Working wolfdogs

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

Hi,
after all these discussions about working abilities (for me it's definitely different to sport abilities) of our dogs and being very happy this evening, I wanted to share this story:
After a severe car accident a 59 year old women disappeared from the hospital at the 4th of Jan. and showed up one village further close to Cologne. After the police did refuse to call mantrailers the family looked for private trailers on their own and I got a call on Saturday morning. After they already had several trailers there we agreed to phone the next morning if we were needed
At Sunday noon she called me and asked us to come. We went there with 2 wolfdogs (Falin and her son Koljan) , one Tervueren and one Schnauzer-Mix and four handlers and arrived there quite late due to a quite far travel distance.
We sorted out the confused informations of sightings and trails of the former days on a map and decided to check the two possibilities to cross the motorway to the next village as she had been seen there the day before at a shopping center. The teams with Koljan and the mix found older trails on one side but Falin found an extremely fresh one, that was confirmed by the Tervueren, on the other side; we lost the trail at the end of a very big sport/school area in some kind of park at some very dense bushy area. We couldn´t continue there because it was totally dark, no way to trail there further on at night. We called all teams over to our side, checked the whole area around it for trails and though we had no chance to make a direct find, we could establish a movement sheme of the person and give some advice where to look for her at what times of the day. The family informed the police who picked her up today in exactly the area we suggested she would come back to!

I can´t tell you how proud I am of my great wolfdog! We searched from about 5 p.m. till 11.30 p.m. and when we decided to stop, Falin still was keen to go on and asked for more this morning (I am totally knackered, we returned at 2.30 a.m). For me this is what I look for in a working dog.

Ina

[saschia]

Congratulations, hope now you'll get some well-deserved rest and Falin some well-deserved treats

It really is great when the wolfdogs are used for real work and I hope people who need working dogs will look to the breed more. Thanks for sharing and for being a good example!

[wolfin]

congrats!!!!!!!!!!!! I very proud for Falin great job a team

p.s. I hope we meet in this summer

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

I have to correct the story as I just got a message from the family. The woman showed up at the policestation in the area we said she would very likely move to in the morning and asked them to bring her home! We passed the station the day before on the very fresh trail. What she told them till now confirms the trailers.

[yukidomari]

congratulations!!

[AMERICANI]

That ROCKS Michael!!! Way to represent!

[Rona]

Congratulations!

[Shadowlands]

Congratulations Falin, Ina and everyone else involved The family must be so relieved to have her home

This is something I would love to get into with our puppy, but don't know where to start Is it something I can do myself or do we need a trainer? I don't imagine for one minute we would ever be as good as Falin, but it would be a good exercise for her

[woland77]

Hello Ina, really good work, congratulation for you and Altaj, this apptitude of wolfdogs would be developped!!!

[Sir Allen]

Congratz. Very Good.

[Ricky's Wolf]

Congratulation Ina!

[plongeuse]

Congratulations Ina and Falin !

[jeannie]

Hello Ina,

very good job - this motivates to continue our training!
Please go forward with your plans - you and your dogs are good enough for rescue work as it was shown last weekend. And some police was already involved .

Stefan (and please post this story in the German forum )

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

Hello,

to give some further impressions of Altai´s (Falin`s) work here is the trail of our last training of today.
Track 10 Pfungstadt 19.2.12.jpg .
It was a 7 hour old trail of a person going by bus. We started in about the middle of the trail at a very big crossing. Both dogs lost the trail at the point where the person changed into the tram and showed a clear negativ after checking the bus station there. Very interesting as trams seem to be much more "closed" than cars or busses.
6*C, snow at some parts, quite windy. Trail length was 2,64 km, average speed 5.1 km/h, time 31,22 min.

Ina

[woland77]

Super!! what is the mode tofollowing the smell of the person on the bus, from bus the person lost smell?

[michaelundinaeichhorn]

Hello Alessio,

I am not sure if I got your question right so if I answer the wrong thing just tell me.
You loose thousands of skincells and other debris moving around all the time. They drift upwards with the warm air around your body and then sink to the floor. So you leave a continous trail of them everywhere you go. Cars, and busses are kind of cars, have a forced ventilation (direct translation, no idea how you call it on English), meaning even when the windows are closed and the ventilation is shut of they blow out some air and with it your debris. A well trained and good dog is able to follow this extremely small amount. To my astonishment that doesn´t seem to be the case with trams, though Altai seemed to smell some hint she told me the trail ended at the point the person changed from bus into tram. It might be that she couldn´t sort out the fact the the fresher trail was much less than the older one. I will try a tram some time in future again. But anyway this is one of the important informations you get while training. If our dogs loose the trail close to rails ist is very likely the person took the tram there. You would then continue the tram route and check at the stops if the person left there or not. The dog will find a trail or show a negative.

Ina

[woland77]

Hello Ina, yes, your answer is perfect for my question. Is very very intersting, i love all about nose perception..