Missing-Pet Recovery with Expert Tracker, Annalisa Berns

mitch: 0:00

One, two, three, four, oh I. Welcome to no place like home. A podcast about missing pets. I'm your host, rich Bernard. I talk with owners, finders, professionals and volunteers. For this episode I spoke with on a Lisa Burns, one of the best trackers and responders I know. We talked about how she came to do this work, some of the pitfalls and joys and how to get involved as health. Up next, my interview with on a Lisa. Is. I am so excited to meet you because you're like kind of a little celebrity and our little circle of Responders so I'm like I mean, I'm a Lisa. Am I saying that right on?

annalisa: 1:15

a Lisa. Yes, yes, correct.

mitch: 1:17

Cool, cool, you're in. Tell me where you are right now.

annalisa: 1:20

Well, currently I'm in Florida, but I travel quite a bit.

mitch: 1:26

Okay for respond for cases or just teaching everything, everything.

annalisa: 1:32

But yeah, so I was out in California for two weeks and then I'm here and I'm working on Doing some different trainings in California, florida and New York.

mitch: 1:45

Right, I'm going to the one in New York. I'm very excited, yeah, yeah, that's one of the things I want to talk about, actually the and so I guess we could start there. The training that you're doing is for people who are already responders or People who are new to this and want to get involved, or what the training?

annalisa: 2:06

really is for everybody. That might be interested, everybody, from a hobbyist, someone who is already working in the field, maybe as a private investigator, but wants to expand to Missing animals Okay, really we're gonna have something for everybody, and it's really important for us to connect as a community and get to know, each other and also to be able to Bounce ideas off of each other and sort of what standard best standard practices might be, especially regards to using search dogs. So, yeah, so for anybody who who might be interested. And I, I know that In the past some people have shied away from encouraging people doing it like as a hobby. However, I See that it's so enriching. It's so enriching for our canine companions, yeah, but that it really benefits them. Even if I say, as a dog owner, I'm not really planning on doing anything with this, it still is fun for the dog to do the dog club doing it, and then that also expands the awareness, just the general awareness of it because that's one of the things I really want to work for and I'm trying to work on Is getting more people familiar that this is actually a thing that you can work. A search dog to find a lost pet yes.

mitch: 3:38

So okay, so, and is the training, that is, these workshops? Are they just for people who have dogs, and or is it for people like me who May not have dogs but they are not and will not be responder training trained? So you know, I do this as a hobby, basically.

annalisa: 3:58

Yeah, it's especially for people who either don't have dogs or haven't started training their dogs. I really want to encourage people to start training their dogs, even if their dog isn't perfect for it. It still can be fun for the dog and sure can teach a very specific behavior that maybe you can't help in every case, but maybe you can help in some. Maybe you can help your next door neighbor that has a missing cat. Yeah and so I really am Wanting to bring awareness to those types of scenarios, because not every dog would make an excellent search dog as a career Finding right pets, but that doesn't mean they can't be trained to find a cat's collar. Yeah, that doesn't mean they can't be trained to alert where Pet is in hiding. Yeah there's things that are or find remains. There's so many other possibilities and I really want to encourage people to think outside the box. This is not something you have to use a cookie cutter strategy. You can say, hey, I have this dog and I want to try this out and try that out, because Dogs are amazing. We didn't know, they didn't detect and smell, can't smell cancer years ago. That's true, that's true so there's new possibilities and amazing things working with our canine partners.

mitch: 5:32

Oh, I mean I, I would love to. You know, we have, we have two dogs and one of them, roxy, is just a, she's just a rock star of a dog. I mean, she's completely Flapless, flapless, flap, unflappable. She's completely unflappable. She loves everyone, every animal she meets. I just don't personally have the physical ability to do I mean, the tracking work itself is pretty Physically intensive. So I'll be interested to see what other kinds of applications there are, because it would be really cool to To be able to do something with Roxy or, you know, a future dog. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to the little trip to the Adirondacks in April April, I think it is. Yeah, yeah, I'm so excited, yeah, so you must have been doing this for a long time if you have developed a kind of expertise and Sort of branched out into training other people.

annalisa: 6:34

Yes, I originally did my training, I think in 2005, with at Albright and I did my training in Fresno, california. I was part of the second graduating class.

mitch: 6:46

Wow, he did.

annalisa: 6:47

Yeah and it was an amazing experience and I brought I had a German short hairpointer, uh mix, that was a rescue from the shelter and I brought her to the training and she took to it immediately and we helped find the first lost dog. We were a higher defined and oh my gosh Give closure to the first lost cat case we were hired on and I was hooked and so I've been working in the field. I'm a licensed private investigator in the state of California and also in Florida right and I have helped many people either find their pets alive or sadly deceased. Yeah, and also an important element is just letting people know they've tried everything and clearing areas. Yes, one of the things we're focusing on so much is. I want to walk up and find the pet, which of course, we want to do that, but it's immensely helpful to be able to clear an area with the dog and say actually there's no evidence of your animal being here now, or there's no scent there's. There's different variations. You turn your dog to indicate but to tell someone they're wasting their time in an area or they aren't wasting a time. This is definitely where your pet scent is. So all of those sorts of things can be incredibly helpful to people looking for their lost pet.

