Train for a Rescue Dog

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ty Brown, with dogbehavioronline.com. I'm here today in Riverton, Utah, teaching you how to train a dog. The topic of today's discussion is teaching you how to train for a rescue dog. Now, a rescue dog serves a very, a very useful purpose. People get lost all the time out in the woods or out in the open, and can't find their way back. They may be injured or something like that, and so the rescue dog serves a very important function of finding lost hikers, finding lost travelers, finding lost people that have, that have lost their way. Now, you can actually start training a rescue dog from a very young age. From the time the dog is a puppy you can even make it much of a game. You can have someone hold the dog while you the dog owner run off and just hide around a corner. You release the dog as you give the dog, as you give the command to search, and when the dog finds you he gets tons of praise, and and it's just this big game. As the dog progresses in this training you make the searches longer, you make them harder, you put up more obstacles, and soon the dog starts to realize if I really want to find this person I have to use all of my senses. I have to listen for him, I have to smell him, I have to look for him. And so in this way, you have a dog that's very, that uses all of his skills and all of his senses in order to find people. As the dog progresses in this, then you take it out for real, and you go out into the woods, and you have people hide, and you give the dog the scent of that person and encourage the dog to find them. When the dog finds that person, you've already set that person up with maybe some treats, or maybe a ball if the dog really enjoys the ball, or some other reward that's very motivating for that dog. Over time, the dog will start to understand the scent of this person mixed with me going out and finding him ends up with a fun game and a fun reward. And so that's how you train a dog, a rescue dog."