Dog Training Tips and Resources 2023

The Evacuate with Your Dog's Help book explains how-to evacuate with pets. How-to make a bug-out (survival) bag for owners and dogs to carry. Every dog of any age or size can help its family evacuate. Be prepared for disasters with your pets. Learn what to expect at disaster shelters and from pet rescue during disasters. Included is a detailed expanded list of survival items for pets and owners with step-by step instructions to train your dog to carry a saddlebag to hold items to evacuate and "bug-out" with. Plus Pet CPR instructions and how-to calm a frightened pet. How-to find a lost pet. USA Evacuation Law for pets. 

Both of the books are free on Kindle and Audible. These books are used as a worldwide emergency preparedness resource from the author. Paperbacks are discounted to help with cost of publication. 

What is a Family Disaster Dog? It is Your Dog trained to Find and Rescue You!

Let me tell you how easy a pet dog of any age, size or breed can be your very own Search and Rescue Dog!

The Family Disaster Dogs book is full of fun and easy lessons that are tailored for the family to learn rescue skills in the comfort of the home during daily activities. Your pet dog is a Family Disaster Dog! 

Any size dog from the little Chihuahua to the Great Dane can help its owner survive..and they find you every day already when they want to play or eat so why not learn what else they can do to help you !

Take a look at my Amazon Author Page to read or hear previews of all my books. Thank you in advance for sharing the books and leaving a review which helps other dog owners find many helpful resources, including mine, in search engines.

 Stay safe out there this spring and summer!

Enjoy your dogs and do something new with them today! 

Thank you for visiting Family Disaster Dogs 

Be sure to look at the Page menu above, there are several pages to see and at the bottom of this post is a time line with over 250 articles for dog owners.

Weather Plays a Role in Training Dogs for Detection Work

Bloodhound- Wrinkledpups Daisy Mayham photo by A. Higgins

Weather plays an important role in training dogs, so let's talk a little bit about training your dog in the foul weather conditions. 

When working a search dog one has to work in all weather conditions and all possible situations in order to expose the dog to different environments and scenarios so that the dog and handler is familiar with each event or condition they may encounter in a real incident. This also teaches the dog and handler how to problem solve and work those situations better. 

This is also true with time of day and day of the week. 

People get lost in all types of weather, any time or day and many times the weather is why they are missing, such in floods or tornadoes. Disasters are often weather related so it makes sense to train with your dog in all types of weather plus most dogs do not mind the weather like we do but some do.

I have met many dogs that prefer to stay indoors in bad weather. I had a bloodhound named Yeti who even as a young pup refused to step into the rain. I would open the back door to let her in and she would be against the door standing four feet planted on the door frame. I could never figure out how she did that with four feet and fit in the door when she was grown up she would fall into the house from leaning on the door ! But pull out a harness and leash then out the door she would go to track anything down, rain, snow or hail. 

What matters is how fun we make training or work for the dog because they will go along for the fun of it, especially if they find it interesting.

All weather conditions affect the search scene and how the search will be handled by the dog and handler because of environmental changes that happen to the scent particles  when exposed to different variables. These variables can be temperature, moisture, humidity,wind, terrain  just to name a few. There is a whole science behind scent and weather.  

Keep in mind, you and your dog constantly learn from each incident or training because each incident is different in one way or another, no two are the same.  With scent dogs, no location is the same tomorrow as it was today because scents constantly change and move which is why it is important to work in all weather. 

Amber

Click here to Go to the Dog Bug-out Bags List (survival dog saddlebags)

Bloodhound - George
with me,
I owned his parents and grandparents, he went to live in Texas with another of my hounds when I moved west.

Click below to see free previews of the Family Disaster Dogs Book and How to Evacuate with Your Dog's Help!
Family Disaster Dogs

Get a First Aid Kit (275 Pieces 40 Unique Items) Family Emergency Disaster Earthquake & Survival. Large Portable Bag Ideal for Home Car Boat Kayak Backpack RV Sports Camping Hiking. Protect Your Loved Ones

Learn more in my Family Disaster Dogs book 

Free Preview below

Weather and Scent

Now that I have covered the basic scenting dog lessons that show you how your family dog can learn how to find you or a loved one,  it would be helpful for you to learn how the weather affects the scent your dog will be following.

Learning how climate changes affect scent will lead to you reading your dog better which makes this an easier task for both you and your dog.

Tracking, trailing and air scenting all have one common factor that must be taken into consideration at the beginning and during each attempt to locate a missing person.

The weather affects everything on Earth. Especially the way scent is dispersed and scattered by the wind, heated and cooled by day or night temperatures or diluted and spread by rain and storms.

Your dog has a natural ability to understand climate changes and how they affect the scent the dog is following or they would not be able to hunt. Your dog will follow the scent as the weather manipulates and disperses it to settle in places that only a dog can find.

Scent can settle and move through cracks in rocks, under doorways, through overhead vents and auto filter systems or be sucked up and inhaled by the Earth herself during the natural cycle of the day.

In order for us humans to read our dog’s actions that relay what the dog understands about the scent work they are performing we must learn about how the weather affects the scent or our dog knows more then we do.

Once you understand how the weather affects scent then you can use the weather to your advantage when tracking and help your dog to be able to work quicker and smoother in locating a lost person.

This knowledge saves valuable time when people’s lives are in danger.

Here's one of my posts that will teach you a few of the fundamentals of how scent behaves. First will be a discussion about how the Earth takes a breath every day just like we breathe so does the world we live on.

The effects of the wind and scent, then temperature changes, followed by rain and scent; concluding with how different storm situations will affect the trail you and your dog are on.

When you are out with your dog notice how your dog behaves when the weather changes or in different weather conditions and take these actions into consideration while you are training.

Many times when a dog appears to have made a mistake in training we do not take into account how outside influences might affect performance.

Take time to look around and feel the wind, the air temperature and ask yourself; is it humid out? Or which way is the wind blowing from?

Then notice how your dog works in this weather, take notes and if you work in every type of weather as a good search dog should, after a few weeks, the notes will show you different things your dog did at different points along the search.

You will learn how to read your dog in different weather conditions and see in your notes that your dog did indicate or change how they worked when the weather changed.

From there on, when you are working in that weather you will know what to look for in your dog’s behavior and Congratulations, you are reading your dog!