eggers and Lee Behrens are good examples. They  hunt and track with passion.

So lets hear what the women said themselves.

Susanne: I originally got a dachshund from Germany just because I loved the breed.  Little did I know that this dog would change my life for ever! I got involved in blood tracking when Buster was about six month old. My friends from NY, the Jeanneneys, convinced me I had an awesome dog, who was born to track and I got hooked.
     Blood tracking is unbelievably complex. You never know where you end up, what the terrain might be like, what people you meet, and what the circumstances of the hit are until the track is over and you have put together all the many pieces of the puzzle...  does that make me an adventurer??
Perhaps yes, but for sure none of this would pull me to go out there at all hours, at night, early cold mornings, or wet and windy days or getting stuck waist deep in swamps, except that watching my little dogs work is the most amazing and rewarding experience and it fills my heart with pride and joy.
     Over the 11 years Ive been tracking wounded game, I have met the most amazing people in my journeys and Ive made many friends for life!  I have had some incredible mentors who never tire to give me information when I ask them about something I have not encountered before! John Jeannenay, Tom Di Pietro and Troy Wallace are largely responsible for helping me understand "the game" so much more every year.
     While I am still learning something from every track, I have started mentoring a new generation of Maine trackers and hope to pay it forward.
     What keeps me going when Im tired or cold or the weather isnt inviting is compassion for the hunters out there who search for days and days for a deer they think is laying dead. To me putting them at peace of mind is almost as important as finding the deer.

Pam: My passion for hunting got me into it and knowing there was a better chance out there to help with recovering game. I am all for helping my fellow hunters and I love meeting new people. Seeing Tucker doing what he loves most and the amazing work he does, and seeing the reward at the end of the track - it cant get any better. Just love helping out as much as I can.

Judy: I must say that I got involved with blood tracking only by coincidence years ago.  I used to be an avid deer hunter and I had a JRT puppy named Bear.  Bear would go hunting with me -- staying in my vehicle for the couple of hours I was in the stand.  If I ever shot a deer, I would always go and get Bear to go with me to find the deer.  With time and repeated trials, Bear seemed to understand what was to be done and became more and more efficient at finding deer.  His love for doing this along with my enjoyment of it have kept me motivated.  Also, finding deer for a hunter who has been unable to track the blood has been very rewarding. I love being in the woods and love to have a companion (Pup) enjoying it with me.  The communication that Bear and I have in tracking wounded deer has continued also to keep me motivated.   I talk with Bear as we try to find the deer--his vocabulary and understanding me--makes this a team effort.  Dont really know why, but I had rather track a deer these days than hunt a deer myself.

Joanne: I have always loved hearing my friend Susannes stories about tracking. Tracking was legalized four years ago in New Hampshire. I attended a UBT clinic in Laconia. It was very interesting and the speakers shared passion, adventure, technology and enthusiasm. I came home and started laying lines. Angie loved following the lines and I so enjoyed watching her. It was fun and games. Our first track was a success on many levels and I never looked back. You cant make these stories up! Nobody mentioned the waist deep swamps.

Paulene: I saw an article in the outdoors news about five years ago about a Deer Search member 

who was a woman and had a long haired dachshund. I saved the article as I was so fascinated with it. I mentioned it to Laura my partner and she then gave me a 10-week-old WHD puppy with Johns book as a Christmas gift. That was a year later. I was hooked completely after attending a Deer Search competition in Campbell. I only went there to observe and did not even plan to try Braylee out as she had such minimal training but the FLC members encouraged us to try to certify her. She did wonderfully and was certified before I was even a member or certified myself. What keeps me going is how much Braylee loves to go tracking and how thrilling it is to have a recovery. Often times it is overwhelming and very exhausting but I love it.

Claudia: I am married to an avid hunter and tracker. Listening to Rays tales about his tracks made tracking sound interesting. After we bred Rosco we decided to keep one of his pups (Razen) knowing that I would be her handler. There is lots to know about tracking, every track is a learning experience for both myself and Razen. Ray and I keep each other going hoping to find that deer? We also have our tales to tell whether we successfully find the deer or not. What keeps you going back for the next track is knowing that you are going to find that deer (hopefully) and if you do, seeing your dog with its prize and seeing how excited the hunter is seeing his hunt completed. You meet  a lot of nice, friendly people along the way. Besides having a tracking dog you have the best friend and companion you could ever ask for.

Sally: My motivation for getting involved is pretty simple.  Dogs and being out in the woods are two of my favorite things.  About 8 years ago, a friend of mine told me how he had someone with a dog find his deer which was the first time I’d heard of dogs tracking wounded deer.  Of course, the person who found his deer was Tom with Musket.  To me, there’s nothing better than being out in the woods with a dog, and the thought of doing that with a purpose really appealed to me.  

