The Working Dog - Full Documentary (Part 1/4)

Throughout history, dogs have lived and worked with us. Most dogs are friendly, smart, and loyal. There are some dogs that rise above the rest. Man's best friend isn't enough for these dogs. Their energy and drive is so strong that it becomes obvious they need a job. They need to work. It's believed that dogs evolved from wolves, who gathered near our settlements roughly 8,000 to 15,000 years ago. While it took generations to become truly comfortable with us, it's that bond that we now rely on from our modern canine friends. Throughout the ages, dogs have been our partners, whether leading us on the hunt or standing with us in battle. It's a tradition that continues to this day in the form of working dogs. They serve and protect us, not only at home, but as valuable members of search and rescue, police, and military units. It's obvious that we depend on the natural skills of dogs. But what are the qualities that make our relationship with dogs so successful? We have a very bad sense of smell, actually. Our olfactory bulb, which is the part of the brain that processes smell, is tiny in humans compared to dogs. Their brain is really wired to process the world based on scent. They really do get a sense for how the world is shaped around them based on the scents that are coming at them from different angles. The dogs' sense of smell and their perception is so keen that they can pick up on almost imperceptible changes in your body chemistry. There's evidence, for instance, for cancer detection that are actually much better than some of the current diagnostic tools that we have. Look how many dogs are trained to help with seizures and mental health or therapy. It's because dogs have this way of just sensing and really knowing how to act appropriately, and they make people feel good. To become a great working dog, it takes more than an incredible sense of smell. A working dog needs to have a strong drive. Drive is the way we humans describe a dog's desire to use their natural instincts. It's a collection of mental and physical abilities which dogs received from their wolf ancestors. One of the things we do look for for a working dog is their drive. It's the dog's ability to want to find something, how they naturally search, and how much energy and focus they can put onto that. There's a very good test for seeing if the dogs have enough drive to do search, which is throwing their ball. If there is a toy that they like, like a ball or a tug toy, and you see that that dog will do anything for it, they'll jump over whatever, they'll search for it, it all comes down to their drive. For a dog, scent and drive are a way of life. Working with a handler, now that takes practice. When dog and handler learn to work together and harness those natural talents, they become a team. It's a relationship that balances a never-ending regimen of training with plenty of rewards. There's a toy there for sure, but a lot of them, lots of pats, lots of hugs, good dog, good dog, you know, it's very exciting, and that's really important because then in training, he's always going to get a reward, so we always keep that motivation up as high as it can be. It is a big game to them, and that's how we train them. They want to find that person because they want their reward. However, in saying that, dogs are very in tune and sensitive to people who are hurt or dying or upset. Dogs read us and understand us way better than we could ever understand them. Their ability to read body language, to sense whether it's from breath or body odor and so forth, the pheromones that we're excreting. That's the thing is we have a relationship with our dogs. We connect with them. We can read them. The relationship between a handler and their dog is critical. The bond between the two is established during countless hours of training. Without a strong bond, the dog's contribution can be severely diminished. With a service dog that I would train, a very intense part of the training is with the new handler to ensure that the dog and the handler are a team. So much of it is to get us up to the standard that the dog is. My dad always used to tell me when I was growing up, remember it's never ever the dog's fault. You're the one teaching it. So if it's not doing what you want, you're not explaining it properly. Dogs rely on their handler for direction. It's like a conversation because the handler needs feedback too. The response from the dog is referred to as indication, which is the voice of a working dog. Active indication is where we want a dog to indicate that there's a live person there. They want to get as close to that source as they can. The reason for that is they believe they're going to get that tug of war again. So they'll actually start digging. So for the avalanche, it's quite easy for us. When the dog starts digging, that means he's found something. Oh yeah, what do you got, bud? What do you got? Get it out of there. Get it out of there. Good job. I've told people that I've yet to ever have a bottle of medication wake me up in the middle of the night at 4.30 when I'm having a nightmare and help get me down from that whole scenario. There's this interesting idea with anecdotal evidence, with children with type 1 diabetes, that dogs can detect and give an alert when there's an hypoglycemic state. Passive indication is something that we use when we don't want the dog to come in contact. It might be evidence, so we don't want the dog touching it, or whether there's some danger in them touching it. Our dogs are passive in the explosive profile for obvious reasons. We don't want them picking the bomb up and bringing it back to us. We just want them to tell us where it is. So when my dog locates something, the dogs will put their nose as close to it as they can. They're taught not to touch anything, but they'll put their nose on it and they sit. They'll turn and look at me, and then they'll look back at where it's at, as if to say, OK, I'm sitting, I'm looking at where it's at, where's