mitch: 8:16

I agree, those, those negative sightings, negatives the the nose, have been really why my brain is so often. It really is what. Those days have been really helpful in a couple of cases, for me especially so. There was one case in which we had a cat who'd gone missing. We weren't really sure how far he had gone and we were trying to get a perimeter. So we took current was Carmen Butler's dog Out just past this neighborhood to another, another nearby neighborhood and we got a negative on this entire little area and I was like, okay, now we know we can stay in this neighborhood With some certainty that you know we're gonna turn him up in there and we did. And the other thing is that we've been on cases where you know we've gotten a lot of sightings for a particular animal and it gets the owners just kind of running around all over and it's been really nice to be able to say, no, this particular Sighting was not this dog. You know this. You can. You can stop thinking that he got this far or if he did, it wasn't in this direction. Absolutely, like you said, just that, that elimination. And you can really, if you get enough of those negatives, you can sort of begin to see a path where the animal might have gone. If you get enough positives and negatives, you can sort of draw, you know, a little bit of a map and that can be really helpful.

annalisa: 9:52

Absolutely, and if you do, a direction of travel from the pets point of escape where they? went missing their home or the pet sitter and you're able to see which way the pet went. You can kind of divide it into a pie slices, if you can visualize that, and then you can say well, we know, we have sent going this way, so we can't ignore the other pie sizes, but we can now say they're a much less likely Probability right focus instead in the pie slice in the direction of where the scent, the initial direction of travel went. So that's true.

mitch: 10:29

That's true.

annalisa: 10:29

Be a helpful tool and sometimes I remember another case.

mitch: 10:31

That we found that the initial path of travel seemed to be in one direction of this cat in this park, was away from home and Seems to turn back toward home and we thought, okay, so maybe he's making his way back. And it turned out that he was more, you know, sort of on the Other perimeter. But it was an interesting Exercise to see how this cat was kind of making his eking out his little living in this part for two months or whatever. He was gone. So, yeah, those Sent data I mean all data is helpful. So it's really it's it's important for owners to end trackers to see how they're doing and how they're doing and how they're doing. It's really it's it's important for owners to end trackers to know that those negatives can be really helpful. Perfect way of saying it. Agreed, you know, I mean all those, the sightings, and that's what one of the things that I need to remember to tell people when I you know I sort of have a Multi-pronged approach with that. I mean it's not my approach, but you know, learned from cat and I just kind of verbalize it in a particular way that you know, your first year Making sure that you've multiplied your forces by making sure everybody out there knows that this animal is missed and it's missing and what to do if they spot it. And then you know you work on your on the ground and your social and all of that stuff. But Emphasizing that those are just more ways to collect more data is another, is another good way to make sure that people understand the importance of these other Things. Because I think for me, in my experience at least posters people really resist doing posters. It's just like, oh, I already did flyers. I've already talked to all my neighbors. Everybody in the neighborhood knows and they're always amazed if they do put up posters and they see how the the sightings just skyrocket and they really get so much more data. But I want to talk about the private eye thing because I haven't really I've never met a private eye. So this is kind of cool for me. But I don't. I guess they're not your license state by state. Does every state allow them, or are they restricted in some states that don't license them or what?

annalisa: 12:58

So it is state by state, so you have to research each individual state and what their regulations are. Some states require that someone who is working professionally looking for lost pets have a private investigator license, because pets unfortunately I don't agree with this, but pets are classified as property and so they fall under the law in many states of if they go missing, of lost or missing property, and so I am required to have a private investigator's license in the states that I operate in. So it's really interesting, and one of the reasons they require that is to protect the consumer and make sure that you have a basic knowledge of local state laws. And that might apply to trying to search for and recover lost property. A lot of those things absolutely do not apply to missing pets, but it falls under that umbrella.

mitch: 14:06

That's so interesting. I mean, I think the consumer protection is a great thing. I would not have occurred to me that that would be the picture and I remember during our training, during our training with Kat that she was talking about. You know that some people convert from or add pet recovery to their PI portfolio and I just never really had a chance to ask why that was. So it sounds like that's just one of those services you can offer, because it's really so related to what you're doing already. That's pretty cool.

annalisa: 14:46

Correct, but most private investigators aren't going to have the really critical aspect, which is related to animal behavior and missing animal behavior. Most private investigators are going to be more focused on the investigations aside like, for example, a family member that took a pet, that sort of thing. It's not really going to be more like the pet got out of the backyard and what's that pet's behavior going to be. I hope to encourage more private investigators to get involved in lost pet searches and use search dogs because it's an amazing tool. It's very rewarding to work with your trained dog, yeah, and it's in super high demand because one out of every three pets will go missing in their lifetime.

mitch: 15:40

Yeah, that's so important to emphasize to people. I think every time I've talked to an owner who finds out what I do, what the network does, all that stuff, they're just amazed that this is even a professional, a professional, that there's a field, because it never occurs to people that there might be some unique expertise required to be able to do it, that we really are incorporating animal behavior, finder behavior, owner behavior, the laws, animal control, particular to that area, shelters, all those factors come into play and yeah, I mean that really is the training is so valuable. I mean I tell people I went through a 10 week class to do it and it was not an easy breezy 10 weeks. I mean we had a ton of homework to do every week. So, yeah, I wish more people would do it, because it really is needed and some parts of the country, I think, just don't get any coverage at all and not everybody, not all of the responders, can travel like you do. That's pretty cool, exactly, exactly. How many dogs do you have at the moment who are trained?

