Stuff You Should Know - How Search and Rescue Dogs Work

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

All dogs are great, but some dogs work harder than others. Or play harder, depending on your view. Learn all about the good boys and girls who find lost people and recover bodies to bring humans peace and closure. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Welcome to stuff you should know from house.works.com Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and First time ever guest producer Andrew It's very exciting. Yeah, I thought you were saying he was a ghost or something Well, no, he's right beside you, right, but I mean he could be an illusion Or one of those

Like the ghosts that I saw that didn't look like a ghost. That was just a solid form sure Aka a ghost. Yeah, we could use more ghost producers We could you know. Yeah, don't have to pay benefits No, we don't have to do anything. Yep. You just pretty great go press a button in and die. Oh So Chuck yes, I don't know if you remember several months ago We released an episode and it was a good one if you ask me. Yeah, it was about search and rescue Okay, do you remember the episode? Sar Right and there was like you saw urban search and rescue wilderness search and rescue and in that episode

I was like man, we have to do an episode on search and rescue dogs. Well by God Today is the day we're doing it the only time we've ever followed up on a promise in our career The prophecy has been fulfilled. That's right. So we're talking today about search and rescue dogs and this First of all this article is just genuine bonafide how stuff works quality from the olden days Yeah, just checks all those boxes, doesn't it every box That's that's that's mark one in the favor of this episode that it's based on that article mark two is That it's about dogs and how much how great dogs are and I just had a really good time researching this one Yeah, it's funny like during reading this whole thing and all this research in my head. I just kept thinking good boy. Good girl

Mm-hmm. I just kept saying that over and over. Yeah, just petting on behind the ears. Oh, yeah in your mind so When we're talking about star dogs, we're talking about search and rescue dogs dogs that are trained to go find people Right there. They do two things. There's two components to a search and rescue dogs job It is to find people and then to let their handler know that they found the person, right? Sure because of a dog They just find someone doesn't let anyone know Those be sitting around licking faces all day, right? You're like, yes, you you found me No, go get help and the dogs like I don't know although I did like seeing what was that one dog called?

that's trained to To like to stay there instead of going to to alert everyone else a victim loyalty is that behavior? Yeah, and I think that's the case if there's if like someone is injured They may need that dog to just stay there and start barking instead of saying hey I'm gonna run and find someone and let and let them know that you're not okay, right? So what however they alert as long as they alert that's good That's the second part of the job as long as they don't wander off and like find a craps game to engage in without telling anybody that They found the person who's stranded in the wilderness, right?

Which would not happen with a star dog because they can focus like nobody's business, right, right? So star dogs are Professional working dogs, right? Just as much as like a herding dog on a farm who actually does that work Or a canine unit dog or one of the Beagle Brigade. We've talked about them before. Yeah It's a it's a working dog, but the the article that Julia Layton wrote points out and I think really just kind of changed my Perspective on things and opened up my eyes that what the dog is really doing is playing. Yeah, right? So I mean the dog is not taking work seriously even though it appears to be it's taking place seriously And I just love that. Yeah, and and it really hit home to me too like when it pointed out that

If you've ever had a dog that will like Run till their paws are bloody to get that tennis ball or that Kong Right. I guess I just name checked a brand. They should throw some dough for that. It's a good brand though Momma loves the little Kong balls the tiny ones. Oh, those tiny ones are so cute That that that would make a good star dog and I have had two dogs in my life that would be great Search and rescue dogs my dog Buckley who is no longer with us and my current one of my two current dogs Niko and they both had a lot of Staffordshire Terrier in them and They both from day one if you threw something

Ran and got it brought it back had dropped it at your feet and looked at you as if if you don't throw that thing again I might keel over and die right now Staffordshire Terrier, isn't that spuds McKenzie and now? Oh I can't remember what kind of terrier that is but it was some kind of terrier and I thought it was an English countryside village named terrier I mean staff ease or I think a lot of people throw a lot of dogs into the pit bull category that aren't pit bulls That's kind of a bone of contention with pit bull owners

Sure is like, you know a dog attacks that has any a terrier in it and they say it was a pit bull Um, so staff ease are lumped in there, but I remember when we did one of my great memories of being an edin burl On our tour. Yeah, I took a walk around lovely The lovely town and I ran into a lady who was walking one of hers And you know when you're out of town and you're not with your dog You just sort of like attack every dog you see totally and so I got down and I was with this dog And I was like, oh, I love this dog. You're you know, you're dog. So sweet or something and she went just a wee staffy, huh? That's so Scottish a wee staffy. That was a that like that town is

