Woody - A Health & Safety Nightmare!

Although we are usually on the look out for suitable dogs for service dog training we do try to avoid the winter months as it is not easy having an extra dog at this time of the year, let alone one that needs to search indoors and go up and down stairs and on and off the beds.

In addition to this we had found much less demand for these dogs since the end of the Olympics, as there are so many that no longer had a job to do, so we had made a conscious decisions to put the sniffer dog training on hold until the Spring, and then reassess the situation. However, we had not counted on getting a phone call from our usual supplier, Julie Watson of Wrenmarsh Gundogs telling us that she had a Springer that we must see.  Despite all our reservations we decided to take a look, and once we met Woody there was no doubt that we would have him.

As some of you may remember, we had a Woody before but he was a GSD and so it seemed a bit strange to have this little brown and white whirlwind answering to the same name, but we soon got used to it and this Woody turned out to be a delight in every way. At just 12 months old he had learned quite a lot in his short life and was responsive and eager to please. He was good in his kennel, very sociable with people, dogs and cats and loved to travel, but most of all Woody loved his ball and would go anywhere and search diligently in pursuit of this treasure. As most of you will know this is an ideal attribute for a sniffer dog recruit and made training him for his new career a very easy task in every respect except one, Woody had no sense of self preservation, no fear and did everything at top speed.

At first we found this quite amusing and even promising but before long we realised just how dangerous it was and had to think ahead all the time to stop him from injuring himself or smashing anything. Normally, once the dog has learned to search and indicate his find he is rewarded by a ball which seems to the dog to just appear. The trick is to get it to bounce at the spot the dog is indicating so that he thinks it comes out of  where he is looking, but this is easier said than done, and the best most of us achieve is to get it to bounce quite close to the dog and then this is his release. This has always worked well with all the previous dogs we have had, with some just catching the ball or knocking it on a little way and then picking it up.

However, we soon discovered that not only did Woody not catch but he somehow managed to head the ball away and then chase it wherever it went.  Outside searches were not a problem as no matter how far he managed to head it he had a straight run after it and could always find it, but indoors it proved to be a nightmare. I should explain that much of our search training takes place in a large cluttered building with everything from garden and dog equipment to bicycles and old furniture.

This building is anything but tidy and our excuse is that it is kept this way to allow for a good and varied search area. There is no doubt that dogs do have to be agile as well as committed to search in this building as, in order to locate their find, they need to climb over  and on to things, as well as crawl under them and so they must be comfortable in tight spaces. None of this caused Woody any problem and he amazed us not only with his ability but also his agility and drive, and he was soon giving a strong indication in the most obscure of places having searched the whole building to locate his find. However, that is when the problems started as once the ball was thrown and he headed it on he would crash through anything in his path to follow it, getting tied up in bicycles and machinery or missing his footing and falling off things.

We soon learned to do a health and safety check before letting him into the building and that it was the bounce that was the problem and so we reduced the risk somewhat by throwing a “dead” ball that had lost most of its bounce and this worked better as he did not have to go so far to find it, but we still held our breaths once the ball was delivered for fear of what he would do. Unfortunately, even though he had been legally docked he often split the end of his tail when in a tight spot and then he would finish his lesson with blood dripping from the end of his tail and red flanks where he’d wagged so hard and the building would end up looking like a slaughterhouse.

Despite all this Woody was a fabulous worker with the memory of an elephant and as high a drive as we have seen in any dog of any breed, so there was no doubt he would be destined for great things. We were delighted therefore to have an enquiry from the National Dog and Tactical Support Group who have had three of our previous spaniels, and they came and picked him up yesterday to start his new career as an arms and explosive search dog. Although they always have the dogs on a trial period we have no doubt that Woody will make it, although they will have their work cut out to slow him down and keep him in one piece, and let’s hope he learns to be a bit calmer as I am not sure I would want him around unexploded bombs!

(posted: Tuesday, August 13, 2013)

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