annalisa: 16:56

up. I want to warn you. I see that my husband just got home from work, so the dogs might bark in the background.

mitch: 17:03

I'm so familiar with that, so familiar.

annalisa: 17:06

You will currently hear five dogs barking in the background. I have currently so, you know, since I've been doing this. That's one of the sad parts about working as a K9 handler is that you, their lifespan is just too short. Yeah, it's too short. And so by the time they're trained and operational and you're working them, you don't know how long of a career they're going to have, right, it's just never long enough. So I'm actually on like my fourth K9 team, wow. And I started with Lily, my German short hair pointer, and then I added a rainbow, a golden springer, spaniel mix, all my dogs are rescues from shelters or repurposed career dogs. Yeah, and then I added a target dog Perry, a little pug Chihuahua. Oh, nice and then I added a street dog, a feral dog, who was absolutely amazing and taught me so many things because she had the street smarts. And she was a pit bull mix of some kind. Unfortunately, all those dogs have passed away and they saved lives. They saved lives, and here's the thing they loved doing the work.

mitch: 18:31

Oh, that.

annalisa: 18:31

The training they loved doing the work. They each of them learned in a different way. Each of them had their strengths and weaknesses, but they were amazing. So then I added June who was, who is a rescue Foxhound mix from Beagles and Buddies in Southern California. And then I got a human search and rescue dropout dog, rody, and he's a border collie healer mix. Wow. He was from a disaster search dog organization that takes rescued dogs and trains them for disasters. Oh wow, he flunked out because he didn't bark loud enough. Nobody told him that, because I tell you he has no problem barking loud at home now. And then, most recently, we added two bloodhounds, also from we got them from a shelter in Central California and Hawkeye and Faith, mother son duo, and they're absolutely amazing. That's so great. Any breed dog can do this, yes, dogs that have any sort of limitations, you can work around it. And maybe you say this is just for fun or it could be serious. The dogs, they, they love doing it.

mitch: 19:58

Yeah, I, yeah, I've seen Carmen's dog and oh my gosh, Bob Swenson's dog, and they, they love Carmen's dogs and just each one of them, just they can't wait to get out there. They you know they're so excited for, for running the trail, and then you know afterward, of course, they, they all have their different rewards. That's very fun to see. You'll see if I can bring Roxy with me. Yeah, yeah, but no, that's really neat. And how long does it take you to train? It varies, but what's the range of amounts of time that it's taken before you you're able to use a dog in the field?

annalisa: 20:42

Again, it depends on what your goals are. So if you want to teach a dog the fun beginnings which can help you if you lose your kitty cat inside your house, type thing, that can just take a couple of lessons of practice and playtime and the dogs enjoy doing it. Just like, how long does it take to teach your dog to sit or come when they they are called? Yeah, now, what we're talking about with being field ready like they're deploying on searches is we're talking about learning a sequence of trained behaviors and being able to perform in a wide range of environmental variables wind, rain, loud noises, traffic, all of those sorts of things. So the variables is where you really start to get into, where it takes a much longer time to be fully trained and be operational. So the standard usually is six months to two years.

mitch: 21:46

Yeah.

annalisa: 21:47

But I want to add that the training for the dogs is a lifelong enjoyment and experience. So, just because you train a dog and say they're operational, they're ready, you have to continue with that training at regular intervals, and things always come up. Behaviors always need to be worked on, or you work a case and you find this new scenario you never thought you'd come across and all of a sudden you need to train for it.

mitch: 22:21

Yeah, yeah. And that kind of brings me to the fact that there are so many people out there who either don't have adequate training themselves or are starting to take a dog out who is not truly trained, who is not truly signaling the right things, or whatever. So tell me about the risks of hiring someone like that.

annalisa: 22:47

Well, the most important thing in my opinion is clear communication. I don't have a problem personally if a dog that's not trained and there's no other resources and the person says, can I just come and see what my dog does, you know like okay, I personally don't have a problem with that, but only if there's really clear communication. My dog isn't trained what the risks are, or you know, my dog has done this once before, twice before, or I did three lessons. The problem is in making a dog seem like they can do everything magically, yes, and then coming out and potentially doing harm in a search, right. So it's really that, from that standpoint, if it's available, then you want to use somebody who has a trained dog, who talks with you about your case and who has training and experience in similar scenarios.

mitch: 23:51

Yeah.

annalisa: 23:51

If possible. The problem is and the real, in my opinion, the real black hole is that there's not enough trained, professional people doing it. So the only option people have is people who don't have the training, whose dogs, you know, don't have enough experience or whatever it is. And so you know we have to be careful not to over promise and not to over, you know, elaborate what training our dogs do have to be very forthcoming with that, and that there are risks if the dog has not had the training and bringing it out. And so those are some of the factors that go through my mind when I'm, you know, considering all of these variables. There's also a difference between a dog that's retired from human search and rescue, going out to look for the neighbor's lost dog, versus someone who has trained their dog three times has never been operational and they're saying I can do the same thing. So you know what training are we talking about.

mitch: 25:08

Yeah, my concern these days is a lot of the people who just don't know what they don't know, or maybe they know, but you know there's some unscrupulous folks putting out their shingle, as you know someone who can find your pet, you know for sure they guarantee you know, up to a year after it goes missing.