Magnificent. It's magic. It really is. I can't wait to go back one day. Yeah, we need to do that We need to get on another UK tour. I could not agree more dude. Heck. Yeah. Okay. It's done We're doing it look for it in like two years or three years if it's anything like our Australia tour so with the star dogs though we cannot emphasize any more how much time is of the essence because Whether it is and we'll get into the various types of rescues, but they're all pretty time sensitive whether it's a missing child God forbid or a Collapse building God forbid or an avalanche God forbid none of these situations are awesome and

The clock is ticking especially, you know, and in those cases where you know, there's maybe short of oxygen or they're buried in snow Like minutes count. Yeah, for sure. I saw on a site from an organization that offers Sar dog training For your dog, like if you think your dog's got it, they say come we'll find out if your dog's got it They were saying like You have to be out there like you you have to treat this like you're an ambulance Basically when you get the call you got to be out the door and it's interesting You know the dog doesn't have any job other than search and rescue. So the dog's ready to go anytime

Oh, yeah But you're their handler and they live with you and you have to be out there with them So you have to be able to leave your regular job at the drop of a hat and and star dog handlers are on call 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year so much that the dogs go on vacation with the handlers in case there's a call Yeah, and you both have to go show up somewhere together So you have to be very very responsive and it is like you're saying because time is of the essence because This article gives the example of avalanche victims

Oh, man Like if you're an avalanche victim if you're covered in an avalanche you probably will not want to be thinking about these stats But most avalanche victims who are found within I think is it 10 minutes or 15 minutes? I think a 90% of the victims are alive at 15 minutes. Okay, great. What about 35 minutes Chuck? 30% right so between 15 and 35 minutes 60% of those folks will be gone right and so you you might say well, okay But wait wait you guys are talking about an avalanche. How's the dog gonna find you in an avalanche? Dogs can find you covered in snow dogs can find you underwater

Mm-hmm dogs can pick up your scent Sometimes when you're 500 meters away, right? It's amazing I was surprised to hear that because you always see in like those old timey chain gang movies You know that are my favorite genre obviously When they're trying to elude the tracking dogs they cross a river or something like that to throw them off the scent and And that probably works for for tracking dogs and we'll talk about the difference between these dogs, but for for a scent dog They can they can be trained to find your scent underwater, especially if you just happen to be decomposing Yeah, and especially if that dog is a bloodhound

And in those old timey movies that you love it seems like it's always a bloodhound or you know a pack of bloodhounds and the in the dude, you know who just escaped from prison is runs through the river and Usually in the movie they're they're like, you know, drag it all They just threw us off the scent right somebody throws their hat to the ground Because of those kind of because of that whole thing that whole that genre or whatever and prison escape thing I unfairly associate bloodhounds with scary backwards like redneck police officials Yeah, yeah, you know I'm saying because they're always with them But that that doesn't mean that the bloodhounds are scary. Yeah, they're great sure good old hound dogs. Yeah

Elvis wrote a song about him Yeah, but it wasn't favorable That's true, you know lying all the time I wonder but Elvis wasn't talking about dogs No, but he was comparing somebody who he didn't have in a high opinion or high esteem to a hound dog I wonder who that was about and he probably had no idea that he was giving them quite a compliment Right. He was he was trying to do the opposite It was like that Simpsons where somebody calls somebody else a chicken and it chicken and a top hat appears and goes He's insulting the both of us

They Elvis should have said you ain't nothing but a hound dog Which is actually the most talented scent dog of all time. Hey, that would have fit too. You ain't nothing but a hound dog I hold you in deep admiration And there goes the career of Elvis Presley. Yeah, so smell-wise dogs have a sense of smell about 40 times stronger than a human and This is all dogs. It doesn't mean all dogs make good star dogs, but just because little Momo is You know like a little Curly cute lap dog. Yes, doesn't mean that a Momo may not be a good star dog for obvious reasons

But that doesn't mean Momo can't smell a dead body in the ocean No, and she does she just she goes and finds a game of craps instead of telling anybody that's because that's how you've trained her Sure. Now Momo would not be a very good star dog She would be a little sketched out on the scene of a search-and-rescue mission, but she could she and she does I'm sure pick up on the rafts RAT. I'm sorry RAFTS Which is it's gross, but these are the dead skin cells that are constantly flying off of our body Yeah, it smell only like us

Yeah, that's every individual apparently this is not proven But they think they know that humans shed skin cells rafts and that they do have a scent human Specifically human scent and that is specific to each person too, which is all totally believable Yeah, which is why they you know like in the movies they give somebody an old sweatshirt that that person wore the day before Right, and that's how they know how to go look for that person, right? They'll do that they'll mash it in the dog's face and then go find it and they find the whatever the person that smells like that So they think that's how dogs are able to find specific human scents or any human scent is that the rafts the skin cells that we're shedding Are being picked up we leave them behind on the ground they follow the ground

