In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Sarah Jackson from New York-New Jersey Trail Conference about sticky sage.
Links Mentioned in the Episode: None
Science Highlight: Impact of variations in training schedules on dogs’ acquisition and retention of an odor detection task
Where to find Sarah: Website
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Transcript (AI-Generated)
0:09
Hello and welcome to the Canine Conservationists podcast where we are positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs.
Join us every other Tuesday to talk about detection training, canine welfare, conservation biology, and everything in between.
I’m Caleb Frat, one of the three Co founders of Canine Conservationists.
0:25
We train dogs to detect data for researchers, NGOs, and agencies.
Today I’d like to give a a shout out to our friend and student Ray, who’s been working hard on some really interesting training tasks with a lot of creativity and diligence, and it’s been fun to see her progress.
And today I am really excited to be talking to Sarah Jackson from the New York New Jersey Trail Conference about moving from wind farm work to working on this really interesting plant called Sticky Sage as she’s settling into her job with the New York New Jersey Trail Conference.
0:57
This episode kind of builds on a previous episode we did with Arden Blumenthal, also from New York New Jersey Trail Conference, so it might be good to go back and listen to that one as well.
They’re not necessarily episodes that you have to listen to in order, but just so you know, these people are coming from the same organization.
1:14
So Sarah has two conservation dogs, Taro and Lady, and they all joined the trail conference in spring 2024 and immediately got to work surveying for invasive plants along the Appalachian Trail in Dover, NY.
And since then, they’ve expanded their work to include surveys for additional invasive species, small mammal scat, and most recently, native turtles.
1:35
Before joining the TRAIL conference, their projects included detecting bog turtles in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, conducting bird and bat mortality surveys at wind turbine sites in Iowa and across northern and Southern California, and detecting invasive muscles.
Sarah came to canine conservation by way of two seemingly unrelated paths, wounded game, recovery, tracking, and aviation.
1:57
She began tracking with her rescue dog Jack, a partnership that sparked her passion for the powerful bond between humans and dogs working together in the field.
And at the same time, she was flying as a wildlife pilot, conducting low level aerial surveys to support biologists, studying cormorant behavior, tracking radio televatured animals, and conducting annual duck counts.
2:17
She also worked as a cargo pilot, serving as an aviation maintenance and general management, and flew A humanitarian aid missions for Doctors Without Borders in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
When Sarah discovered that conservation detection dog work could blend her love of working dogs with her background and Wildlife Conservation aviation, everything clicked.
2:35
She realized she could combine both passions into one meaningful path forward.
And I’m really excited to talk more about that with her.
Sarah holds ABA in business and an MA in Biology, and when she’s not out in the field, she enjoys exploring the Hudson Valley urban home setting and tending to her veggie garden and flock of Bantam chickens.
2:53
And I’m so, so, so excited to talk to Sarah about this.
It’s going to be a lot of fun.
But first, we do have a science highlight.
So this week I read Impacts of Variations in Training Schedules on Dogs Acquisition and Retention of an Odor Detection Task, which was published in Applied Animal Behavior Science by Smith ET al in December of 2024.
3:13
So this study worked with 48 purpose bred Labradors split into four groups to look at the effect of concentration of training and breaks on acquisition and retention of an odor task.
So half the dogs were trained once a day for 10 days.
The other half of the dogs were trained twice a day for five days.
3:31
And then within each of those groups, half of the dogs were given a mid session break and half the dogs just trained straight through.
So there’s four groups total.
Overall, the effect sizes were pretty small here.
The dogs were all given a standardized training protocol, and it seems like the protocol worked pretty well.
3:47
The researchers detected a statistically significant different retention level when comparing break versus no break between the concentrated groups.
So in the groups that got twice a day for five days, there was a difference whether or not the dogs got a break.
4:03
And the dogs with the concentrated schedules and the mid session break demonstrated the highest retention.
So the dogs were tested a week after their final training concluded and the dogs in the concentrated no break group tested into level 4 out of 6, while the dogs in the concentrated break group tested into level 5.
4:23
Dogs in both of the expanded schedule groups tested between levels four and five out of 6.
So this is a good example of something that is statistically significant but might not be all that significant on a practical training level, depending on how hard it is to get a dog from steps 4 up to Step 5 and ultimately onwards, hopefully to step 6.
4:44
The authors also did temperament testing on the dogs and found that temperament testing had an effect outside of training protocols.
And for example, the dogs who scored as higher arousal performed better in their final assessment compared to dogs who scored as low arousal.
So definitely worth checking out and exploring a little bit.
5:02
But yeah, they didn’t find a whole lot of difference between the four different training schedules.
So Sarah, it’s great to have you here.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, Kayla.
It’s so great to be here.
And honestly, I don’t know how you found the time to squeeze me into your Superwoman schedule, so I really appreciate that.
5:21
Thank you.
Yeah, I I was like shopping yogurt in my face as I was getting ready for this.
Like I need to eat lunch.
Yeah, I’m constantly late is really how it all works.
Well, you’re it’s very impressive everything that you accomplished.
5:38
So keep at it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So we talked a little bit in your intro about your background before coming to conservation detection dogs.
But why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the wounded game tracking side of things maybe to start with?
And then how you saw the aviation and all of this blending in together ’cause that’s that.
5:57
That is not a background I’ve heard before.
Sure.
Yeah, For a while there I thought I was the only one that had that background, but then I was stoked when I heard that.
I believe it’s Lindsay up in New England.
Science Dog.
She started also with the the.
Game so yeah, but yeah, so flew planes.
6:17
Yeah, true.
That’s a little bit out there.
But yeah, I was, it was, you know, he was my pet dog, Jack, and I didn’t know what kind of dog he was.
I was living in Mississippi at the time and I looked up kind of, you know, what kind of breed is this dog at the Catahoula, and I was learning about them.
6:32
It says, OK, they’re good for tracking and baiting and things like that.
So as one does when living in Mississippi, I was sustenance hunting at the time with my bow and arrow.
And just for fun, we thought we’d see if if Jack could get out there and and find some of the down game that, you know, we knew where it was at the time, but we wanted to see if it was something that he took too naturally.