     I’ve never been interested in hunting, so that part of it doesn’t interest me at all.  In fact, the hunting part is actually something I struggle with.  We only get called with things go wrong, and it can be pretty ugly.  It’s difficult for me to see what sometimes happens to these animals, and it stays with me for days.   As you can imagine, having to shoot a deer myself is not my favorite thing, but the alternative is worse.   At least I can do it now without my hand shaking.  

     As far as what keeps me going, most of it is the sheer fun of working a dog who loves his work.  It drives me nuts how some people treat their dogs like spoiled children.  Dogs are happiest when they’re allowed to be dogs, and when Petey tracks, he is a dog doing what he is supposed to be doing.  It’s very satisfying to me and just seems right.  

     The challenge of it also keeps me going.  If we found every deer we tracked, it would be boring and not nearly as meaningful.  Even though it can be pretty frustrating, I stubbornly keep at it because you never know – the next track could be that epic find you’ll be talking about for years.  It’s kind of like gambling – the jackpot could be just around the corner.

     I also like meeting and working with the hunters.  This came as a surprise to me as I’m not much of a people person.  Talking deer and dogs with someone I just met is so much easier than making awkward small talk at a party.  It gives me a comfortable way to interact with people and actually enjoy their company.  

     Of course, when you find a deer, it’s like winning a gold medal.  The hunter is happy, I’m proud of my dog, and Petey and I get to be heroes for the day.  You can’t beat that.

     One last thing that makes tracking fun for me is being friends with Tom and Chris.  I called Tom out of the blue when I decided to get into tracking, and from the very beginning, they’ve been nothing but helpful and friendly.  Tom can talk tracking for hours, and he’s always been more than willing to answer questions and give advice.  We talk every few days during tracking season to swap stories, complain about bad calls, etc.  They’re a lot of fun to be around and don’t take themselves or tracking too seriously, and they definitely make tracking more fun for me.

 

Chris: The original motivation for tracking was to spend time with my husband, Tom, who loved tracking more than hunting.  I love to be in the woods and he would always ask me to go with him, so I would go and help him spot blood.  I also love a working dog and truly enjoyed watching Musket unravel the puzzle to find the deer.  My motivation to continue is to train our newest tracking dogs, Scout (WHD) and Addie (BMH) and to help the hunting community find their deer.  It is very rewarding to find a deer that the hunter could not find him/herself. My favorite weekend to track is our Youth weekend.   It makes you feel so good to help a young hunter find his/her very first deer.  Other motivations are that it keeps me in good health and you meet so many interesting people.  I remember my first years of tracking, I would be so exhausted.  Running up & down mountains and through swamps and thickets is very tiring.  Tom and I started training for sprint triathlons to keep us in shape for the "tracking" season. Just another thing we could do together.  Now I can track for hours and still get up the next day and do it all over again.  The hunters are very appreciative when we come out to help them and we have made many friends through our tracking connections.  I love the time I get to spend with Tom, in the woods with my dogs.  Its my favorite time of year.

Pictures are presented in alphabetical order according to womens first name. Names have links to websites or more info about the womens tracking services.

Barbie Wills from Concord, NH, tracks with wirehaired and shorthair dachshunds.

Claudia Holohan lives in Ashkum, Illinois and she tracks with a wirehaired dachshund Razen. 

Cheri Faust and her dachshund Danika live in Madison, Wisconsin. Cheri is a Secretary and Board member of the United Blood Trackers. 

Chris DiPietro lives in Jericho, VT and she her husband Tom track with 
wirehaired dachshunds and a Bavarian Mountain Hound.

Joanne Greer from Chester, NH tracks with wirehaired dachshund Angie. 

Jolanta Jeanneney from Berne, NY, usually tracks with her husband John and their wirehaired dachshunds. She is on the Board of the United Blood Trackers.

Lindsay Ware from Ellsworth, Maine, tracks with her black Lab Gander.

Louise La Branche from Maricourt, Quebec, has imported four wirehaired dachshunds from Germany. She uses them for tracking and breeding.

Pam Maurier from Manchester, NH is part of Lightning Mountain Outfitters and she tracks with a wirehaired dachshund Tucker.

Paulene Eggers from Syracuse, NY  is a member of Deer Search Of Finger Lakes
and her tracking partner is a wirehaired dachshund Braylee.

Sally Marchmont from Fairfax, VT tracks with a wirehaired dachshund Petey. 

This is Shannon Smiths from Fowlerville, MI, first deer tracking season.
Her black Lab River has been in training since January 2013.

This is a first tracking season for Sherry Ruggieri from Mantua, NJ, and her wirehaired dachshund imported from Hungary Niya. What a great first recovery! 

Susanne Hamilton from Montville, Maine tracks with two dachshunds, Buster and Meggie. She is on the Board of the United Blood Trackers and is a recipient the Maine Bowhunters Association Award. 

Willette Brown from Union, Miane, tracks with wirehaired dachshunds Quilla and Bridger.

Be safe in the woods and keep on tracking!

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