If we run up against a bush or something a bunch of them get scraped off or they're just kind of floating in the air and Depending on the type of dog They're going to pick up those skin cell rafts and and it's probably about here that we should say that there are two types two general umbrella categories of Search and rescue dogs There's the tracking dog and there's the air sent dog and they do the same thing they find Humans, but they do it in two very different ways one super targeted and one super general and depending on the situation that you're faced with You're going to call it one dog or the other or maybe both if you're just a

County that's just flush with extra tax pay or cash that you don't know what to do with sure dog County Yeah, so a tracking dog. They also call those following dogs Those are like when you think of a bloodhound with their nose down on a trail, right? They're the ones who who know and this is what these dogs need. They know the last scene point of this person. So like You know if you went hiking in the woods and you parked your car at a trailhead, right? They know that that is your last if that is in fact your last scene point that is the last scene point here is a sweater that they wore yesterday and Go at it, right and we talked about the nuts and bolts of that kind of stuff on the search and rescue

Episode so go listen to that because we talked about the last scene point and we talked about how Searchers red is like fan out from there. Sure There's like a quick response team the dogs are the ones that are brought out first because a scent If it's a tracking dog and they're following the scent that was specifically laid down by that person Yeah, that tracking dog needs to be there very quickly and they need to They need to be there before everybody else because once a bunch of searchers get into the area and start searching for the person They they don't know where the person's scent trail is so they might be crossing all over it and ultimately ruin it for the dog You can't pick it up anymore. So that tracking dog is going to be among the first searchers on the scene

That's right. The air scent dogs like you said these are a little more like when you don't know Like somebody's just lost in the forest or somebody's buried in the snow. They don't have that last scene starting point And they basically just say go out there and stick your nose in the air Instead of on the ground and see if you can inhale some of those so some of those airborne rafts Like fine 70s cocaine right the finest Quervo gold in the fine Colombian and those you know, that's basically basically their deal You know if it's a little more general

You're probably some sort of a well, there are all kinds of dogs, but you're not small. You're medium-sized or larger You may be a German Shepherd or like a lab Believe believe it or not. It's probably not a st. Bernard Just because they're they're just a little too big these days Yeah cumbersome is how this article put it border collies are good. Yeah, and of course the bloodhound because they're Those big old ears and all those cute folds in their faces. Yeah actually concentrate scent particles right into those Stinky stinky drippy nostrils. Yeah, it just kind of slaps the the skin cells of humans right into the dog's nostrils amazing

So let's take a break and then we're gonna come back and talk about different specialties that a search-and-rescue dog can have okay, woof On the podcast hey, dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and we live it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take You back to the 90s listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself?

What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god. Seriously. I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man, and so my husband Michael Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life Step by step not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now if so tell everybody Yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Okay Chuck, so we're back We are talking now if you'll follow me in this line of thinking okay About the different specialties search-and-rescue dogs can have go Yeah, this one is sort of the saddest specialty, but the cadaver dog very very important though because You know people need closure in their lives and if you've lost a loved one Literally lost a loved one and you don't know where they are and they end up not surviving that ordeal

Then you would still like to give them a burial of your choice or you know, however You want to do things in your family, but wow those those a lot Well, I was saying a proper burial, but that means a lot of things to a lot of people sure could be a sky burial Sure, it could be remember those. Oh, yeah, that was a great one I don't remember what that was on but that was a good one buzzards, right? Just picking at your body. Yep up in the Himalayas Yes, so they are they are specifically trained to search for human remains and those Decomposition gases and those skin rafts still but that that is pretty amazing because these dogs can find it says a

Single human tooth or a single drop of blood they can detect right right because you know, first of all, they're they're naturally Able to detect that kind of stuff, but then the training they receive really kind of Narrows and in focuses that that natural ability they have. Yeah, but when when I was looking up cadaver dogs As of course they did I was like, how would you train a cadaver dog? What are you where are you getting the dead bodies body of arm? Apparently if you are training cadaver dogs, you can't apply to get like decomposing human tissue Well, you have to you have to like get a license for it. I believe or a license to have it But apparently it's hard to come by so trainers will like use their own blood

Oh, wow train dogs to find blood. There's also a company That makes a scent of an artificial training scent called Sigma pseudo corp scent And it comes in three flavors Recently deceased Decomposing and drowned wow and you can train a dog on this on this scent. It's close enough approximation That they will learn to follow the scent and find decomposing human remains. So two people by those creeps creeps and Saur trainers right and like it but just two people by the bottles. They're like a million dollars each