6:56
And absolutely it was.
It was incredible.
He was only about eight months, I think, in his first season.
Yeah.
And so once word got out that we had been taking him on a couple tracks, the neighbors called and said, hey, I, I down this deer, but I can’t find it.
7:12
Can you bring Jack?
And so we take him over there and.
And yeah, kind of word spread and all of a sudden this was becoming a thing.
And so we were getting a lot of calls and, and going out on these tracks with Jack.
And that’s when I really discovered the difference between, you know, being a dog lover and having dogs all my life and always wanted to get outside and play with them and, and working with a dog on a team.
7:37
And it was just the most magical experience, the communication that just came naturally.
I mean, it wasn’t a dog trainer.
I had no idea, you know, how all these things work.
But yeah, you’d be out there and you’d be showing me things when we thought, OK, this track’s over.
7:53
This has been going on too long.
We’re not going to find this deer.
You know, Jack would just kind of sense that we were having this little pow wow about giving up.
And he would find a spot, a sign that that we’d be able to see.
You know, we may not have seen any sign any, you know, prints or blood prints or anything like that for maybe 30 minutes or something.
8:13
But he’d see us looking like, oh, I think, I think they’re giving up.
And then he would go and yeah.
And then he’d go and find a spot and he would sit right at it.
And I didn’t know when alert was at that time.
You know, I had no idea.
It was just this natural thing that he did.
So we’d walk up there, why is he sitting and he’s not moving and look around.
8:30
And then you would see that sign.
It was like, Nope, he’s still on the track, let’s go.
So little instances like that where this natural communication came about just had me hooked on working with him.
And, you know, ethically, what we were doing to help sustainably harvest the game that hunters were out there looking to harvest was, was something that definitely felt like a meaningful practice.
8:53
You know, So, yeah, it was, it was a wonderful experience.
It was something that, you know, obviously I was just doing it on the weekends or in the evenings or something as a hobby.
But I was flying at the time, like you said, you know, flying wildlife biologists around and doing these low level studies and watching birds.
9:11
And for a minute there I was like, you know, I loved biology when I was young.
My career has kind of taken this interesting path into aviation.
But I think I’d really like to go back to school and get more involved in the biology part, not just the aviation part.
And so it was just kind of crazy.
9:27
I was poking around looking for a way to go back to school and look into biology and conservation jobs.
And I, that’s when I just stumbled upon conservation detection dogs and I just couldn’t believe my eyes.
I was like, Oh my goodness, this is the two things that I love so much all in one.
9:45
So that was around 2015 or 16.
I just kind of put my head down and set my sights on it and started working towards a career change.
Wow, yeah, that’s crazy.
And can you tell us a little bit more about how you got into the the piloting?
10:01
Like were you just, were you a plane kid growing up?
How does 1 become a wildlife pilot?
Yeah, so my father was in the Air Force in Australia, but he never got the chance to fly.
But he absolutely adored airplanes.
10:19
I mean, he was, Yeah.
He was just like obsessed.
He was that guy that could look up at the sky anytime a plane’s flying over and tell you exactly what it was.
And so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like many parents do, if they can’t live out their dreams themselves, they, they try to foster that for their children.
10:35
And so on my 8th birthday, he took me to an airport and lo and behold, I was signed up for a flying lesson at 8 years old.
And they put me in an airplane sitting on back at the time I’m I’m dating myself here, aging myself Yellow Pages.
10:51
They Oh my God, they were still in print and they were very big.
And I had to sit on two of them to be able to see over the glare shield and look out the window of the airplane.
But yeah, I had a blast.
But I was, you know, only 8 years old at the time.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life yet.
11:06
And so every couple years, my, my, my dad would keep sending me on these little discovery flights.
They were called.
And I remember when I was about 15 years old, it all clicked and just went on this incredible sunset flight.
And I just fell in love with it.
11:23
And you know, at at the time, I remember thinking like everything was really kind of simplified, but also it, it gave me that perspective of like, I’m just one little part of this huge community, right?
Because you can see everyone on, you’re not so high up that you can’t see individual houses and cars driving around, you’re only flying around 1002 thousand feet.
11:43
And so I just sort of loved how it, it helped me feel like part of something bigger, but also it simplified everything and to just fly the plane, do this, do that.
And I must say that, you know, full circle, many, many years later, the, the dog work actually feels kind of the same in, in many, many ways.
12:03
So it’s been kind of a, a thread that’s gone through the many shifts in my career.
But yeah, I got my license when I was 17 years old and started flying and I never really wanted to fly for the airlines.
So I was always kind of interested into the in the flying jobs I’m sure you’re familiar with in Alaska, a lot of the small planes that are flying out there.
12:26
And yeah, I, I got the chance to kind of shadow some of those flights and fell in love with that style of flying.
And so in that space, you know, that’s where the wildlife flying kind of lives.
And yeah, kind of got into it in that way.
Yeah.
12:42
Oh my gosh, that’s so cool.
I was a kid who loved planes and loved flying.
And I love what you’re saying as well about how flying and handling dogs gets to kind of put you in this place of being in the moment and being really connected, but also kind of outside of everything else that’s going on in your life.
13:04
And I had the realization a year or so ago that all of my favorite ways to spend my free time do that for me.
You know, whether it’s being out with the dogs or surfing does that for me.
Cross country skiing does that for me.
13:22
I do a lot of partner dance.
And that also does that because you’re just kind of like, and especially I follow.
So I don’t know what move is happening yet next.
I’m like responding to both the music and my partner.
And I just have to be like in this really Zen different place in my brain and like, yeah, that’s one of my favorite things to like find the activities that unlock that for myself versus like, I love trail running.
13:44
It doesn’t do that for me.
Like I I trail run and I think about my day and I think about my problems and that’s good for me and it helps, but it doesn’t reset in quite the same way.
Yeah, Yeah.
You’re not in that necessarily that flow state.
And it’s funny that you say that because that’s kind of been what has attracted me to certain hobbies too.
14:04
And motorcycle riding is one of those also where I kind of feel like I’m, I mean that flow and I’m yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really neat.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So yeah, one of.
The hoping you get to do some more flying while you’re out there.
