Search & Rescue - Interesting Findings

I've been in search & rescue training for a long time, 4.5 years to be exact. The civil defence officers are very attentive to us and will cater our training accordingly to our level. Since I have been here for a while, they will placed more challenging 'victims' for me to search. Nowadays, I have been given search tasks that involves victim(s) hidden behind walls / next room, underground tunnels, dark room training, height training i.e. victim on the second floor etc. As I am shorter than their usual canines, there is sometimes a limit to how high I can smell.. heehee. (sooo... it is true that taller beings have better air quality!). Nevertheless, HC urged me not to give up and I am glad that I am still very enthusiatic over the training.

Last week, the officers showed me a search task that has very puzzling results from their official working dogs. They re-enact the task for me to see how I react to it.



As you can see, I am on the second floor and the victim is on the first floor. There is a huge hole that is covered by thick glass panel, with a tiny gap to let air from first floor to travel upwards. Our vision is different from the humans, and we couldn't see that the hole was covered by the glass panel, and we avoided stepping on it as we thought it was an uncovered hole.

And the puzzling thing happen.

HC can tell from my body language that I am excited by the victim's scent and was trying desperately to locate the exact source. I even put my head into the tiny gap of the glass panel covering the hole (imagine my head in first floor, and body on second floor). Yet, in the end. I indicated (by barking) that the scent is on the ceiling of the second floor instead of the first floor. HC concluded that the scent that travels from first floor to second floor gets 'trapped' on the ceiling of second floor and that's why I indicated there. But she is puzzled how I could have put my head in the gap of first floor but not sensed the victim. The officers said that their working dogs gave very weird results too, and one of them even went to the next room (on second floor) and indicated there.


mmmmmmm.... I can't wait to see what more challenging tasks there's for me next week!