Yeah, and they go out on a tinder date and they're like just a little dab of drowned body behind each year Oh, I'm all set. Yeah All right, water dogs are the next and those search for drowning victims. Obviously They are generally in a boat at some point and we'll talk about their training but one of the one of the big parts of training is to make sure that these star dogs can ride in helicopters and ride in boats and ride on a Snowmobile or whatever, you know an ATV. What are those things called? Yeah ATV four-wheelers Remember, they had three-wheelers and we were kids man. Those are so dangerous Yeah, everyone's like many things sure to tip over a lot, right? Maybe we should add a fourth wheel

Yeah, there you go. And then now it's stable and it's a man. Those were so Dangerous that I remember when they came out and it was like 12 year olds dying all over the place with those things I never rode one of those. I didn't either my mom would would not have let me near one of those. I was a go-kartner. Oh Lucky I didn't have one, you know, we never had any that stuff because my parents are teachers So they were like draw a picture of one But my my really good friend growing up lived out in the in the woods in the country and he had two sort of homemade go-karts Not sort of homemade. They were totally homemade They weren't like the you know, the super sweet things you could buy, right?

But they had the land where their dad built like a dirt track and It was the most fun thing I ever did as a child. That's awesome. It was awesome Yeah, it was always the friend out in the country that had the go-karts sure. Yeah, not a city folk, right? So, I mean if you have a really specialized Sar dog, maybe it is used to riding in a go-kart too But it's gonna definitely be trained to to ride in on just about anything that it will be called in for yeah And in addition Chuck, this is amazing to me They are totally fine with being lowered down the face of a cliff in a harness on a rope. Yeah

Stuff like that like they're trained to as we'll see they're trained to basically keep it together in some very weird Situations for dogs. Yeah, and again with my dog Nico the the staffee I have you know, two dogs and they've both been on boats and Charlie the the shelter mix kind of just hides under seats Right, whereas Nico is we call her the hood ornament. She just sits as tall as possible front and center And her nose is just I mean, I can't imagine the amount of sense that she's inhaling, right? It's really impressive. Yeah, we took mumbo on a kayak to see what she would do and she loved it She did not hide at all. She was alert barking at fish anything she could find. She was like, yes This is pretty great. That's pretty fun stuff

So there was also like we said, there's avalanche Search and rescue dogs. Yeah, there's also urban disaster search and rescue dogs And we'll talk about them more in depth in a little while, but suffice to say that that is the The pinnacle of search and rescue dogs. Yeah, that's the toughest one. There's something like from what I saw There's maybe a hundred search and rescue dogs in the United States That are officially qualified to search in a disaster scenario in an urban area Yeah, and I know we're gonna talk about it in a minute, but there was one part of that section Oh, yeah, that just got me like these dogs operate 100% on reward

For doing what they're doing and in urban disasters like Apparently a dog can get down if on themselves if they just keep finding dead people, right? and so at ground zero they were firefighters and rescuers that would pretend to be People trapped just so that these dogs that have been working long days could feel like they had done something to help Right. Can you believe that dude? I totally can. That's just such like a firefighter thing to do. Oh my god Yeah, that's pretty cool. I love that too. All right, so there's wilderness dogs Mm-hmm self-explanatory and then something called evidence article dogs

Yeah, they can find like pieces of clothing or or evidence in a crime. Oh, okay. Yeah, got you so go find the bloody hammer, right? Right exactly. Wow that turned dark all of a sudden. It really did So let's say that you want to start training your dog There there's it's actually training of search-and-rescue dog follows pretty established Training principles and first of all, it's all positive reinforcement. Oh sure We eventually need to do an episode on like negative reinforcement or dog obedience Because it's just so fully discredited But most people think that most people don't realize it, but you do not need to punish your dog for not doing something, right?

You just praise and reward your dog for doing for when they do do something, right? That's how you train a dog. Yeah, and that's the basis of search-and-rescue training is it's all positive reinforcement and reward And the whole thing starts out with just basic obedience And it's at this point that Momo would wash out of search-and-rescue trail really just right out of the gate Yeah, Momo is her own person and we treat her as such like she's our child So we don't treat her like a dog. So she has come to not see herself as a dog She's very good dog very sweet and loyal and takes good care of us, but she She would just get distracted and again a little freaked out and sketched out when the when the distractions came around

Yeah Nico stares at You know, we're living in a in a rental house right now Because we're we're doing work on our house So it's a very weird time for our whole family to all of a sudden be uprooted and living in this strange house out in the woods Yeah, but Nico just sits and stares in the window Which overlooks a big wooded lot Just movement squirrels birds or whatever and the second you open that door. She's so fast. She's like a greyhound