Yeah, we don’t actually get to be.
We don’t do anything on float planes, at least nothing currently scheduled with this project.
14:22
Everything is boat based, which is fun in a different way.
A little bumpier, Yeah, but you see more whales maybe depending on.
Yeah, that sounds so magical.
And all the sea otters I can’t imagine.
Oh my God, they’re so cute.
14:38
Yeah, we find, yeah, find, get to see a lot of a lot of sea otters.
And we saw, yeah, we saw a nice little pot of humpbacks last time we were out.
And yeah, that’s fun.
It sounds like an immense amount of data that you’re collecting in so many different ways.
14:54
I can’t wait to read your thesis.
But I’m I’m super interested about the the wolves eating the the otters.
That’s really fascinating.
I just had a meeting with a CNR biologist out of the state of Alaska talking about that and like, you know, pulling up maps and being like, look at all these places where we’ve detected an Otter in the wolf’s get.
15:09
And she was like, wow, like, that’s more than we thought.
Oh.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, it’s been cool.
Yeah.
But then the the less sexy side of it is yesterday I spent like 4 hours trying to chase down a bug in my code and discovered that we have 90 missing samples somewhere in the meta bar coding diet data.
15:29
Like, I don’t know what happened.
It’s probably just a missing file with a number that round, but I don’t know where it is.
Like 90 is a suspicious number.
But yeah, it’s going to be it’s going to be fun to get to put it all together.
I love the field work, but I’m actually really learning to love the data analysis, especially because I know kind of the whole story and I’ve got to be part of it from start to finish.
15:54
It just, it really changes the feeling around the whole thing.
Incredible.
Yeah, So, OK, so tell us a little bit about your first conservation detection dog gigs.
Like how did you, what was the, what was the first one that you started out with?
Sure.
16:09
So I, I guess I’ll start because I know your audience, there’s a lot of, a lot of folks that are interested in kind of like the path to getting into this career and the steps people took.
And so I’ll just back up right before that and mention that I had basically been stalking everyone in the conservation detection dog space.
16:30
And especially, you know, working dogs for conservation.
They’re out there is kind of one of the most prominent that you’ll, you’ll run into in your stalking activities and they Megan Parker was giving a talk in Vermont.
So I went up there to listen to that and I, I gave her my spiel and I told her I was really interested in the field and I’ve got this working dog Jack.
16:52
And she said, you know, if you want to get into this field, you need some currency and a degree in biology is really going to be your currency.
And I was like, OK, got it.
I’m on it.
And so I looked for a master’s program that would, you know, give me the currency I needed specifically to get into the conservation detection dog world.
17:12
And I was lucky to find a program.
It’s through Miami University.
It’s called Project Dragonfly.
That was they had, they’re basically anchored in zoos all over the country and you can sort of design your, your program around your specific, you know, interest.
17:30
And I told them my specific interest is conservation detection dogs and they said have at it.
So what was really fun about that is it was a program that was very progressive in modern conservation where it’s very community based.
It’s very much working with people that are in the community place based.
17:48
Yeah.
And they helped us gain a lot of exposure to making connections and to working in the field in our area of interest in our local communities.
And so being that the conservation detection Dell community is sort of global and not necessarily in everybody’s backyard, I was still able to adapt the curriculum to that kind of, you know, spatial aspect of our field.
18:15
And it really pushed me to get in touch with a lot of people in the field.
And they helped me immensely.
Everybody was very open and allowed me to work with them, work on projects with them, volunteer sometime and just, you know, interview them and understand how the field works before I ever even had a detection dog or before I ever even got into the field.
18:36
Yeah.
And so I’d love to call out Anna Sieka from West.
She was one of those folks that I, Yep, that I called up and interviewed and she said, you know, there’s, there’s this route.
You can get a dog, you can train it up and then you can, you know, apply for jobs or you have to bring a dog to the table and you can test into those kind of programs and start working from there.
18:58
Or you can get on with a group that has dogs and they could pair you up with one of their dogs and, and see if you’re, you know, able to work with them that way.
And so I was a little hesitant to get my own dog and train my own dog because again, I didn’t have a training background and I just, I didn’t really know, you know, where that would go and if I even knew what I was doing, which I didn’t.
19:19
So I’m glad I didn’t go back first because I wouldn’t have had no idea how to pick the right dog or train a dog or anything like that.
And so, yeah.
So throughout this kind of networking and degree program that was really helping me make connections, I was led down the path to get in touch with rogue detection teams and was really fortunate that they had a spot open up in their wind farm work.
19:46
And I was, yeah, I was absolutely thrilled.
They said, we’re going to have a spot.
Can you do it?
And I said, yeah, in a heartbeat.
I’m there.
I, I left my aviation career.
Yep, I’m ready and and that’s where I started.
So it was it was an incredible place to start because you know, they knew this and and I learned this and I still stand by it now even four years later.
20:11
That wind farm work, especially where?
Where we were fortunate enough to do the wind farm work, which was in Palm Springs, is a great place to start for a beginner team.
And And so, yeah, so much so that we had like literally a 90° perpendicular wind, you know, that was always coming out in the same direction.
20:35
The turbines were all in a stationary line in the same direction.
The ground was flat, so we were able to work unleashed with this amazing crosswind and, and learn the ropes really in just such a gentle way.
20:51
And then and, and every job I’ve had since then has kind of leveled up.
And yeah, it’s been so fun having this like soft transition to every, you know, difficulty layer that I’ve added to my kind of portfolio, I guess you’d say, with the dogs.
Yeah, yeah.
No, absolutely.
21:07
That’s such a good point and it’s, yeah, it’s something we think about a lot.
We’ve also kind of seen it go.
One of the things we’ve started realizing within our team at Canine Conservationists is that there does seem to be a benefit to getting the dogs onto a non wind farm project early as well.
21:25
It’s so easy that you can have dogs who look really, really good on the wind farm and then you kind of throw something of that next level of difficulty up, especially if you don’t have the ability to ratchet it really kindly.
That’s what I’ve got three dogs in Alaska currently because I’ve got kind of two understudy dogs that I’m really trying to like get them to the, a place where they can work.