my reward? The dog doesn't always finish on the high, but these are rare cases. Just so the dog knows that this may happen, we're still always trying to reinforce the fact that you're doing this for fun, and you're doing this to get that big, big reward at the end of it. These dogs love their job. They love to work. They have a need to be on the go all the time. When we're training or when we're deploying a dog, we expect them to be game on. And in return, what we allow them to be is, in their off time, they can be a dog. Having that bit of definition helps to keep their expectations straight about, tomorrow I'm going back to work. It's amazing how much they love it. I mean, I don't see them as a tool. I see them as literally a research assistant that has a set of skills that no human can actually match. Find a driven dog with an incredible sense of smell and a handler that is committed to understanding his furry partner, and you have a powerful team. Together, they can accomplish just about anything, and sometimes their work can be quite unusual. A hundred years ago, some biologists were starting to get the point that they could use their hunting dog to actually follow the species they wanted to study. It's a known tool, a good tool, and it's also non-invasive, which is something we really like about it. Dr. Simon Gadbois uses his knowledge of dogs to complement a particular form of conservation research. Using high-energy dogs that are naturally born to work, these dogs are able to search large areas of habitat, seeking out endangered species without disturbing or harming the wildlife. While Simon and his students spend a lot of time at Dalhousie University, the real fun is in the wilderness. This is Zila. This is our senior tracking dog, and I've had her since she was about two years old. She's from a rescue, and she was very, very intense, and she mellowed down with age, fortunately. She's a great dog. Focusing on specific areas of Nova Scotia, Zila, who was rescued from a shelter, now has the chance to save the lives of ribbon snakes and wood turtles. So she's a multitasking kind of dog, basically doing a lot of different species, so it's been relatively easy. I think she knows when we go in a specific location, this is a wood turtle day versus a ribbon snake day. She's very consistent at all of the skills that you want in a sniffer dog, so she's good at detection, discrimination, trailing, tracking, and she'll probably participate in some of the other research that we have going on. The point is to try and understand, basically, the state of the population of ribbon snakes and wood turtles in the province. We basically need to survey and monitor that population, and that's where the dogs come in, helping us doing this in a more accurate way. When you can hear the sniffing like this and the tail goes, that's a good sign. So when we train the dogs, we're looking for very, very specific skills, and for the conservation dogs, it's actually quite a demanding training process, and also we need to bring those dogs to the field, sometimes for weeks at a time. Surprisingly, scent is not necessarily the most important thing, because there's a whole kind of package we're looking for. So they can't be aggressive, they can't be barky dogs, so these are basic things we're looking for. Then basic obedience, because you want to be able to control the dog. Again, a very strong play drive is something that we like, responsive to praise. And for the scent, it's just the basic skills. I mean, other people may look for other things. I mean, for instance, if you work with sniffer dogs, but for police forces, you may want a different set of skills. For instance, they may want, in that case, an aggressive dog. For us, that's a big no-no, especially if they have to work with wildlife. We don't select dogs that would injure or even touch the animals. Most of the time, they're not interested. When they find it, usually they're way too happy to turn towards you and wait for the ball to come out of your bag. It's not about playing with the snake or the turtle. You know, we never had any incidents whatsoever, but again, it's because we select our dogs well. I would not trust just any dog to do this kind of work. Zila and her co-workers are some of the best in the business. But even a seasoned sniffer dog like Zila can have a day or two without finding a turtle or a snake. Often we find the turtles in the alders here all along, sometimes right in the middle of the field as well, sometimes closer to the water. At this time of year, we don't actually really know where they spend time, so that's been the whole issue, is to try to figure out exactly where they are. The reason why we're using dogs is because it's extremely difficult to see anything visually. They learn very quickly to depend almost entirely on the nose to find the animals, and that's great for us because it completes what we do. So it's a fantastic team. One is very visual, with a bit more of a bird's-eye view, and the other one is right to the ground with the nose. That's how we find more animals, basically, than if we just have humans. And I can't tell you how many times, at the edge of this field, for instance, the whole team had literally walked by the turtle, and then the dog is behind and looks down and points at the turtle. It's quite remarkable, actually. We've had a few people coming to us and say, we don't agree with working dogs. Dogs shouldn't be working for people. Well, to that I respond, too late. We should have addressed this question 8 or 15,000 years ago when we started creating working dogs. We can't now, within a few generations, say, oh no, sorry, border collies, you should be couch potatoes. Maybe some dogs, but ours need to work to be happy. If they don't work, they're not happy. They'll trash somebody's apartment or house. They need a job. Now, I'm not sure I would drag a chihuahua in the field to look for coyotes, but, you know, that's the whole purpose of having different breeds with different purposes. Good girl.