Bolting for anything and luckily she hasn't caught anything yet, but I'm telling you man She'd be a great star dog The only reason I would not do this is because I want her around and not on location Right helping people. So I guess yeah, if I'm selfish if it were squirrel search and rescue I think momo would be excellent excellent at it. I agree ssar Yeah, maybe there is a call for that. We just don't realize it because we don't speak squirrel So yes, basic obedience is level one Just regular commands temperament is super important. They have to be good with

Strangers other dogs obviously a lot of times there are a bunch of dogs on the scene and they can't be like I'm gonna go fight that dog Or play with that dog They have to be good on walks on Loose leashes, but be good with crowds all of that stuff. I I imagine really roots out and training a bunch of dogs right off the bat. Yes for sure So that's just basic obedience and you have to you have to just knock that off the list out of the gate Sure, right then you move on to the you you move from, you know Good well-behaved obedient dog to now. We're starting to get into the training a little bit and you want to teach your dog

Something really important that apparently comes up in search and rescue that You are not the end-all be-all in the world to this dog This is the part I hate this dog has to be able to To to take instruction from people other than you. Yeah, and to also show a tremendous amount of concentration Self-possession Distraction and the way that they test this usually when they're training search-and-rescue dogs is they will take a dog over to a crowd of other dogs and there will be other people milling about and all that and You the handler will will ask the dog to lay down or stay or sit and

The dog and then you leave you go away at least out of sight I think this article says 30 feet away and so the dog can't see you anymore and then over the course of 10 15 20 minutes other handlers come in and Take over Responsibility of tending to this herd of dogs that are all sitting around yeah And if your dog will listen to your command that you gave one time just stay here or sit or lay down Whatever the whole time you're gone until you come back and tell them that they can get up or whatever Then that's apparently the test for canine professionalism pretty amazing and I'm sure there's probably a lot of different tests

There's no standardization for search-and-rescue dog training except for the FEMA certification for urban search-and-rescue dogs So I'm sure there's different tests all over the place But that's a pretty good glimpse of what you need to expect from your dog To to surpass the the second level the second echelon and move on to the third one. Yeah, the second one is tough Second one's tough. I think the third one is is genuinely tough not not necessarily for you training the dog I think the third one is the tough one on the dog. Yeah, this is just raw physical and mental ability and agility, so I Mean they're going through like an obstacle course basically you can go through tunnels you can climb

and incline of more than I think a minimum of 45 degrees on each side like up and down you can get into a Cherry picker like we talked about and go up really high without jumping out Mm-hmm or be in that boat or be in that snowmobile or a helicopter and not get freaked out like you have to you know They don't crank up the helicopter usually Like once you get in that thing and we've all seen mash you got to run up to a helicopter whose blades are spinning Yeah, a lot of people don't want to do that No, no, so but your dog needs to be able to like come on. Let's go all the man all man the machine gun

Yeah, or hey get in this harness. I'm gonna attach you to my chest and we're gonna repel down this mountain And you just got to be a good boy. Yeah And they do I mean once they reach a certain level of training they do and then the final is is tracking obviously Well, I mean this is this is after they pass those three levels, but Tracking is urban tracking is level one like you talked about that is that's the hardest thing to do in this test Is just off the charts to me what they have a person do is they will be the target like the you know The whatever they're looking for so they will do a half mile to one mile track from one point to another in

High traffic area of a city like they'll go to like downtown New York and walk Half mile to a mile this dog sitting there the whole time, you know with someone else They have to cross at least two intersections make at least three right angle turns right go down two blocks of alleyways Leaving, you know a scent article along the way like they're at least leaving little nuggets Shedding off skin cells, I guess sure or maybe dropping the comb in your back pocket Then once you have laid down that track another person crosses that track in at least one place So they're adding scent basically trying to throw this dog off right and then thirty minutes later after all of this And after the target is at the very end

They finally say alright dog go and the dog has to find this target in no more time than it took for the person to lay down That track right and like you said waiting 30 minutes before they start after the person's finished That's impressive that is super impressive and there's distractions the whole way to right like from from what I gathered This is actually done in like an actual city like they don't have like a fake city built somewhere in Colorado or something like that Like this is a like your real town. This is happening in yeah, so the more distractions the better Yeah, for sure, and they hire people who are wearing like Dracar noir and just a wander around everywhere to confuse the scent and everything It's it's a it's a crazy jam for the dog. That's gross. So let's