21:49
And we, you know, it’s just, it’s so challenging out here.
Like temperate rainforest is just, and coastal.
It’s just, it’s so hard.
And of course they’re struggling and they’re doing great.
And I’m, I’ve got an episode I’m recording in a, a week or so all about that.
So we won’t go too far into it, but I just keep teasing it because it’s just, it’s all I can think about right now.
22:09
And yeah, I love the wind farms.
It’s such a good place to start.
And also, yeah, it does seem like if you let, if you get a dog really, really used to that being the job, then it can feel jarring or unfair to them when you ask them of the next thing.
22:25
So it’s great that you were able to wrap it up like that.
Yeah, It’s interesting you say that because we were able to ratchet up actually through another wind farm.
But even then, when I had to take him into plant work, it was still a surprise to me how much of transition that was.
22:43
So our first wind farms were on flat ground with this wind, you know, this perpendicular wind.
And then we went up to Northern California where the wind farm, well, no, I’m sorry, we went to the Midwest and worked in Iowa within croplands, which was still pretty similar to the work that we had started on.
23:03
But then when we got to Northern California, everything was in the hills and very, very hilly.
Every turban was on a different hill.
It was they were on the apex of these mounds.
And boy, you talk about having to relearn wind.
That was that was a steep learning curve for me, basically just in the sense that I had to put my dogs in the right spot.
23:24
Now, they were already a couple years in and seasoned.
And so they kind of knew how to run perpendicular to the wind no matter what.
But often times I thought I had them in that situation.
And then all of a sudden they were turning around and finding something behind us.
And I was like.
Interesting.
23:40
Yeah, yeah.
So they were, they were tuned in a lot quicker than I was, I will say that.
But I was grateful for that experience because it did, yeah, it did ratchet up from the first one.
And then again, we went into into the forest over here in the Northeast now where we’re at.
23:56
And and that was also another fun learning curve.
Yeah, that’s so cool.
Yeah.
So, yeah, why don’t we get into that a little bit.
So tell us a little bit about as you got started with New York New Jersey Trail Conference and some of your first gigs here, what you’re like learning curves are what what were you having to relearn or like start start tackling guys like that next level of skill building once you got here.
24:22
Yeah, so shout out to the trail conference.
First of all, I had definitely admired the organization and the dog program from a distance for for many, many years, probably since it started.
Because that’s I, I think right around the time where I was really trying to get into the the field.
24:39
And as much as I knew that that was just a a really awesome organization, I never would have known until I actually got hired just how incredible it is.
All the people are amazing.
The partnerships are incredible.
The state of New York is really just on the ball on, you know, on top of invasive species and and really managing ecosystems for the health of everybody that lives there and also for the recreation of of people too in communities.
25:07
So it’s just been just such a a joy and a tree every single day to work in this field at, at this, you know, historic organization and, and just with such great people.
And yeah.
And so as soon as we got here, we we kind of got spoiled because we started out one of probably our most charismatic, charismatic projects that’s right on the Appalachian Trail.
25:33
And so I was just stoked because some of my trail running heroes have have definitely run up and down that thing.
And so, yeah, I was just excited, yeah, I was excited to just even step foot on it.
And, and yeah, it was really, it was super fun because the plant is, it’s in the mint family, so it’s quite a pungent smell and that makes training on it fairly, I don’t want to say easy, but fairly straightforward as far as plants go, because we, we then have gotten on plants that are very cryptic and have a low odor profile.
26:08
So it was fun to start on a plant that was a little more smelly.
And it’s super interesting because this project is really one of those like poster Childs for catching an emerging invasive species right at that Tier 2 level that they’re classified here in New York where there’s a good chance we could corral it and management manage it and almost get it to eradication.
26:35
I mean, we hate to say that word and throw it out there, but it’s, you know, it is it, it’s on the horizon.
It looks like something that’s achievable.
And so it’s super fun to be involved in something like that, much like you were involved with the dyers mode and, and that did get to eradication.
So that’s really cool.
26:50
Yeah.
And you know, that was, yeah, that was a really and and gosh, plans are plans are so interesting.
Yeah.
So why don’t you let’s take a step back.
So maybe give us a brief overview of the tier system and then tell us a little bit more about Sticky Sage.
So we know it’s in the Mint family.
Why?
Where does it come from?
27:06
Why don’t we love it?
Yeah, yeah.
So.
Trail.
That’s five different questions.
Just pick one.
I think I’ve got answers to forums.
Yeah.
So it was a it was.
It’s a beautiful plant and it’s very Hardy.
27:22
It’s extremely Hardy.
I took a sample and put it in a zip lock bag and it was still alive 2 weeks later.
I mean, it’s insane.
And so people, yeah, you can buy it in a nursery, which is a bummer.
Many of our invasive species come from nurseries and it was a garden escapee.
27:39
So it was brought to the attention of regional biologists and the trail conference around 2012.
And there’s a lot of federal land that buffers the Appalachian Trail, but there’s also a lot of private land.
So people’s backyards back right up to that puppy.
And when they were out there walking around, all of a sudden they started seeing this monoculture of a new plant that they had never seen before.
28:00
And, and of course, that’s where an introduced or a non-native plant really gets into that invasive categorization where it starts to do harm to the environment.
And a lot of times that’s by creating those monocultures.
And so it was just absolutely taking over the understory and out competing everything and very, very quickly.
28:22
And so the concern with a plant that’s able to seed and also travel is that it can move along such an iconic trail as the Appalachian Trail and get from state to state very quickly.
It’s called sticky stage because it has like these Velcro like pods that stick to hikers, pants that stick to deer and everything that kind of comes in contact with it.
28:45
It travels very quickly that way.
And so they definitely wanted to nip it in the bud before it became a massive problem like your barberry or things like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So how did it?
Yeah.
29:00
So that’s how did it come about.
That’s where is it?
Why is it a problem?
Did I miss anything?
Where?
Where is it native to?
Did we talk about that?
It’s a Eastern European native and actually in its, yeah, in its native habitat, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a great plant.
29:17
They use it medicinally, herbally.
It’s made for teas.
And so I always like to shout out to the plants where they’re from and that they’re beneficial.
