I'd like to throw out the idea that a dog with the proper training could find buried monuments, both metallic and non-metallic, as well as other types of evidence such as buried stones and the remains of stumps and fence posts.
Depending on the breed of dog, and who you ask, a dog's sense of smell is anywhere from 50 to 1000 times better than a human's. Service dogs are able to tell when a person is about to have an epileptic seizure, probably by the smell of their breath. As everybody knows, trained dogs can detect drugs or explosives, and track lost children or escaped prisoners. They have been used to find booby traps in Vietnam, truffles in France, and nearly-invisible mealy bugs in California vineyards.
A piece of iron, concrete, or stone has little or no smell from a human point of view, but they're probably quite distinctive to a dog. When a bearing-tree stump has rotted away, leaving only a pocket of discolored soil, the discolored area most likely has a unique smell.
Training would be the key. If I were going to try this I would consult a professional dog trainer. It's likely to be done sooner or later, perhaps by someone on Beerleg. What do you think? Could your dog learn to do it?
> Training would be the key. If I were going to try this I would consult a professional dog trainer. It's likely to be done sooner or later, perhaps by someone on Beerleg. What do you think? Could your dog learn to do it?
I'd think you'd probably want a trained pig for this since they have a more sensitive sense of smell (and are in fact used for truffle hunting). If you have such a pig, I would suggest not renting it out. I'd think that posting details would be interesting and helpful to many posters.
It's the distinct smell that is the key. In SAR, the dog is trained to follow a smell provided - usually dirty laundry or shoes worn by the missing person. All of the other things listed also have distinct odors: explosives, drugs, people, mealy-bugs, truffles. So what smell will you train for. Metallic object? Damn, old fence post. Rotting trees? None of those in the woods. Stones? I live in Colorado! You can see where I am going. But their sense of objects is greater than ours and a dog that went out with you all the time since being a puppy could probably pick up what you are doing and be trained to find things out of the ordinary when given a specific location.
> Training would be the key. If I were going to try this I would consult a professional dog trainer. It's likely to be done sooner or later, perhaps by someone on Beerleg. What do you think? Could your dog learn to do it?
I have all the faith in the world that a dog can be trained to hunt-up pins or stakes and such. I'm sure that rebar, nails, stakes, hubs and flaky flagging all have their own signature smell.
And although I've never seen such, dogs ARE trained to sniff out very specific items such as guns, ammo, explosives, dead or living humans, weed and even prescriptions medications.
I've often thought if you kept a good-nosed breed pup (say a beagle or lab) in the truck with you and gave it a treat every time you dug up a pin or stake; the dog would eventually put it together.
The dog's name would most assuredly have to be "Schonstedt". :snarky:
Well, I've been called worse.
:dog:
but if it was an older dog, maybe 'dip needle'
A pig would likely be able to do this very well, preferably a small pig of course. I've heard of both pigs and dogs searching for truffles.
Never owned a pig myself, but my sister had one for a pet one time. It was definitely a smart animal, though a good deal less cooperative than a dog.
😀
Dip needle. Wowzers, those go waaayy back. We used to call them hockey pucks, but they were yellow.
Somebody has to recall the dogs motto of life. It goes something like "...if you can't eat it or hump it, then pizz on it..."
I had a pretty cool survey dog though. Yellow lab. Her name was Nellie, but that's short for Woe Nellie as she'd give me a funny look whilst sliding around in the back seat. She did help though and knew when to avoid a dozer. She would always alert me when toxic squirrils or dangerous cats were nearby. Her reward was something from McD's
Specific location would indeed be important. Of course we normally have that anyway, or at least we have a likely search area.
Since dogs are able to understand simple commands like "sit" and "fetch", they could also understand commands for different categories of buried objects, such as "iron", "stone", "concrete" or "stump." As Paden says, these things would have different smells.
If a dog saw different kinds of evidence being dug up, and was then told what type they were, he or she would probably pick up the words pretty fast.
As you suggest, false scents would need to be dealt with. Looking for a particular rotted stump in the woods or a particular stone in Colorado would be much like searching for an iron monument in northern Minnesota, where every third rock contains some iron and many roads are built out of leftover crushed rock from the iron mines. Nevertheless it is possible to find irons there. You learn to recognize small differences in the Schonstedt signal and you have to dig up more junk than elsewhere. You also need to take extra care to narrow down the search area.
In a similar way, a dog could likely tell the difference between a spread-out mass of buried twigs and leaves and the more compact rotted material from a stump or post, or between a single stone and a pile of stones. Setting up communications with the dog about that would be difficult, but not impossible.
Pickles is not amused
"I'd like to throw out the idea that a dog with the proper training could find buried monuments, both metallic and non-metallic, as well as other types of evidence such as buried stones and the remains of stumps and fence posts..."
Great(?)! Idea. Until it happens I prefer these "cretin" implements of excavation. Plus you don't have to feed them and clean up the you know what discharge.
B-)
I have one of those!!
We don't rent pigs. =-) Does someone read Larry Mcmurtry
My shepard can smell on my breath when my blood sugar gets low. A dogs smelling ability is even more than you stated 314. Yes, I believe with training you could get a dog to find monuments and what not. Maybe if you pee'd on the mon before you left it.............?? 🙂
-JD-
> We don't rent pigs. =-) Does someone read Larry Mcmurtry
Yes, I've been reading some of his source material lately, including Frank Collinson's "Life in the Saddle" and Adam R. Johnson's memoir with a chapter entitled "The Surveyors"
I didn't know dogs could do that, but it's not hard to believe. You're lucky to have a pal like that.
Too bad it wasn't customary to pee on monuments in the early days. Of course it might have happened now and then by accident.
GEONERD said
"It's the distinct smell that is the key. In SAR, the dog is trained to follow a smell provided - usually dirty laundry or shoes worn by the missing person."
I have long maintained that we find monuments by subliminally following the "essence" of the old goat that set them. Shoenstadt the survey dog will need a reliquary to provide the smells of all the surveyors who worked in the area. Pincushions could get interesting and survey caps could become obsolete.
Could dogs find buried evidence? Plastic Bar
Colleagues-
Have any of you run into a gnawed plastic bar to the point that the ceramic magnet has been revealed/released ?
One of our Golden puppies, while watched thoroughly, as a test, took about an hour or so to gnaw the plastic bar and got to the ceramic magnet before being pulled off the bar.
Fast forward hypothetical scenario ...........
Dog is a 'digger'.
Dog digs up plastic bar set by surveyor on the subject property at the time owned by previous occupant.
Dog chews and ingests ceramic magnet from plastic bar unbeknown to dog's owner.
Dog needs operation to remove ceramic magnet = many $$$$s
Is the surveyor liable ?
Is it better/best to not draw liability and only use iron bars ?
Your comments please.
Cheers,
Derek
I don't know about metallic objects and concrete, but I do know that my dog has absolutely no problem in finding all of the "tootsie rolls" that my cat buries in the yard and in the litter box.
