Frequently Asked Questions
What can you train the dogs to find?
Just about anything live, dead, or man-made. Our dogs have experience finding Eastern Box Turtles, Wood Turtles, Spotted Turtles, Eastern Spadefoot Toads, GPS collars that had been worn by Fishers, and even a missing pet tortoise. Other conservation dog teams have surveyed scat of large carnivores, zebra mussel larvae, kill sites of cougars, salamander egg masses, leaking water pipes, bat guano, lizards in burrows, rhizomes of invasive plants, spotted lantern fly eggs, snares used by poachers, whale poop, fungal diseases on fruit trees, injured koalas, crude oil, rattlesnake dens, rodents and snakes hidden in cargo, sea turtle nests, bird nests and chicks, chronic wasting disease, invasive snakes, and hundreds of other targets. The most common targets for conservation dogs are bird and bat carcasses for windfarm surveys, rodents on ships, carnivore scat, turtles, invasive plants, and wildlife in illegal trade. However, their abilities to find a wide variety of targets doesn't mean that dogs are the best tool for every survey. Some species can be seen from a greater distance than they can be smelt, some live in fast moving water that might carry the scent hundreds of meters downriver before it reaches the air, and some live in areas that are too dangerous for a dog to search.
How do you train a dog to find wildlife?
With a lot of time, tenniballs, cheese, and patience. We use positive reinforcement through clicker training to teach our dogs that searching is a rewarding game. We train our dogs to locate artificial scents (birch oil - which is common in sport scent work, and fresh Kong rubber - which is less volatile and easy to cut) in exchange for food and toys before we introduce their final targets. The dogs practice finding these targets in different habitats and environmental conditions, communicating to us that they have found the target by giving an alert behavior, and learn to ignore other wildlife and focus through distractions before we bring in a sample of an endangered or invasive organism. We make sure they know the game before they can stress out a live animal target or contaminate a rare genetic sample. Only then do we introduce the scent of the target.
What do the dogs do when they find the target?
Our dogs indicate they have found the target by giving a trained final response (TFR). Our more experienced dog, K9 Newt, lays down with the target between his front paws. If we do not see the target, we can ask him to “Show me” and he will use his nose to point to or poke the target. When the location of the target or the terrain are not suitable for laying down, Newt will use secondary methods to communicate. When the target is in a tree, he may put his paws on the trunk and then stare at his handler or he might get as close as possible to where the scent is falling and bark while looking up. When he is on top of a brush pile, he may crouch rather than lay down. In tall grass and dense herbaceous cover, he may sit or stop and wait for eye contact before laying down. Several times he has found the target out of view of the handler and returned, made deliberate eye contact while smiling, and then turned around and led us back to the target. We do NOT allow our dogs to pick up, paw at, bark at, or jump on the target. We prefer that they do not even touch the target.
Why don’t your dogs just pick up the turtles and bring them to you?
There are many reasons why we do not want our dogs holding live animals. Foremost is the welfare of the turtles - we want the animals to have a little stress as possible and being picked up by a potential predator, quadruped or biped, just doesn’t sound like a fun time. (We also work to minimize the amount of time that humans handle the turtle.)
Second is the safety of the dogs, as Kris has personally witnessed dogs being bit by Painted Turtles and Pond Sliders - species that don’t normally bite when handled. Kris has been bitten several times herself by Eastern Box Turtles (within days of telling another herpetologist that box turtles don’t bite, of course).
Additionally, Kris has a background in habitat analysis and can’t stand the thought of losing data on where the turtle was originally located, its behavior, and its position in the microhabitat.
We want to minimize risk of disease transfer, interrupting nesting, releasing territorial turtles within another’s territory, disturbing thermoregulation, and many other considerations.
Can rescue dogs be used for conservation detection work?
Absolutely! Many larger organizations have professional dog trainers on staff and only use rescue dogs in their program. They are able to ease the transition from an animal shelter to a working career and handle any behavioral problems that might be unveiled along the way. However, we are a small business rooted in ecology rather than dog training. Like all professional conservation dog organizations located along the east coast of the U.S., we prefer to work with exceptional breeders who are experts at developing high-drive working dogs and can ensure the health of their puppies into adulthood. We know the dog will fit into our program, our goals, and our family before it is born so that we can focus on science.
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Where do your dogs live?
In our home. We own a small homestead in upstate New York, just south of the Canadian border. Our dogs join us in the garden, chase balls into hayfields, sleep on our bed, follow us around the kitchen, and enjoy cuddle time on the couch. Newt is in charge of maintaining a fox-free zone when we let the chickens out in the yard (they stay in their run when he is not home), though he ignores foxes when we are in the woods. April has learned to open doors and insists that no one uses the bathroom without her. Both dogs require daily hikes and mental stimulation to keep them satisfied.
How did you get into conservation dogs?
In high school, Kris and her dad volunteered on a citizen science Mark and Recapture study of Spotted Turtles. Swamp walking with her father on weekends, Kris used to grumble that finding these shallow-water reptiles would be easier with a dog. She didn't know how right she was. When Kris mentioned this to Dr. Tom French of Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife, he responded that all the great herpetologists in the south had turtle dogs (though Kris still hasn’t figured out who he was talking about) and cemented the dream of detection dogs into Kris’ brain.
During her Master’s studies, Kris read about dog training, training theory, and hunting dogs. After graduation she got her first Labrador, Emydoidea. Emy was a gentle soul, food motivated, and highly intelligent, but she was not a high-drive working dog. Emy excelled at therapy dog work in nursing homes and was a champion in agility (CS-ATCH) but was a “Clever Hans” of a dog, reading the handler to find the target rather than sniffing.
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in 2018 Kris joined the faculty at St. Lawrence University. When she was ready to start making a difference with conservation dogs and research students (the human kind of student) we bought K9 Newt from Radar Kennel - which specializes in pointing Labrador retrievers that hunt upland game. Years later, when Kris' faculty job ended, she founded Bark & Code.