We love that.
But unfortunately our ecosystem just didn’t evolve with it.
Exactly.
Yeah, they’re out of place.
29:32
Yeah, it’s the same.
I having moved to Oregon, it’s so funny, Like blackberries are super invasive there and they’re just all over the place.
And I’m like, this is great because along all of my reading trails in the fall, I can just bring a yogurt tub and bring home free blackberries.
But yeah, they’re also really, Yeah, quite harmful in a lot of ways.
29:54
I think they’re one that has gone well past that tier two phase of like, yeah.
And you know, when you talk about Berry, yeah, when you talk about berries, we actually have a couple invasive plants that sprout berries here.
30:09
And I just recently learned that, you know, our birds that are native to the ecosystem here, the berries that they evolved with contain like upwards or 50% fat content, which is what the birds need to be able to overwinter.
They need that fat.
But the invasive berries of a very similar plant have less than half a percent of fat content.
30:31
And so there’s just no way, yeah, there’s just no way for those birds to be able to overwinter.
They’re on a diet like that.
So that’s just one example of how harmful invasives are when they take over and replace your native plants.
Yeah, and that’s crazy because, yeah, like looking at it or knowing that maybe they’re closely related, you would never know.
30:47
Holy crap, that’s so cool.
I mean, huge bummer, but fascinating.
Yeah, really fascinating.
Yeah.
So you know, OK, so is plants super Hardy?
We’re trying to figure out how to potentially maybe get to the big E word eradicate.
31:06
So why, why did they want dogs on this project?
What do you know about kind of the inception of this?
Yeah.
So, you know, Arden had kind of touched on this in her interview with you.
But we have this incredible system in New York where the Department of Environmental Conservation New York Dec has developed a partnership for regional invasive species management, where it broke the state up into eight regions and anchored each PRISM, as they’re called, with a host organization and said, Hey, let’s, let’s really move together in these groups and, and understand like, what are the threats that we want to address on these landscape scales over these long periods of time to work together to solve these problems.
31:52
And with the lower Hudson prism, where our organization is situation situated and, and the one that we actually host sticky stage came up as one of those plants that, you know, the state and our local partners and federal even because it’s the Appalachian Trail all decided yet this is definitely something that we want to tackle on on last right.
32:12
And so the, the first boots on the ground were definitely human.
And when you have this huge monoculture, you know, back in 2021 when we first got on the project, when I say we the trial conference, they counted well before 2021, there was actually too many plants to count.
32:30
And then in 2021 after that first season that they had gone out and, and really removed a lot either manually or through herbicide.
The next year they they counted about 54,000 plants.
And so these are teams.
Yeah.
Yep.
So these are teams of humans that go out and basically like a fire line, they stand about 5 meters away from each other, about 5 people deep.
32:52
And they just kind of walk through the trail through these polygons that we’ve outlined and take out those huge, massive monocultures.
But where we found that we need the dogs is, you know, there’s only so much as humans can do without one sense of sight.
33:09
And a lot of the plants, yeah, the were being missed were seedlings.
And of course, if you miss those seedlings and they they grow up and mature and flower, you’ve just added a bunch of seeds to the seed bank.
And for a lot of these invasive plants, the seed bank can be like 10 years rich, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s going to keep on seeding just from the bank.
33:30
So finding seedlings is definitely one of the big tasks that we wanted to use the dogs for.
And then also understanding the edges of the infestation, like the boundaries, because the boundaries tend to be very, very sparse plants.
33:46
And it’s really not efficient to send five people through, you know, the edge of these polygons if they’re really just looking for like a needle in a haystack kind of thing.
But when you say needle in a haystack, that’s when dog comes in.
And so that was the dual mission of the dogs.
34:04
And, and so they’ve been on it for a couple years now.
And for example, there was a few polygons around the Appalachian Trail that the humans had gone in.
Our Conservation corps had gone in.
And last year, for example, in just these two spots, the the humans covered, they they pulled 551 plants along the Appalachian Trail.
34:28
And after they did that, you know, we’ll, we’ll wait for the herbicide re entry interval, you know, 3 weeks, 4 weeks.
And then we’ll bring the dogs in to find those seedlings that were missed.
We found another 363 plants in that same area that the humans had covered.
34:44
Yeah.
So, you know, that’s what, 40% more that could have been missed.
So that’s where you get to really see the power of the dogs.
And when I say seedlings, I mean these things are tiny.
You’re looking for a green thing and a sea of green things.
So it’s it’s really tough when you’re on these plant jobs and the sea things were sometimes, I mean, smaller than your pinky nail.
35:05
Like it was just unbelievable how tiny.
Yeah.
And the dogs are phenomenal at finding them.
It just, it would blow your mind.
So it was, it was super, super fun.
And of course, on the Appalachian Trail, there’s lots of streams and lots of forest cover.
So it was, it was pretty cool.
35:22
We were able to work all summer, July and August.
The dogs were able to cool off in the streams and when they felt like it.
And so it was just a really nice, fun project to work on.
Yeah.
Oh, that’s so lovely.
Yeah.
And it’s such, it’s so amazing to think about how small of the plant these dogs are able to find and how, yeah, how efficient they are at these kind of edge effects.
35:48
And yeah, coming, coming in, I think like the other firefighting term would be like doing mop up after, after the rest of the crew has gone through and done the best they can.
And I love that you emphasize as well the like, you know, the humans are going out there and they’re doing a great job and they’re working so hard.
36:03
And they took, yeah, 54,000 plants off the environment last year.
But yeah, they just have the one site and green on green is that’s tough.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it’s, you know, it’s just such an awesome collaboration between humans and dog teams.
36:19
It’s I think, you know, quite a unique scenario.
I don’t hear a lot about that in in the conservation projects that the dogs have been involved in.
So I think it’s a, it’s a wonderful example of, of things that we could do in the future to bring dogs into existing conservation work.
36:37
Yeah.
And, And so we’re down under 10,000 plants this year.
So we’re, yeah, we’re hoping to keep on chopping that away and.
Yeah.
Do you know, I know one of the things that blew my mind with the Dyer’s Woad project was that these plants can, you know, drop up to like 10,000 seeds or something like that.