Actually man, when's the last time you smelled Dracar noir? Oh I don't know 86. I have smelled it within the last year and I got to tell you it holds up Maybe even more than it I realized before We know how I feel about cologne So I say we take their second break and then come back and talk about what we've talked about up to this point It's just like basic training now. We got to get into specialty training. Okay. Oh, yeah, we'll be right back Yeah, we'll be right back On the podcast pay dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show

Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper Because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your game

Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do? You've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you

Oh, man, and so will my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush Boyband or each week to guide you through life step by step not another one Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life Oh, just stop now if so tell everybody ya Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Okay, so Chuck your dog has been through SAR training or basic basic training for SAR Yes, but they haven't actually been taught the SAR part yet. It's just they've just shown like okay. I got it

I got what it takes. Let's you know put me in there. Show me what to do Yeah, and the way that you you train a dog to search and rescue by alerting is just basically Taking their natural inclinations and again like focusing them and amplifying them and you do that through reward and the way that you train a dog through reward I'm having trouble saying that for some reason is that you identify what that dog wants more in the world than anything else Yeah, whether it's a tennis ball, whether it's a snossages Whatever it is you figure out what that dog wants the thing that they will do anything to get

And that's what you use is their reward and then you can start the SAR search and rescue training Yeah, and the reward is important to be consistent with that With that reward because you can't even and they pointed out even in the horrible situations Like 9-11 or if they find like your family member, you know their body out on the woods You need to discreetly take this dog off to the side and give them the reward and even if that means You know toss a frisbee like if that's what it is then that's what you got to do which would be Really just odd thing to see somebody playing frisbee with their dog with the crying family and a dead body in the woods with

Well, letty hammer sticking out of their forehead Discreetly is the key word there. I get I don't think you're like leaping over the body or anything Like you just find a nearby area and then go kind of discreetly carry out your reward. Let's just hope so Yeah, so it takes About 600 and this is generalization, of course, but about 600 hours of training Yeah, which is a lot of hours for a dog to be field ready. That's for the dog Yeah, yeah, the humans have to go through what like a thousand hours. That's that's what this article says Yeah, so that's 1600 hours of training between humans and dogs

Which is hilarious because it means that humans require more training than the dogs do to do the job I know and they and like I don't know our humans rewarded. Are they like here's your martini Chuck? Yeah, you're like I would crawl through an avalanche to get to a martini. That's my reward. That'd be great so You the whole way you start this again, you're using the their favorite thing in the world as a reward and you teach them that They can go find their reward somewhere. They normally want to find things So if you show them, okay Come find me is a good way to start and usually this takes two people and this article uses avalanche training as an example

But it kind of generally applies to anything whatever your whatever specialty you're training your SAR dog to engage in Yeah, that's what that's kind of what you would teach them. So if you if you're training them under avalanche Guidelines you would go dig a hole in some snow and in perfect perfect line of sight with the dog You would go and I don't know that and like go run and jump into the hole Yeah in the snow and you would have your assistant holding the dog back And then after just a second after you make it into the hole They let the dog go the dog runs after you and when the dog comes to get you you just praise it and love on it and give It its ball or its snowsages or whatever it is and the dogs like oh, okay, no if I go find human

I will get played with I will get a reward whatever it is. That's really important to me And now the the kernel the seed of search-and-rescue training has just been planted in the dog and dogs are smart So it doesn't take much more to kind of fluff it up into bona fide Full search-and-rescue professionalism. Yeah, it's kind of funny because dogs are super smart, but also very dumb in that like It's just a simple Reward situation like right find it person get treat. Yeah, and that doesn't mean dumb But it's simplistic. I guess. Okay. Good. I'm glad you said that cuz I was gonna say Sounds more like dogs have it figured out rather than being dumb. I've had some dumb dogs. Well, sure

There is such thing as dumb dogs. They're great at the best. There's dumb people too. So well sure dumb shrews dumb camels Plants Interesting point dumb everything So in the case of the avalanche you jump in the hole and that's great first first part accomplished But then they'll do it again But the person handling the dog holds on to them for say five or ten seconds, right? Then makes them go then they just increase that time up until the point where it's like Five or ten minutes and the person has buried themselves in the snow and then the dog like that's the true test like it's been ten minutes

I saw the person go and disappear and now and I imagine this isn't very fun for the person to bury themselves in snow completely All right, but it's got to be done and then the dog finds a person and they get that snossage or that frisbee play Yep, and so each time they're associating this new thing the increasingly complex game of find the human With their reward so they're learning this this new stuff Holding the dog back increases the amount of attention span and memory That's required to to remember this game and so over time the dog learns if I go dig under snow I can find a person that I smell there and they'll probably play with me