annalisa: 25:33

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely scams out there and it's really hard because when you have a lost pet you're in trauma and your first thoughts are let me check credentials, but that's a good time to ask a friend or family member. Can you search around on the internet? Can you see if there's reviews? Can you ask around for some past client references or training references and that's a good route to take with it. And the biggest thing for me is what are the training credentials? Okay, I don't just say I hear my training credential is A, b and C. I link to Cat Albrecht. I list cats and names. I show my certificates where I graduated, you know those things. And so I think actually asking and looking at training credentials are really important because, look there's this isn't an industry where there's a cookie cutter, that everybody goes through the same process and there could be really good search dogs that don't go through that process. Yeah so. But if you look back and say, okay, but who did you train with? Who trained your dog? Has your dog ever been tested? Have you ever been tested? Those sorts of things are good questions to ask and I would not say absolutely, don't go with someone who doesn't have that, but know what you're getting into and certainly don't put out a lot of money Right.

mitch: 27:05

You've got to know what your money is actually buying Exactly. So you mentioned the dogs who have been trained as for human search and rescue, or cadaver search and rescue, search and recovery. What about dogs who are trained for, like barn hunting, scent work, that kind of scent work, absolutely? I mean, is that?

annalisa: 27:28

transferable? Oh yes, for sure, because they know how to use their nose, they know how they're giving alerts or indications. True, and you know, dogs can find amazing things bed bugs. I just learned that dogs can even find dry rot.

mitch: 27:43

I just read that too. Yeah, must have seen the same.

annalisa: 27:47

And they're finding invasive species all over the world. So these are amazing animals that we can work in collaboration and in teamwork with, if we just take the time and pay attention.

mitch: 28:01

Yeah, yeah, true, that's pretty amazing. Tell me about maybe a particularly meaningful case, a difficult case, something that stands out in your 18 years of doing this. That's amazing.

annalisa: 28:18

Yeah, I've worked a lot of very difficult cases. I've worked a lot of heartbreaking cases, but I've also worked so many cases where your faith and hope is renewed. My favorite case really is my first case that I ever worked, which was with my search dog, lily. That. I trained with Kat Albrecht and she, kat, gave me the lead for this particular case. This couple had adopted a wild dog, a dingo mix from Australia, named Jade Wow. These details you can't make up. Life is yeah, they had adopted this wild dingo mix and had it shipped from Australia to LAX airport. Oh my gosh, the family lived in Texas and they had gone to LAX airport, picked the dog up and started to drive back cross country to their home in Texas. The second night or so they were camping along the way at a national park in Southern California, and the dog backed out of its harness. This happens so often too. Yeah, it happens a lot, obviously not dingoes from Australia.

mitch: 29:45

That's the only one I've ever got. That's an added complication there.

annalisa: 29:50

Exactly, and that was my first dog case and I fully disclosed to them. I've just done my training. I can't remember if I had just passed my test or if I was going to take my test very shortly. It was right around that time I had never worked a dog case and I was very realistic about what they could expect. I wanted to work my dog to see, if she gave me any indications of the dog being in the area, what she could find. I was not making outlandish promises because the client was thinking this dog's probably halfway to Timbuktu now and so I brought her out and I worked her and very quickly I could read her body language that this dingo was still nearby and she led me in a certain pattern that was kind of circling around the area where it had gone missing and we found the dog's prints, we found where the dog was drinking water and we found where the dog had bedded down and so I said your dog is still nearby, your dog is not up into the hills. And I advised them they needed to do a humane trap and they put out the trap and one or two days later the dog went in. And they genuinely were going to give up and just go home, because they thought it was a lost cause. So I think that's a really perfect case example of how working with a search dog gives you information that then you can leverage to someone catching their dog or cat, getting their pet back.

mitch: 31:38

Yeah, that's incredible, I mean, and also incredible that this dog stayed in the area, given that it was not from that continent not alone that area and it had not ever met these people before, like it correct. How much of a bond I mean? I guess it depends on the situation, but some dogs take a long time to really develop a bond to a new owner. It seems like that dog really didn't quite have anywhere else to go and knew that these people were at least safe enough. That's just. That's a really good story.

annalisa: 32:14

That's really sweet and they had smelly. Really delicious food.

mitch: 32:19

Yes, yes, God, the difference that makes. Yeah, don't take out your little temptation street spirit cat or your little milk bones for your dog, like that's not what brings them home. I mean, I guess you know anything that works works, but that's not your statistically going to be your best bet, right?

annalisa: 32:38

Well, I really wanted to talk about encouraging people to get into this field and to work with their dogs. Yeah, because the demand is so high and we can help so many more people and their pets if we are able to inspire and reach out to people and educate them about what is possible.

mitch: 33:07

Yeah.