36:57
So if you miss one, you’re just, you could conceivably back, go back two years.
Do you know, is Sticky sage one of those as well or not quite, as you know, quite as prolific I suppose?
Right.
So, yeah, the CPAC is definitely a concern.
37:14
It’s to me job security.
I think it just means that we’ll have to continue to monitor it.
We have a different plant that unfortunately did skip a year in, in our survey efforts and we absolutely saw that it, it, you know, it’s kind of like 2 steps forward, one step back.
37:34
That’s what what happened with that skipped year.
It kind of or one step forward, 2 steps back, excuse me.
And, and we kind of saw that with that, that by year.
So it’s definitely going to be important to continue to go out there.
And I think even with the Dyers wood project, I had heard the dogs started to find the seeds underground like that hadn’t even emerged yet.
37:55
Yeah, I think I can’t quite remember on this and this is obviously this is a working dogs for conservation project.
I worked very briefly on it while I was there.
I remember the one that I know for sure happened was bits of root from a plant that had they had tried to remove and removed most of but and they this plant can dyer’s wood can re sprout from roots and the dogs found like a segment that was still underground that had been.
38:24
Yeah.
And so that’s what we’re finding with our dogs, too.
Yeah, yeah.
And these plants, I think.
The plant is what we’re finding in in.
Best examples of this this synergy like you were saying of like.
In most cases it really doesn’t make sense to have the dogs on them alone.
38:44
They really need to be part of a comprehensive management and mitigation plan.
Yeah, when it comes to to plants, absolutely.
And I think it’s something that, you know, like I said, has so much opportunity.
So if people are aware of invasive species and they think maybe it’s just too ubiquitous at this point, but there may be those fringe boundaries or like kudzu is a great example.
39:07
I mean, it’s the vine that ate the South.
And I can I can definitely attest to that because I lived in Mississippi and I’ve seen whole forests taken out by it.
But up here in New York, it’s it’s an emerging invasive.
And so we are going to put the dogs on it to, to find those boundaries and to try and corral it and keep it from spreading further north.
39:24
So that’s always something that dog teams can, can look into is, you know, what are the, what are the species around me that I could help with and help maybe curtail on that in those boundaries or maybe go in after people have already searched.
Yeah, pick up the seedlings.
39:41
Yeah.
And I’m sure that the local, you know, trail maintenance crews and, you know, plant societies have good ideas of what those plants are.
Because a lot of times if you’re kind of a a layperson, the plants that you might be aware of may be the ones that are already so established that it’s not necessarily where they’re going to be putting their efforts or they might be one that is.
40:07
Maybe still at the toehold, but might not be necessarily as harmful and again, it might not be a high priority.
So really worth digging deep into the local knowledge and understanding what is a problem here.
And you know, again, one of the things with Dyers Wood that I found really interesting was they were working really hard on keeping it out of Missoula and having a lot of success and you know, just really, really incredible project there.
40:29
But you drove 5 hours over the border into Idaho and it was completely established and very, very stable.
And they weren’t even trying to take it out of parts of Iowa that I or Idaho that I was aware of.
And at least at this time things might have changed.
But yeah, it’s very local, locally dependent with with all of these things, so.
40:51
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and that’s the fun part about, you know, being able to do the conservation work in your own community.
I mean, I, I definitely did what you do and traveled the country and, and kind of followed contracts where they were.
But it’s, it’s certainly, it was always a goal for me to be able to do this in one place and kind of be involved in the community and, and sort of settle in.
41:11
And so that’s, that’s what’s really, I think neat about that is looking at that your, your own ecosystems in your own communities and finding where is the niche that we could fit in.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And having that stability is I like, I love the jet setting.
41:28
It’s also it’s exhausting and it’s definitely not for everybody.
And especially, you know, if you’ve got elderly dogs, elderly parents, kids, like there’s so many reasons that it is not necessarily a sustainable lifestyle and it’s not always the best way to actually execute conservation goals.
41:43
You know, sometimes it is nice to have these, you know, these like mercenary dog teams who come in and do the thing and then leave and like they, it can be a huge force multiplier when used that way.
But also a lot of these projects, what they really need is the long term, the relationship building.
41:58
You know, it’s one of the things I really admire about New York, New Jersey Trail Conference is the the ability to integrate these dogs into a much more comprehensive management plan, mitigation plan and having them as part of a long term team rather again than it’s just it’s such a nice contrast and I don’t think we see enough of the model that you all are exhibiting it.
42:21
It it seems like that’s where this field.
It would be nice if this field matured into more of that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I, I see kind of remnant or like little glimpses of that in other states, like the multi species habitat management plans in California are really cool.
42:38
They have, I’ve kind of looked over a couple of them and there’s, you know, 20 to 40 different ecology firms that are out there monitoring various parts and pieces of those plans.
And again, that’s just a whole another opportunity, right for for dogs.
42:55
But the, you know, when you talk about, you know, kind of almost the capacity building in your local communities, we’re actually really excited at the trail conference this year to be rolling out a volunteer dog surveyor program.
And, you know, we’re just two dogs and the trail conference is only 25 employees or so, but it’s built on, yeah, it’s built on the shoulders of 2000 plus volunteers.
43:21
And that’s really how we get the work done in our region.
And right now we’re responsible for over 2100 miles of trails that we maintain and the ecosystems around them.
And so we can’t do it with just me and Arden alone.
And so, yeah, we’re super excited to kind of build on that legacy of of volunteerism within the Trail Conference and extend it into the conservation dogs.
43:46
So this year we have pulled probably just over 60 teams that have gotten started with us.
And we have an awesome plant that we need to collect a lot of data on.
Our teams are not gonna be managing the plant or pulling it yet, but they are gonna be going out and surveying areas and reporting that data so that we can make some management decisions on it in the future.
44:10
And we’re just excited to see where this is gonna go.
We have a great group of people, great, amazing group of dogs.
It was really fun.
I got to meet a handful of them a couple weeks ago.
And yeah, we’re, we’re looking.
I think she give a shout out to Rachel and Fen.
Who?
Absolutely.
44:26
Yeah, we know when you.
