The seminar in Holland this consisted of a mixture of members of Mantrailgroep Nederlands and members from three defferent German mantrailing organisations. As the majority of the people had been trailing for some time bedfore the seminar began the emphasis was put on the exchange ofideas and giving different slants on already existing ideas from other trainers and seminars.
It worked very very well once the initial idea was accepted and the people realised that I was not going to tell them what they were doing was wrong and only give them ideas of how to iomprove and plenty of food for thought.
The setting for the seminar was excellent with plenty of space for everyone and excellent classroom facilities to watch the videos of the days events.
It was evident as the week went on to everyone that an indication of the finding of the trail is an essential element of trailing for SAR work which I have advocated for many years now but as the exercises continued the handlers themselves came to realize the importance of this often missed out step in trailing.
The process to get dogs to scent discriminate was gone over and trained and all of the dogs and more importantly the handlers began to get the idea so hopefully we will have a lot of dogs who can indicate the trail in future.
We also showed how to work a road junction again giving my way of working against the many others which produced a lot of thought and a lively discussion but gradually we came up with a format to work with .
The biggest difference that we came upon was that I prefer to reward the positive as against the negative that most of the group were using and it was nice to hear some of the members saying that they are going to use the idea of rewarding positives in future as I honestly cannot see any justification for rewarding a dog for finding nothing as it seems to me all you are doing is teaching a tired dog to indicate a negative to you to get a reward and a nice rest, we are not in the police business and are there to save lives not give evidence in court .
We trailed in the forests, countryside and trough the town centres of some busy towns so a varied week was had by everyone.
It was aqn enjoyable week and I will be interestred to see how the people develop their skills as I know that everyone who attends a sseminar takes away parts of it and makes their own system which is not wrong as long as it works we must thank Monique and Ip for the use of their home which made a great seminar