Yeah Again depends on how soon the dog was let off on the scent of the person covered by the avalanche But that's what that's the game that they learn. Yeah, and and they talk a lot about focus and concentration, but these dogs I mean, it is amazing because in a in a lot of these searches unless you like you're the first one on the scene Mm-hmm. There are people everywhere. There are sirens. There are bull horns. There's equipment making loud noises There are any distraction you could think of that would freak a dog out Yeah, is on the scene all at once and they say that star dogs can get so good That they can not only ignore all this but they could they could walk by a cheeseburger on a trail

And just keep following that scent. Yeah, which is where my dogs would fail You want to identify the star dog at a disaster area? Find the dog that's just casually filing its nails That's the star dog Every time. Yeah, there's no way my dogs would ignore that the food thing that would Know mama's got this thing where her eyes get real big and kind of bug out of her head And she like uses a paw to kind of like gently Like tap you like hey, I'm right here. Yeah, you want to share some of that? So

There's a couple other things we should mention about this this training the avalanche training We just mentioned you can you can do that with anything you can do it with underwater training Apparently it involves the handler in the boat with the dog, but also a scuba diver hiding underwater That's the best way to train dogs on water You can do it with Simulated disaster like collapse buildings that kind of stuff so you can take this this idea That you're training the dog that if they go look for a person the person might give them their snossage or their ball And that's what they're doing. Yeah, so even when they're out there searching for dead bodies in the woods to the dog

They're just playing a game. There's a bunch of people around. There's a lot of sirens and like crying humans and We like shovels and backhoes and all that stuff But the dogs just in the midst of all this the dog is playing a game of go find it Yeah, which is why that reward is so key right even in the face of tragedy. Yeah so The that's the dog training. We have to talk about training you because in Soviet Russia Sorry Yeah, I mean, you know most of these are handlers

We'll we'll seek out this dog probably from the get go at a shelter and kind of start from from day one as like This is my next star dog Like we said earlier, they spent about a thousand hours of training as a human This is training the dog. This is also like you've got to be good in the woods You've got to know weather patterns You got to know how to communicate on these radio comms and know how to work a compass and Most of these people are a lot of them are EMS certified But the very least you're brushed up very well on your CPR

Cuz if you're a couple of miles away and you're the person that comes upon the scene You've got to administer some some aid right there. Yeah, one might call it first aid Yeah, you would you got to look good in cargo pants. Yeah for sure You got to have a nice pair of hiking boots. You got to be able to wear a boot this article Quotes a search-and-rescue handler Who who says the the chief thing that you have to be able to do is to know where you are at any given point During the search. Yeah, you have to precisely identify your coordinates Which means you have to know that GPS the compass the map all that stuff you said

But you also have to know it while you're following your dog with a flashlight at night because apparently at night Is the best time for a dog to search crazy. So you have to be really really good at identifying your coordinates And the reason why is because dogs will often Give a sign they'll alert that they found something even though there doesn't seem to be anything there But if your dog does that you want to note down the coordinates and you keep searching And if some other SAR dogs come along and they they note the same area and everybody compares notes afterwards They're you're gonna go back to that same area. Yeah, that you need to know exactly where the area is So, you know that there's something there and how to get back to it

Yeah, so you really need to know what you're doing with with Self-coordination is what I'll call it. Yeah, I would fail Even if Nika was great. Mm-hmm my my legendary sense of that poor sense of direction would disqualify me Yes, so that's why I don't do this. Didn't you get trapped in a cave once? Uh No, I didn't get trapped You just didn't feel like leaving What are you talking about? I went caving and I went in and I went out

Okay, there was no problems. I thought there was a problem. No, I mean the problems were It was kind of scary Right, but I was I was with experienced speedlunkers Who got me all through it? Sure, but yeah That was that one pancake part that you freaked out when I even told you about it. Yeah, I don't want to talk about it So If you are a SAR team or you have a SAR dog You are like you said on call at all times even if you're on vacation. That's why you travel with your dogs a lot

You are always ready and I imagine it could ruin a vacation, but if you're sitting around You know pushing papers in an office. You probably look forward to that call Oh, yeah to get out in the woods and do what you were trained to do with your with your best pal Yeah, exactly. So you get the call out You load up all your gear you you head out there It depends on what's going on. You might be hopping on a helicopter or a boat again depending what's going on there And this is where that obedience and all those distractions come into play and you're you know It's up to you as the handler to be the alpha even though your dog needs to be good off leash and on loose leash