Are online mentoring group and yeah, they seem, they seem really, really cool and really promising.
I’m so excited that they’re part of this.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, no.
44:42
And I’m so glad that you all are again able to.
Like we’ve got the papers that have come out of Australia about volunteer programs.
I know conservation dogs.
Hawaii has done some experimentation and they’re another like amazingly well done place based organization that has these like long term relationships and roots and growth within the and capacity within that that place.
45:07
But it’s so cool to see you all starting to experiment more with plants and I think or with volunteers, sorry.
And I think like when I talk to people, we get some people in our mentoring group who are interested in maybe doing this part time, maybe doing this on the weekend.
Maybe they’ve got another full time job.
45:23
Maybe they’ve got a kid.
Maybe they’ve they’re taking care of parents.
Maybe they’re we a fair number of them are actually kind of getting close to retirement and have been wanting to get into this.
But again, they’re not necessarily interested in doing it as a full time thing and doing the really scrappy upstart, you know, entrepreneurial, travelling around the world like on the road for nine months a year sort of thing.
45:46
Like that’s, it’s just not for everybody and it shouldn’t be.
I think plants are one of the places that have the best openings for being able to get involved with your local gardening club, your trail trail crews.
46:03
You know, in Missoula, when I lived there, it was actually the mountain biking club that did a lot of really good trail maintenance and invasive plant removal as a way to give back to the community.
There’s already such a lovely volunteer and service model with the plant world and it isn’t it just feels a lot more accessible to people on a volunteer or on a part time basis compared to, you know, the wind farm work.
46:30
You need permits the you got to go out there like most people don’t live near enough to a wind farm for that to be an accessible like weekend gig.
The carnivore work also generally is going to require travel.
Turtles might be another good ish example of a way to experiment with volunteer programs and not say it can’t be done with any of the any of those others.
46:53
But it’s so cool to see you all experimenting and I can’t wait to do a follow up episode with y’all in like a year or two with like, OK, how’s it going?
What are what are your lessons you’re learning?
Where are we going next?
Because I’m sure just one year in you won’t have all the answers, but you’ll have some for us.
47:10
Yeah, those are all great considerations that you bring up.
And, and yeah, definitely kudos to Kyoko and her volunteer program.
And we reached out to her before we started out for some advice and she was just incredible, offered so many good yeah things to say about how she runs her program and, and how they manage the volunteer programs there.
47:33
And yeah, it it, you know, it’s really low stakes when you’re talking about invasive plants.
You, you know, you can’t really mess anything up.
So it’s nice to have a target that’s not sensitive.
And for us, it was a, a really nice segue from a program that we already have involving human surveyors.
47:52
And so we have a lot of volunteers every year that go out and survey trails and let us know about, you know, we’ll pick like a dozen plants that we’re, we’re monitoring for management decision making.
And they report back on these sections of trail.
And they may have one section of trail, some people may have 5, some people may do more than that.
48:11
And again, they take all this data, they put it into a app that was created by Cornell in New York.
And, and it becomes part of everybody’s management kind of scheme.
So the, the dog surveyors are just kind of like an add on to that.
And so the way the program’s running for us and the reason why we can do it in such large numbers is that it’s all going to be on leash.
48:31
They’re already going to be following the appropriate regulations for whatever part that they’re hiking in with their dogs.
We don’t need any permissions.
The plant actually grows right along the side of trails that are already established.
We just need more data on it.
48:47
And so it’s going to be just a, a really great way for people that are they’re already hiking with their dogs to sort of level up that bond, you know, have something meaningful to contribute when they’re out there hiking already.
Really have some fun, stay safe and contribute to conservation in Yeah, in a really powerful and effective way, but also in a way that’s a low bar for entry.
49:11
You know, whereas a lot of the conservation dog projects are kind of that, you know, like you said, a lot of permissions, you need a lot of experience, you need off leash skills, you need recall skills, you need first aid skills for you and the dog.
And you know, you got to be pretty rough.
You got to have all the gear to go through those brambles and thorns.
49:28
And, and there’s a lot to the full time field work of a conservation dog.
And like you said, not for everybody, but we really were fortunate to be able to find a plant that is not super prevalent yet, but prevalent enough to where we could have people in quite a wide area in our region.
49:49
It actually smells like Burt rubber if you crush the leaves.
And so for the humans, once the dog finds a plant, it will be easy for the humans to identify that they’ve got the right plant because there are several Viburnum.
It’s a viburnum.
It’s called Stiebel’s viburnum.
50:05
There are several look alikes, but the really pungent smell will help the humans identify it too.
So, yeah, so just in so many ways it it’s a lovely project that it came together and we’re excited to get the teams out for survey.
No and again, such a lovely fit for volunteers.
50:21
I don’t know if we’ve said this like little component explicitly, but like invasives provided that there’s not a risk of becoming a transmitter.
But again, if it’s already on a trail and people are already hiking their dogs, like it’s already kind of that that’s already a thing.
But you know, even if the dog only finds one that the humans missed, it’s helpful versus if you’re really, I mean, I, we just did an episode, it’ll be a month or two ago by the time that this episode comes out.
50:49
But we did an episode on spatial analysis for the show and talking about what it takes to actually be able to get to like density analysis or population analysis.
When you’re looking at animals, you do need, you need more consistency from the dogs.
51:05
You need a finer grain sampling because you’re trying to get at our we know we want to have a good idea of is the animal here or is the animal not here?
And how many places are we detecting the animals and or plants?
And yeah, that’s it’s just not quite as good of a fit for a volunteer team versus again, yeah, these invasives, if they just find one, that’s amazing.
51:27
If they find none and they just get to go out on a walk and the human finds all of them with their eyeballs, that’s also totally fine.
Yeah, and, and I love that you bring that up because the conservation detection dog method is a team and you’re kind of getting 2 for one, right.
And so, you know, having kind of broadcast this opportunity to folks that maybe weren’t already involved in conservation.
51:48
Like we did actually send it out to nose work instructors in the area and they told their students about it.
And so that’s a whole group of people that maybe weren’t, you know, aware of the problem with invasives and hadn’t possibly, you know, surveyed or anything like that, that before.