annalisa: 33:07

So today I had somebody from Human Search and Rescue contact me and this happens semi-regularly. They have an operational search dog that's a German Shepherd, so they know how to do the training. They know they either are doing trailing or area search or HRD, whatever it is with that dog and they have a second dog that's maybe a companion animal or what they were going to do Human Search and Rescue with. But something happened. They changed their mind. The first dog was so much better at it. There's a ton of reasons why they might say I have a second dog and that dog's not going to go the same route, but I still want to do something with the dog and I said pet search and rescue is a great option for that second pet. They have the operational knowledge, training, knowledge from Human Search and Rescue, and they've got a second dog that they could definitely deploy in lost pet cases. I want to emphasize again there's a wide range of the training that you can do with a pet to find other pets. You can do the basics, which is runaways, direction of travels, alerts, those sorts of things, or you can get very complicated and do 10-mile-long trails. That depends on the handler, the owner, the trainer to what extent you want to go. Every single level is valuable, is worthy, is enriching for the dog and can help in your community or in your house. So I want to encourage people to, whatever the level might be, to explore it, and you never know with a dog. I was telling you about my rescue dog, hope who was a street dog, pit bull mix, and we just thought this dog is never going to even be a pet. I couldn't touch her for the first two years I had her. It was totally feral and one day we were doing a training exercise and we had put her, I think, in the house and somehow she got out, pushed the door open or something like that, and she came and did the training exercise better than the dogs that had been in training did. And we were, like you know, hitting ourselves up side the head what's going on here? And we started doing the training with her and she was absolutely phenomenal. So sometimes you really well, you can't judge a book by its cover and you need to give the dog a chance and explore what the dog enjoys doing naturally and work with that. Work with the dog's natural inclinations and tendencies and what the dog enjoys doing, Because using their nose to find a target, whether it's a stray piece of cheese or chicken in the little piece of chicken treat in the tall grass, or if it's finding their toy or if it's finding another missing pet or person. They love using their nose for all those things and learning how to do that is complicated, especially when we talk about the different scent conditions and is it a five day old scent? But learning the basics is not. So I really want to encourage people all my dogs love it and it's enrichment for them and there's many different ways that each of us can help with the lost pet problem.

mitch: 36:55

So taking that, if you're someone like me who has limited physical capacity I specifically, I have migraine 24-7 and I don't, as a result, do a lot of moving around physically, which means I am out of shape like stamina wise, I can't take one of these long runs. But also, just, you know the physical demands of climbing up and down, you know ravines and things like that, which these things always seem to lead to. You know, if you're given that kind of situation, what kinds of things might I focus on?

annalisa: 37:40

Oh gosh, I love this question. This gets me really excited. I love this. This is the kind of thing that just is a joy to me. So those things you listed, yes, that will limit you but there's still so many possibilities within those parameters. I think the first thing then is I go to the dog and what's a match for the dog, because they have so many different personalities and they have their own likes and dislikes. But ignoring, let's say, for a second, you didn't have a dog and you were like I'm thinking about going to the shelter and adopting a dog. What are some things I could look for? What are some things I could do? The first thing is doing interior searches or property searches. That's where the dog doesn't have to be on a leash or can be under voice control or can be on a long line, but you can let it drag behind the dog. So that's more like looking for evidence or looking for where a pet is hiding. So that would be like where there's different ways to do it, but one option would be where you're directing the dog. Check this, check this. This is like what the police do when they're looking for drugs or bombs. They're giving the dog very methodical, specific, like a detail search, like going over a vehicle. Go through this room here and do a detailed search for the missing pet or cat, whatever it might be, that's not going to take a lot of stamina from the handler's perspective and it's great stimulation for the dog. Now there's some drawbacks you can't use a dog who is aggressive, so you have to have a dog then for that situation that loves kitty cats, that loves other dogs, that's not going to get into an issue with the pet, so there are limitations for that. So that's one thing. I also absolutely love working my dogs in a safe, confined area off lead. Now there are drawbacks to that, because Cattlebrick says a great story about where her dog went down a hillside to where she thought it was enclosed, and the dog actually jumped into a swimming pool and almost drowned. Oh my God what a nightmare. Exactly so. You have to be very careful about these parameters, but if there's a safe area for your dog to work off lead that's also a possibility to find evidence. One thing I would highly recommend is training that dog for that handler to find ID callers, because when a pet is stolen, the pet caller might be taken off and dropped and that might be evidence. Or also if the pet is deceased there might be evidence of a caller, or if the pet pulled the caller off when it was stuck under a house or in a fence. So, training a dog to find the pet's caller is not going to apply to every pet case because, some pets are lost without a caller it wouldn't be helpful. But if the pet had a caller and you can say I have this dog and I can come over and I'll take a half an hour and go around your property and see if the caller can be located, that can provide closure or the next clues, right? So those are just a few examples. I also encourage people to work with other people who maybe have strengths that they might not have, and often we'll work with a second or even third handler or flanker, and if one of us is not feeling 100%, then the other person can kind of step in and take the lead, and then, vice versa, we can switch out, and when you train with more than one person and your dog is used to working with more than one person, you have that flexibility also. So that's another possible scenario Teaching negatives is also something that does not require any physical mobility at all. Really, because you're asking the dog is the animal sent here, and the answer is no. So the appropriate response is some behavior that is not taking off on scent. It's giving you a no indication, and there's a lot of different ways to do that. So those are just a few ideas of what. I would consider. And another one is having a target dog. There's so many lost dogs that will not come up to a human but will come up to a target dog.

mitch: 42:57

Yeah.

annalisa: 42:59

So you can have a dog that's not online or have an excellent recall, or even for training. So maybe you're not the person who's going to be working the dog. But what if one of your dogs is used to train another dog to help find lost pets? That is so needed. That is so because I'm going to say the hardest part is the training and setting up the training scenarios, especially as you progress and you're like, okay, now we're going to do a split trail with three different target dogs. You know you can get pretty complicated.

mitch: 43:37

Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like you do ongoing training. Whether you're on a case or not, you're training those dogs Like daily To some degree.

annalisa: 43:49

It really varies based on my availability and what dogs I have. That are working cases or not, where they are it's changed a lot over 18 years and what. I do and even how I train my dogs has changed a lot over that time. I absolutely advise to do training on a weekly basis, if not daily, and like, for example, this morning I didn't have a trail set, I didn't have evidence hidden out, but we practiced recall, we practiced sitting, staying waiting coming. We practiced touching on a target. You know we do all of those things so that when a situation arises and we need to call on those in our scent training, it's that behavior is there for us to call on.

mitch: 44:44

Yeah.

annalisa: 44:44

So ideal really is to be able to do something on a weekly, maybe bi-weekly basis. But some of the foundational things that dogs like to do and it's not complicated For example, foundational things would be runaways, hide-and-go-seek, those are things you can do in your in your fenced-in front yard. You don't have to make it complicated. But as you progress, then doing a two-week-old age trail with multiple targets or whatever you know, then you can get pretty complicated.

mitch: 45:18

Yeah, explained to the listener what you mean when you say runaways.

annalisa: 45:24

Yeah, so runaways are the foundation of the trailing training. Okay, and it's basically hide-and-go-seek. So, the target which is the would-be, if you think about it, that's, the missing person or the missing pet runs away from the handler and the dog that are trying to find them or catch them and then, depending on which stage and how, there's again many different ways to go about it in the detail, but the basic idea is then you go and find the target that just ran away. Right. So just like playing hide-and-go-seek as a kid and the dogs?

mitch: 46:08

love to do it and you mentioned trailing. We should probably explain trailing versus tracking, versus whatever other kind of. I think, feel like there's a third term.

annalisa: 46:22

I'm forgetting Area search.

mitch: 46:24

Okay, yeah there's.

annalisa: 46:26

I just want to. From my perspective, these are the terms we apply to try to understand what the dogs do. There's a lot we still don't understand what the dogs do, so I encourage people to understand. These are terms, but we're still learning the amazing capabilities of our dogs and we're just trying to understand them. These terms vary based on who you talk to. They also vary across the world, so someone could say one thing in one country and it could actually mean something in another country. The two main distinctions are scent specific and general scent. So for example, scent specific. I am looking for this person. I'm looking for Sally May and this is her scent. I'm not looking for any other person or any other person's scent, only this Versus general scent. I'm looking for any person Sally May, John Smith, Gloria, anybody will do, as long as it's the scent. So to put it in another example, if I was training my dog to find narcotics, then I want my dog to find any narcotics. I'm not just wanting the dog to find this specific narcotics from this particular plant or from this laboratory or whatever. So those are two distinctions to be aware of. So you can teach a dog to find only fluffy, the lost pet, or you can teach the dog to find every dog, every cat. You can teach the dog to find every collar or every remains of a pet. So these are all you know. It's kind of like the big umbrella distinction. Yes, Is your pet is your search dog scent specific or is it? doing a search and looking for any of a particular item. That would be like evidence recovery Right Within that. You can train your dog with a variety of ways, and area search, tracking and trailing are three common words that are used to mean different things Generally not always, but generally area search is not scent specific but more teams, by the way, are training to be scent specific. In an area search where you send a dog out, they find any missing person in your area or find a specific person. Area is usually off leash and the dog is worked in a pattern to cover a bigger area. Trailing is what we commonly refer to in the work that I do with using a search dog to follow the scent trail of the lost pet to indicate which way the pet went Right and in those instances the search dogs are using a combination of information to pick up that scent. And we are. They're picking up the rafts of the skin, rafts, the. They use the wind direction. They will use vegetation where scent is clinging those sorts of things to determine and follow the scent versus tracking, and this is not worldwide these definitions. Tracking is usually more following footstep for footstep and not trying to use these other possible parameters to follow the scent. So the dog is trying to more closely follow exactly where the footsteps fell.

mitch: 50:27

Gotcha, and just to wrap that all in a little, though, when they're trained to look for a particular, when we say they're trained to just look for a particular person or just look for a particular pet, that the way they do that is by providing them a scent article that smells like that person or that animal at the beginning of the search. Correct, so they know this is the scent you're looking for. Just so that, correct?

annalisa: 50:55

Yes, they have to be provided. That scent item, yeah, and it can really be almost anything and it can be something that a person or a pet touched once. It doesn't have to be something that has a huge concentration, because the dogs are so amazing at picking up. I was watching a show and they were talking about ancient mummies in Egypt and how when they go in to retrieve the mummies, they have to wear full hazmat suits because every time you breathe, you breathe out so much DNA that if they pick up the mummies and breathe on the mummy, their DNA will come up in the DNA analysis and tests. Wow, yeah, that's amazing. The dogs are. They're like, look we've got a scent.

mitch: 51:51

Yeah, A bunch of amateurs. That's amazing. Yeah, I didn't realize that it was that took that little material Very potent, yeah, very potent. Yeah, so I don't know. If you saw, earlier today in our one of our Facebook groups there was somebody posted a picture of a mummified dog, did you see that post. Yep, yep. If someone were able to get access to that specimen and they had a scent article from a missing pet, would they be able to match those? Or are they so different because of the mummification Right?

annalisa: 52:35

It's a really good question and people actually ask that about cases quite frequently. So what we know is that dogs are smelling a combination of compounds, and when a person or an animal passes away, the combination of compounds immediately begins to change. And over time. All of that, those combination of compounds. So if you think about it like your soup recipe, you have a cup of beans, a cup of rice, you have a tablespoon of oregano, you have a tablespoon of olive oil, whatever your combination is. That's your recipe of your soup. Your body is the same way, so you have this combination of these different compounds that make the different smells that have to do with the food you eat and the environment that you're in and your DNA, and when someone passes, that starts to change. So we aren't at a point, to my understanding and research, where we know where the threshold is, because there's so many variables that could impact that between where there's a match and where there's not a match. Gotcha, in my experience, there has to be variables that we're not aware of, because sometimes they can do it in certain situations, and sometimes it's just been too long or there's another variable. So my inclination would be to say that would not be a normal thing to expect a search dog to match the ascent article with a mummified animal's body to say if that was it or not. Not to mention it would really depend on how the dog was trained, because it depends what their alert would be, and all dogs are going to want to sniff the mummified animal.

mitch: 54:48

Fascinating.

annalisa: 54:54

I think fur testing or dental records would probably be what I would try to go with, or just some standard measuring. We know that the pet is this long from nose to tail, or have a picture you can tell what it would be from the shoulder to the floor and use that for getting a better idea of if it could be a match.

mitch: 55:24

Yeah, that's fascinating. And are your dogs. Any of your dogs trained to find remains.

annalisa: 55:31

Yes, I do frequently cross train my dogs for remains, because that is a common outcome If someone has looked for their lost pet and they've exhausted all other possibilities and they haven't found it, then there's a good chance that there's a reason why they haven't found it. So I want to be able to offer as much closure as possible to my clients. So I do try to cross train my dogs if it's reasonable with finding remains, and I currently have two dogs that are extensively trained in finding remains. Wow.

mitch: 56:14

That has got to be so hard to be out with an owner and get that signal from your dog.

annalisa: 56:22

Well, that's one reason I actually don't allow people to come with me on the search. I know some people do have the pet owners go with them, and that's fine. But, for me personally. I've had too many traumatic experiences where the pet owner's been with me and or that has been the outcome and things that the pet owner actually should not see. Yeah, so and also so, when you train your dog to find something, they're doing it because it's fun. Yes, they're not doing it because they're serious and they're giving the pet owner closure, right. So when I train my dogs to find it, I have to reward them for doing a good job. That's my job. Yeah, I don't want to be disrespectful in front of the pet owner and be giving my dog treats or playing with them. Good job. Exactly.

mitch: 57:21

Exactly, so very good point.

annalisa: 57:23

And also for my mental health. I have to take a minute because it's upsetting for me. Sometimes it's very upsetting for the dogs also yeah. And then I immediately call the client and tell them right away. And then I ask them do you want to see, or I don't think you need to see, this, yeah, or do you want to send your friend? This isn't, you know there's. You don't want to be part of traumatizing anyone more than they're going to be from the experience, yeah.

mitch: 58:02

And then I ask my friend that's an excellent idea, because then the person has some assurance that you know you're telling them the truth and it's real and they need to know that. But they don't have to have that visual. And I think it depends on the person and the situation.

annalisa: 58:19

But yeah, that would be a that's a difficult call. I try to have clear communication and ask because everybody's different. Some people want to see and know everything Right, and then I think that people you know in that moment will be like I'm just going to pretend like I don't know.

mitch: 58:34

Yeah, yeah it's. I'm tearing up because I'm picturing that being in that situation and thinking like for me the visual can be so invasive that I can't, you know, let that go. But on the other hand, you know what you imagine can be so much worse than you know anything that you might see in person. Yeah, that is a very interesting point of view about the. You know, at the end of these trails. It's not this is not just for the listener, this is not like you're giving them treats as you go on the run and you know, oh, good job, you know, like you might on a walk, if you're teaching them loose leash or something like that. It's they work and then they get the reward at the end. And for some dogs that reward is not a treat but tug of war, fetch, you know, playing rough housing, whatever, and it's very exuberant and exciting because they've been very focused and you know, working this whole time, and then they get a release and that's the exciting part. And so, yeah, having a person there getting bad news would be awful. Yeah, that's definitely a smart. That's a smart. I just had not ever thought of that before.

annalisa: 59:48

And also the dog may give me an indication and alert before I visually can confirm.

mitch: 59:56

Yes.

annalisa: 59:57

Yeah. So there can be a lag and, depending on the dog, the reward might come before visual confirmation, because I might be very confident in this dog or there could. There could be a lot of things going on and so I don't know what exactly is there. Like the dogs, the dog dog's job is to show me where. It's my job with my eyes, to see it and then interpret what that is for the client or give them an estimation of what that is. So let's say, my dog is alerting and visually I don't see anything. The dog's done his job. Dogs told me where her job job and it might take me a half an hour to find the blood or it might take me an hour going on hands and knees to find the buried body, whatever it is yeah. So the reward for the dog does not come for me Most of the time. The reward does not come when I have visual confirmation, yes, and if the dog tells me I found it, I have to believe the dog. They found it.

mitch: 1:01:05

Yeah, and that's what they get rewarded for. So that has to come soon and it has to be a clear, like reward. That's exactly yeah, the dog has to be rewarded.

annalisa: 1:01:14

So it does now. These are things that are that don't happen every case but, over the period of my career, it's happened enough where I'm conscientious of these things and Want to do the best I can for my dogs yeah in their training and in deploying them in the field, and for myself yeah, and I've found for myself I also. I need a few minutes, just enough to have the client come to where I'm at yeah, to compose myself so I can be strong for them.

mitch: 1:01:48

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's right, because you're ultimately you know you're there to serve that person and and the pet and Well, you really hope for a lot more reunions than the not reunions, though, and I'm sure that ends up being the case, I would think.

annalisa: 1:02:06

It varies. One of the things I think we don't Acknowledge enough is how much geography and particular locations yeah, you know contribute to how and if pets are found right. So if you have a lost pet in the middle of nowhere in Montana versus if you have a lost pet in Beverly Hills, yeah, completely different scenarios of what is likely to have happened at different ratios. Yes, and Sometimes I work in places where it's not a good area for a pet to be missing and that can be from you know, lack of animal control resources, lack of education, viewpoint about animals To be just busy roads, lack of street lighting I mean, there's so many barriers. Yeah, exactly that can go into that. I Would love to see research done that goes by more Geographical areas and how pets in that those areas, specific areas, are found and what risks are. You know, if you do your top 10 risks, what's? Number one, two, three, four and To go like that, because I really don't think you can make a generalized statement across the US, let alone the world about and I know that if you looked at the statistics and let's say New York City versus Oklahoma City, it's gonna be very different as to the Portions of deceased or alive pets and how they're down.

mitch: 1:03:46

Yeah, no, it's very true. Yeah, we've been talking a bit in one of the groups about the the presence of predators, large predators, especially in some areas where that's just not something that someone in a city is likely to have to think about. But you get a little bit out of town or you know, into a less populated area and you know You've got completely different predators to deal with and, depending on the pet you know can be, can be a problem absolutely.

annalisa: 1:04:20

And the other thing is Individual patterns in predation. We we tend to categorize Animals all together and make like generalizations about them, but they can have very weird Individual new on yeah, that you don't see in in the rest of the population. So you can have an area where, let's say, predators don't go after pets, but you can have one that does. Yeah right. So there's Many really fascinating aspects to looking for lost pets, to lost pet behavior, to find your behavior, and there's, you can make some generalizations. And then sometimes there's the exception to the rule.

mitch: 1:05:15

Yeah, who's doing research on that, like sort of serious peer reviewed research? I guess it would be people researching predators. Yes, would probably be the first place to look.

annalisa: 1:05:26

Yes, there there is some predator research that's Been done and is continuing to be done. One of the things I like to Refer to was a study done and I can't remember if it was Arizona or New Mexico, but someone basically Studied and watched and recorded coyote cat interactions and they were doing this as part of like their you know, like their research for working with the university, going to college and things, and they found the number one coyote cat Interaction is coyotes chasing cats. Yeah, not catching cats. Yeah chasing cats interesting and and that just really inspires me, because think how many kitty cats get chased and then, yeah, can't come home again. Yeah so they are, are the need for people to go out and look and have this information, be passionate about helping animals. It is really high and it can save lives and animal lives and their owners, because many of these animals are Important companion animals therapy animals, emotional support animals and people's reason for getting up in the morning.

mitch: 1:06:49

Absolutely, absolutely. I think that's a great place to leave it. Actually, that's really, that's really good. I Can't wait to meet you in April yeah, it is April in New York. That's gonna be beautiful.

annalisa: 1:07:03

I think well, april no.

mitch: 1:07:06

Adirondacks.

annalisa: 1:07:07

Adirondacks is July.

mitch: 1:07:08

July. Yeah, why April July? I'm so sorry.

annalisa: 1:07:16

I'm doing three trainings in 2024, so I've got. Florida is January. Los. Angeles is April and then. New York, the Adirondack Mountains is July awesome.

mitch: 1:07:29

That's close to me, so that's where I'm going. I love it.

annalisa: 1:07:32

Yeah, I was trying to get the word out and inspire. Fantastic and and share my story about how I have had, you know, an 18 plus career, your career and. It's been incredibly rewarding. Yeah, it has Just been an amazing journey that I wouldn't trade for anything.

mitch: 1:07:55

Yeah, and for those dogs rewarding too, and exactly yeah, that's awesome. All right, I know, lisa, it was wonderful to meet you and I appreciate this. I will let you know when we've got a post date, probably a few weeks from now, so sounds great.

annalisa: 1:08:10

Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

mitch: 1:08:12

Thanks. Talk to you later, okay bye. I am so grateful for my guest on, lisa Burns, for joining me today. No place like home was a podcast about missing pets. I feature content from owners, finders, volunteers and professionals. I always appreciate a rating and review on your podcast app and a follow on Facebook, where you can find the show at MPL H Mitch. That's n is a, no P is in place, l is in, like, h is in home. Mitch MIT CH. Find episodes, transcripts and additional information at noplacelikehomeshow. If you have questions or feedback, you can contact me at npl h Mitch at gmailcom. Remember to always think missing, not stray or dumped. This podcast was created, posted, recorded and produced by me, mitch Bernard. The opinions expressed on this show are those of the people expressing them and do not necessarily represent the views of any other entity. Thanks for listening.