Elevated Hides in Scenario based Training

This K9 team successfully completed my detection scenario station at the Colorado K9 Conference. In this evolution, the team conducted a single-blind search, knowing only that they had two rooms to search without any information about the presence of hides. In one of the rooms, there was a narcotics hide weighing about half a pound, placed in the ceiling roughly 10 feet above the ground. As demonstrated, the team, like many others, noticed their dogs signaling "Something is here," despite the complexity being beyond the usual straightforward training scenarios.

Typically, the dog's odor training involves simpler and more accessible hides, unlike the challenging contexts encountered in real searches. This advanced training is designed to help handlers interpret their dogs' behavior in situations resembling actual operational deployments. The goal is to make training more realistic, identify any gaps, and allow teams to experience failure in a controlled setting to reduce the likelihood of failures during real searches.