It's still you're still in charge, right? And that's and that's a big part of it so I think we said that search and Urban search and rescue is the the hardest Kind of search and rescue for a dog to do not just because It's it's difficult, but because it can be it can really get a dog down to find nothing But dead bodies. It's also extremely hazardous. You know that dogs poking around a Collapsed building that's a precarious place to be looking for survivors So if you're an urban search and rescue dog from what I saw you don't want a dog

That's over three years old entering this or that's just too old So you want a younger dog you want to start training them early on but if you're an urban search and rescue dog Urban disaster search and rescue You're probably not going to have an extremely long career in that. It's just too Exhausting and it's too demanding. So you may as you as you kind of move toward retirement Get moved to different types of search and rescue that are a little less demanding and apparently the last step before retirement is Wilderness search and rescue because to a dog. It's just a great day out in the woods. Sure That's it's as good as it comes. Yeah, so after after four or five years on the scene of collapsed buildings

Yeah, you get to run around the National Forest and And look for folks. Yep, and then after you finally are retired you get to lay around all day and Chase those squirrels. You've been wanting to chase that whole time. Yes, and unsurprisingly I would say most all of the time you are probably Sticking with the the the trainer as their good boy or girl But if that is not possible for some reason there are plenty of people that will line up to adopt a star dog Oh, yes, because they are just as well-trained as they come. That's right You got anything else? Yeah, man. I love these dog cats star dogs

Yeah, I'd love to do something about just breeds and the original dogs and how they evolved and all that good stuff Okay, have we not done a how dogs works? I I'm sure we have. Yeah, but I don't know if we got into all the you know, there's that movie out about the Original dog the original domesticated dog It's called alpha. Okay, and I think it's not true But I think it may be based on what people believe might have happened like One human bonded with one wolf and that kind of started the whole thing. Are you talking about dances with wolves? Yeah, that's it. Okay. Oh, no, no, no. I have seen that. It was water world

All right. I was way off. Oh, that's funny. You bring that up I was thinking about that movie the other day and just how perfect the casting of Dennis Hopper was Because whoever casted him was like this movie's off the rails before we even started shooting. Yeah, let's get Dennis Hopper and Gary Busey in here. Was Gary Busey in it too? No, he and I don't want to make fun of Gary Busey He's a you shouldn't real troubles Well way to end this on a downer We'll just stop right here if you want to know more about SAR dogs to start looking it up There's all sorts of training resources and everything you could hope to find on the internet

And since I said that it's time for listener mail This is about Pando Yes And I have to say that since we did that episode I often listen to brown noise here at work while I'm trying to concentrate on my my earbuds But I have since switched to aspen forest. Oh Nice and and wind. There's a great like hour and a half recording of In the field of a it may be Pando for all I know, but it's really really lovely

I highly recommend it. Cool. So all right. Here we go. Hey guys And Jerry, hope you're having a wonderful day. You really enjoyed hearing episode on Pando My family has been taking an annual camping trip to Fish Lake, Utah Since the early to mid 90s, which is only a mile or two down the road from Pando It's like, how do you go a mile from Pando that's that big and just not go into Pando, right? You know, maybe they don't know about Pando Oh, he knows. Oh, he said I've been hearing stories about it Since I was little and have always been astounded by the magnitude and resilience of an organism like that The ungulate fences start right on the side of the road and it's like night and day

You're driving along in a fairly sparse aspen grove and then bam There's a wall of tall dense aspens on one side surrounded by fence The other side of the road is a fence as well But there's often cattle roaming and the tree population is considerably thinner. Oh Boo, I'm an oil painter by trade and recently did a commission of a nice little spot in Pando and Included a little picture here in the email of the finished piece. Oh, cool It is wonderfully gorgeous place saddens me to hear how much danger it's in Thanks for getting the word out there guys. Hopefully something could be done

Hope all as well that is from Lawson Barney in Colorado Nice and asked him if people could view his art and he said just go to Lawson Barney on Instagram L. A. W. S. O. N. All one word capital B. A. R. N. E. Y. on Instagram to see some of this stuff. Yes Instagram is a great place to find artists these days. That's what I hear Are you not on? No, no, you know me. Yeah, check it out while you're there check out an artist I love called the Christian Rex Van Minden. Oh Amazing, I'm gonna check out Lawson Barney too at the very least because he's got a pretty awesome name. Yes If you want to talk about artists that you love on Instagram, turn us on to some you can go to our website

Stuffyoushouldknow.com find all of our social links I also have a website called the Josh Clark Way.com and you can send us an email Send it off to StuffPodcast at howstuffworks.com For more on this and thousands of other topics visit HowStuffWorks.com On the podcast HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show HeyDude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping-off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it

Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boyband or each week to guide you through life tell everybody you everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye. Bye. Bye. Bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts