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Pics from our recent detection trial held at Turtl

Pics from our recent detection trial held at Turtle Bay Resort which aimed to assess the efficacy and efficiency of dog teams and visual searchers detecting downed seabirds in cover. #conservationdog #seabirdconservation #seabirdfallout

Congratulations to Debra Gochros for receiving the

Congratulations to Debra Gochros for receiving the 2022 Mea Ho‘omana‘o Award, which was recognized by the Kaua‘i Chamber of Commerce, Governor Ige, Kaua‘i County Mayor Kawakami, Council of the County of Kaua‘i, and Hawai‘i State Legislature.
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Debra has been an active Kaua‘i community member for decades and has served in or volunteered for various organizations that benefit the community and wildlife, including K9 Search and Rescue, Kīlauea Point Refuge, Hanalei Refuge, and several schools. We got to know her through Hanalei NWR's K9 program for avian botulism surveillance, and we are excited to now be collaborating with her on our downed seabird project.
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Go Debra!

📸 1: Debra and Xena at Hanalei NWR.
📸 2 & 4: Two of the 5 certificates!
📸 3: Debra and Guinness at Turtle Bay during the recent downed seabird detection trial.

Woohoo! After a lot of preparation and work, this

Woohoo! After a lot of preparation and work, this week's detection trial was a big success. We now have a lot of data showing how effective dogs are in finding downed seabirds in cover, compared with human/visual searchers. We look forward to sharing the results when the data analysis is completed.
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Turtle Bay Resort was the perfect place to hold the trial, and we really appreciate their passion for conservation and their allowing us to use their facilities.
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There were lots of real world challenges, from parties going on in our search areas, to interesting airflow around building structures. Learning about these was part of our goal.
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Huge mahalos to all the volunteers who participated in the trial, including visual searchers, data recorders & timers, and biologist Sheldon Plentovich @sheldorofthehillpeople who generated all the random points for the targets and set them out in the search areas each night and morning. You da best!

📸 Debra Gochros and Guinness searching a parking lot. The urban environment was very different from what we're used to surveying.

The perfect balance between night and day. Happy A

The perfect balance between night and day. Happy Autumnal Equinox!

📸 K9 Toad on nature’s balance beam during a devil weed survey
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#cattledogsofinstagram #australiancattledogsofinstagram #conservationdog

Happy Aloha Friday and Flashback Friday! 🐧 Run

Happy Aloha Friday and Flashback Friday!
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Running a high drive working dog on leash is not necessarily easy, but it's important in some locations to minimize disturbance to wildlife. Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge provides habitat to several species of endangered waterbirds, including ae‘o, or Hawaiian stilts. Whether we're at the local park or a refuge conducting avian botulism surveys, we always aim to walk past these waterbirds slowly and provide enough distance so as not to trigger alert calls or flushing.
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Our upcoming downed seabird trials and surveys will also be conducted with dogs on leash.

📸 by @tor.johnson.photography of handler Kyoko and K9 Solo at Hanalei NWR in 2019

Happy Aloha Friday! We had an adventure-filled wee

Happy Aloha Friday! We had an adventure-filled week on Hawai`i island searching for native seabird burrows. `Ua`u (Hawaiian petrels) and 'akē'akē (band-rumped storm petrels) on the Big Island are known to be in high elevation sites where they’re safer from predation. They also nest deep in tunnel-like burrows with small openings that look like many other cracks in the huge lava fields. Finding and confirming burrow locations can help local conservation agencies make the case for building predator-proof fencing around the nest sites. Various tools are used to detect these elusive seabirds, including song meters, which record their vocalizations. We hope the dogs will be a valuable added tool going forward. Mahalo @alcidalex for this opportunity!
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📸 Zephyr takes a break from his survey at 9000+ ft elevation on Mauna Loa, with Mauna Kea in the background.
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#zephyrdasniffer #labradorsofinstagram #seabirdconservation #hawaiianpetrel #bandrumpedstormpetrel

Some photos from our latest training session in pr

Some photos from our latest training session in preparation for an upcoming downed seabird detection trial. And while we post goofy videos like this, we take the work very seriously. All dogs in the program are screened to be non-reactive to live birds, and for operational surveys they will be on leash with safety muzzles. The goal is to protect the seabirds! #hawaiianseabirds #seabirdfallout #conservationdog #detectiondogtraining

We haven't posted about podcasts lately, so we tho

We haven't posted about podcasts lately, so we thought we'd share a few episodes we really enjoyed. DM us your email address or check out our Facebook post if you'd like the episode links.

WORKING DOG RADIO - Episode 17: WDRTeeth10

Host Eric Stanbro interviews Canine Oral Specialist James Anthony DVM and Elite Science cofounder Olivier Morin. This was an informative episode about proper dental health, facts and myths; things every dog owner/handler should know.

K9 CONSERVATIONISTS - Episode June 21, 2022: Leveraging Terrier Instincts with Miriam Ritchie

Host Kayla Fratt interviews Miriam from New Zealand about how she selects and trains terriers for invasive mammal detection (rodents, stoats, etc). The New Zealand Department of Conservation has high standards for certification and deployment, and it's great to hear how these dogs are trained to be very target-specific.

OLOGIES - Episode Nassology (TAXIDERMY) with Allis Markham

Alie Ward hosts this comedic science show whose guests include ecologists and conservationists. In this episode, Alie interviews Allis Markham, a taxidermist whose work is featured in many museums, including of rare species that died naturally and are preserved and displayed for educational purposes. A few of us at CDH are taking Allis' online taxidermy course - it's fascinating and gives you even more respect for animals.

HUNTING DOG CONFIDENTIAL - Episode 26: Hawking and Bird Dogs with Anthony Williams

Anthony hunts game with both his falcon and dog. We'd heard of hawking, or falconry, before but had never heard of someone whose bird of prey collaborates with a hunting dog. An absolutely fascinating interview!

K9s TALKING SCENTS - Episode 61: The Process of Training Detection with Tobias Gustavsson Part 1

It was interesting to hear Tobias' training methods and his reasons for doing things a certain way to achieve the results that he wants. We also appreciated host Cameron Ford's afterword describing the importance of trainers being open-minded and having different tools in their toolboxes, because one method isn't going to work for all situations or dogs.

...Continued in comment and click image for podcast/interviewee tags

Check out this devil weed lookalike plant. Can you

Check out this devil weed lookalike plant. Can you tell which one is the lookalike? Scroll right to see a closeup. Scroll right again to see the two plants in the sun, which makes it more obvious. The dogs are very good at detecting the target plant from afar, but the dog handlers have also honed their “ChrOdo eye.” While the plants look similar from a distance, you’ll notice up close that the devil weed leaf is a little more robust, i.e. not wilting, and has a wider base.
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#invasiveplants #chromolaenaodorata #invasivespecies #demolishthedevilweed #zephyrdasniffer #devilweed

We’re a TADD late to the party but better late t

We’re a TADD late to the party but better late than never! Almost everyone in the world of detection dogs has already heard of or used @scik9.mm Training Aid Delivery Device, which was developed for the Army and designed by scientists and K9 trainers. For those who are not familiar, the container lets the odor of the training sample out but doesn’t let water, oils and other substances in or out. This would have been very useful for our recent marine mammal project, in order to keep our scat samples uncontaminated while bobbing in the sea water.
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Another great feature of TADD is that it’s “NASA Outgassing Compliant, meaning it’s extremely low odor,” so you can be sure the dog is only being trained on the target odor within it, and not the container. Less time spent proofing dogs off of containers and other non-target odors is a good thing!
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We think there are a lot of uses for TADD, not just for training dogs but for conservation work in general. We’d love to hear the interesting applications for your TADD, whether you’re a biologist or a conservation dog trainer. Please share in the comments!

📸 1: Zephyr thinks SciK9’s metallized odor barrier bags are a good idea for maintaining the integrity of training samples! Many commercial mylar bags don’t have the necessary layers to block odor transfer.

📸 2&3: From www.scik9.com
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#detectiondogtraining #scentdetection #scentdetectiontraining

Another scent detection mini workshop in the books

Another scent detection mini workshop in the books! Today’s attendees included a biologist from USDA, a couple of repeat participants from Army Natural Resource Program, and dog trainers from @apetperspective who all brought their dogs to join the fun. Since the ANRP folks had previously done an intro workshop, we focused this time on the concepts of target odor imprinting and how dogs could be used to screen potted plants for pests prior to outplanting. We also discussed the potential use of dogs to detect the presence or absence of invasive mammals within predator proof fencing. There are so many ways that dogs could be used to help conservation efforts.
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Mahalo to everyone who joined us today and thanks to ANRP for hosting us at your base yard!

We’re always a little late posting because we’

We’re always a little late posting because we’re on Hawaiian time 😃 but hope you had a good National Dog Day and Aloha Friday!

📸 by @chippertonphotography of K9 Eddie who is currently preparing for a downed seabird detection trial. In addition to being a super sniffer, Eddie is a studio dog that has starred in Budweiser commercials and the Hawaii Five-0 TV show 🥰 @hawaii.studio.dogs

When you spend a lot of time in the field, you dev

When you spend a lot of time in the field, you develop a list of favorite gear that makes the work easier. We wanted to share a couple of recently acquired products we really like.
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The first is a squeeze bottle for dog water, with collapsible bowl and lock mechanism to prevent water leaks between uses. It's so important to keep our working dogs hydrated but if you use a traditional water bottle and bowl, you end up wasting a lot of water if the dog doesn't drink it all. This squeeze bottle doesn't require opening a bottle and pouring into a separate bowl, and will suck the unused water back into the bottle for future use.
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The second is an odor-proof pouch that can hold a few bags full of dog poop. Of course we are all responsible and pick up after our dogs, but nobody wants to smell it hanging off their backpack for an entire survey!
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What are your favorite field items?

📸 by @tor.johnson.photography of @betabitzer and K9 @qanagator surveying for devil weed on the Big Island

💦 Pet water bottle by LESOTC
💩 Poo pouch by Tuff Mutt

Several dogs have been training for seabird detect

Several dogs have been training for seabird detection, as we have a few projects coming up this fall. We’re grateful to @bishopmuseum for providing training samples, and @oahudofaw for letting us train at their base yard.

📸 K9 Mackenzie is on odor, and had permission to be here 😉

We enjoyed having Civil Beat reporter @r2dlou join

We enjoyed having Civil Beat reporter @r2dlou join us in the field today. Thanks for the pics!
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#malinoisofinstagram #invasivespecies #invasiveplants

We've been working for many months to prepare a pr

We've been working for many months to prepare a presentation about a proposed K9 bio-security program that would use dogs to screen ships going from the main Hawaiian islands to the remote marine national monuments. Today was an exciting day because the presentation was finally shared with representatives from the various agencies that have a stake in the care of these monuments. We think the talk was well-received and we look forward to helping make this idea a reality.
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At Johnston Atoll, the yellow crazy ants wreaked havoc on the ground-nesting red-tailed tropicbirds or koa‘e ‘ula. The Johnston ant eradication took over 10 years! And you've probably heard of the mice that have been attacking albatrosses on Midway Atoll. The Midway mice eradication project is a huge effort, yet to be completed. While it's too late to change what happened on Johnston and Midway, it's possible to prevent or curb future rodent and ant incursions in those atolls and others. We think dogs will be a valuable added tool.
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Thank you M. Vick of @workingdogsforconservation and A. Rickli-Rahman of @usfws for the knowledge and effort you put into the collaborative presentation!

📸 1: Marine Vessel Imua docked at Johnston Atoll during Crazy Ant Strike Team XX's deployment.
📸 2: Red-tailed tropicbird and chick at Johnston Atoll.

Photos by @tor.johnson.photography

Capturing photos of a dog working indoors can be a

Capturing photos of a dog working indoors can be a challenge because of the visual obstacles and the dog moving around so fast but we managed to snap a few sniffs, a couple of alerts and some reward events during our training session with Rusty Radona, former HPD K9 trainer and officer. We don’t get many opportunities to train the dogs indoors, not only due to location availability but also because we tend to train our conservation dogs in outdoor areas that simulate survey environments. We had a blast with the new airflow challenges today. Mahalo Garrett (Guam Dept of Agriculture) for handling the dogs!
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#gmanflyingnun #detectiondogtraining #dogtraining

We had a fun group training this past weekend, wit

We had a fun group training this past weekend, with a few devil weed dogs and a few seabird detection dogs. Mahalo @chippertonphotography for these awesome photos. And thanks to @oahudofaw for letting us train at your baseyard.

📸 1-4 by Chipperton Photography: Briar is on the hunt for devil weed; Qana alerts on devil weed; Jojo keys in on seabird odor; Zephyr alerts on seabird odor.

➡️ www.Chipperton.com

It’s so hard to capture field finds and alerts o

It’s so hard to capture field finds and alerts on video but sometimes we get footage of other interesting behaviors such as the bracketing of a scent plume and pooling odor. Qana was a rock star today and found 5 mature plants in a small area. #invasivespecies #invasiveplants #chromolaenaodorata #malinoisofinstagram #conservationdog #detectiondog #fieldwork @betabitzer @qanagator

Mahalo to the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle (CRB) Resp

Mahalo to the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle (CRB) Response Team for letting us visit your training session with our guest Garrett, K9 trainer from Guam Dept. Of Agriculture’s biosecurity program, who is in Hawai`i to observe different programs and training methods including ours. As you may have read in previous posts, we helped find three working dogs for their program, Elvis, Maui and Penny. We can’t wait to hear updates on how they do with CRB detection. The Guam teams will be searching for adult beetles whereas the Hawai`i teams focus on buried larvae.
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@crbhawaii @doag.biosec
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📸 (L to R): Marlee and K9 Rider, Roberta, Cody and K9 Bravo, Garrett
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#invasivespecies #invasiveinsects #coconutrhinocerosbeetle #biosecurity

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