The art of poo detection

After one week of intensive but enjoyable and enlightening training (I feel like my relationship with dogs has been simply but miraculously transformed for the better!), the dog and human teams have been decided. So who is with who? Well perhaps anyone could have guessed that the female would work better with the sensitive, highly strung (but intelligent!) border collie and the male with the dozy, amenable, beefcake labrador! So it’s Simon and Chevy versus me and Pepper, the race will soon be on to see which team will top the dungometer! 

But for now the training continues. The dedication and obsession of these dogs is really quite amazing! A few minutes of play with a ball and some well deserved praise is ample reward for the dogs to search the hot humid rainforest for hours a day for traces of rhino poo and they will not rest until they have found it!  Hook them up to their orange harnesses with jingling bells to warn any impending animals of our approach and the dogs are raring to go!

Chevy and Pepper were trained by Packleader back in the states on general rhinos using poo from captive Indian, Black, White and Sumatran Rhino from White Oak Conservation Centre, as there are no Javan rhinos in captivity anywhere in the world. The technical staff at the park provided us with 3 frozen Javan rhino poos when we arrived, which we broke up, placed into small bags and have been putting into the forest on and off trails at varying distances, to train Simon and I in the art of detector dog work. Both dogs got the Javan Rhino poo straight away, so no worries there! As long as the rhinos poop in the park and we work with the dogs effectively, we should find enough of it!  

Steve has been leaving early morning to plant the poo in the forest on different trails each day and Simon and I take it in turns to work one dog through, watching each other and learning from practice and from Steve’s extensive experience as we go! I have to admit it is not as easy as I had thought it would be! We have to have 100% concentration on the dogs, guiding them to search on both sides of us, making sure they aren’t working too fast, watching for any dangers (snakes or spiny plants), paying close attention to recognise when the dogs are on the scent of rhino poo. So much so that we will need someone to navigate for us in the field to ensure we do not wander off into the forest never to be seen again! The dogs’ behaviour changes when they are on the trail of a poo, working methodically to find the source, Pepper typically stops and freezes in crouching position staring at the sample, waiting for me to verify that it belongs to rhino and then throw the ball his way in reward. After a few minutes play, a check for leeches (there are thousands of the sneaky bloodsuckers here, usually attracted to Simon who smells a little more through changing clothes a little less than is perhaps polite for fellow fieldworkers!) and some coaxing of the dog to stop thinking of the ball and take a minute for a drink, we ‘get back to work’ to find the next poo sample! We have learned that timing and tone is absolutely key with these dogs, too soft and the dogs are too excited to listen to you calling them back, too slow and they get impatient and move away from the sample towards you to see what is taking you so long with their reward! So although we have the gist of it for now, we need to refine our skills and our relationships with the dogs in the next week or so, before we make the move to the target area.