Germany 2009
Basic 7 dogs and handlers and another seven with no dogs
started with the basics of bacteria and scent and how they behaved in different situations and temperatures.
A lot of time was spent on planning of the searches both from the point ogf view of the trainer and the handler.
Indication of trail was stressed fully and discrimination of scent was shown along with the discrimination of age and direction which is a natural ability of the dog.
Visual aids were used at all times including smoke, bubbles and all other aids in order to be certain that the planning went correctly in all searches so that the dogs were given the chance to make a successful conclusion.
The weather was hot as usual for this seminar it happens every year that we get hot weather.
Night lessons were again directed towards bacteria and their behaviour .
As the week went on we used various venues and a very interesting day was held at the observatory area near Hamburg which has lots of telescope houses and buildings allowing every handler to ptractice their skills
of planning how to approach a PLS a nd how to continue from there with the search, the number of stidents about provided an abundance of distractions and false trails so it was an excellent day.
At the end of the week everyone seemed to have a grasp of the basis behind trailing and bacterial activity so hopefully everyone will progrress forward from this.
Next seminar this was billed as an advanced seminar but it started with the basics of scent and bacteria with more bubbles and smoke etc and even a very interesting bubble machine which was extremely effective in producing huge numbers of bubbles
simulating bacteria effectively.
The practical sessions were again in varied surroundings including a very interesting day on a lake thanks to the local water rescue b oat team.
The dogs were all taken by boat to a\ PLS given an added dimension to their search.
Trails were run after one two or three people and with varying degrees of success but everyone had to work extremely hard and lots of lessons were learned