52:04
And so we have this new group of people out there surveying and, and, and spreading the word about invasives and what they’re doing with their dog.
And, and that’s a win right there.
Just that that ripple effect of the outreach.
So.
Yeah, the ambassador dog effect, like sure, that’s so awesome.
52:20
Yeah.
What are the downsides?
Any anything we should be thinking, you know, because I’m sure we don’t want necessarily people thinking, OK, great, this is great.
I can just start one of these tomorrow.
Like you’ve probably had to do a lot of work to make sure that this is going to work.
Tell us a little bit about some of the downsides as we’re not even downsides necessarily, but like reality check.
52:40
What did it actually take to make to get this going?
Yeah, we are lucky that the the Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management is supporting my time to be able to develop the curriculum and the logistics behind setting a program like this up.
53:00
But there’s only so much funding that can go towards that.
And in a perfect world, we’d love to meet with these teams and do you know, hands on training and have more workshops.
But you know, we have our own field work that we also have to be accomplishing in the meantime and we just don’t have the funding to be able to do more hands on training with folks.
53:18
So setting up the teams to succeed on their own, you know, being that they’re training on their own at home and it’s a lot of self study that’s been tough finding that balance of being able to support people.
We filmed a lot of videos so far and we’ve created a handbook and and Paul Bunker has graciously donated his workbook at cost to us for our teams.
53:44
And so every team got a copy of Imprint your detection dog in 15 days, which is amazing.
Thank you Paul and Sharon canine.
And so, yeah, so it’s that I think that’s the struggle is going to be really supporting the teams enough to get to that survey to that that, you know, finish line while being able to juggle everything else that we have as far as responsibilities go.
54:09
So yeah, we’ll see how it goes.
We’ll see how many teams make it and and what we can do next year with the program.
Yeah, yeah, very excited to hear more.
So OK, let’s pivot back to Sticky Sage for just at the very end here.
Do you have any lessons learned that you’d like to share?
54:27
And you know, we can kind of go through, we’ve talked a little bit about collaboration, maybe the dog team selection and dog preparation and field work.
You know, are there any lessons learned through that project that you’d like to share with the listeners?
Sure.
54:44
So I think, you know, you had mentioned this earlier, the transition for dogs that let’s say, start on a wind farm into a forest with a plant was still a pretty steep curve.
And I was actually surprised by it.
I would often find my dogs kind of, you know, with their noses up a little bit looking for that odor to come across the wind.
55:06
And it just is not really how odor works in a forest with understory and a canopy.
You’ve got these patches of light and so you’ve got these warm spots that are pulling air up and then you’ve got, you know, so many different, you got streams and all kinds of different eddies.
And so it was, it was really interesting to see the dogs learn how to search in that new environment.
55:28
And we sort of, you know, we kind of just we imprinted them on the plant and then started with the institute training, which of course is always the best way to train on especially plants.
I think is that those in situ examples, because another thing that we learned is that it is really difficult to safeguard the, the VOC profile of a plant with out just, you know, when there’s disturbance to it, right?
55:57
So it’s going to smell one way in its environment with that particular soil and that particular water system.
But as soon as you remove it, it gets stressed, it’s putting off a different odor signal.
If it starts to die, it’s going to put off a different odor signal.
If you freeze it, dehydrate it, what have you, the VOC profile changes.
56:14
And, and we did look into some precedent, some papers that were published on plants.
And I think that would be probably my number one thing to advise people of, but also to maybe take it with a grain of salt because you might go down the rabbit hole of, Oh my gosh, plants are possibly impossible because they, there’s just, there’s just so many ways that they change their odor profile.
56:40
I mean, there was a paper that we pulled up that, yeah, it showed in a drought situation over 8 weeks, some plants had more odor, some plants had less odor.
Some plants completely changed their odor profile.
And so you see stuff like that, it kind of scares you.
56:56
You know, you’re wondering like how on earth am I going to imprint the dog on this plant in a training environment, in a lab and then have that actually be effectual when they move into the in situ plant.
And really what we found is you just do the best you can with the plant samples that you get.
57:14
And it it does help set the foundation for the smell.
But really it all comes together with that in situ training.
And it’s not going to look pretty.
We’ve read a couple papers that said, yeah, they didn’t just instantly go to the plant in situ.
And that’s OK because it didn’t take long for them to put the puzzle pieces together and then go from there.
57:34
So, yeah, you just, you do the best you can, but the more you dig into VOC profiles and plants, the more you learn they are, they are quite tricky.
But yeah, it’s not to be turned off on.
There’s lots of plant dogs out there and it’s they’re very successful.
57:50
So it’s just a process and it’s just definitely, you know, keeping in mind, yeah, the different ways that that odor can change.
And we are actually going to partner with Get Sent on some some trials with their odor device where, you know, that could be a really effective way to transfer the odor of the plant as it is in situ into the lab.
58:16
We just want to understand how much odor is imprinting on those Get Sent tubes and how many tubes would we need to use at one time to stimulate, you know, a whole shrub or a whole seasoning.
And because they really we just don’t have the data on that yet from them.
58:32
So we’d like to actually get some data on that and that would be a fun project so that we were a little bit more informed when we when we do these plant trainings.
Yeah, that’s amazing.
And no, I it’s such a good point.
I remember being pretty shocked with the Dyerswood project how hard it was for Barley to make that leap as a dog who for better or for worse, usually his probably see makes too many leaps too quickly on me and it really did not make sense to him at 1st.
59:03
And I’m so glad as well what you mentioned about you know, sometimes that that middle step and that that final leap that they need to take to getting field ready and how it isn’t always pretty and sometimes it is really ugly.
It’s we have been dealing with some similar stuff here in Alaska with our wolf scat detection dogs.
59:21
And I was kind of fretting about it and talking to a friend.
And I think, I think it was Megan Barnes, who’s been on the show before.
And she said that she was talking to a mentor of hers about this.
And I can’t remember who the mentor was, so I can’t give them credit.
59:39
But you know, they said, hey, it often looks ugly at this stage.
Sometimes you got a ugly train to get through it.
And just hearing that has been such a good reminder.
Like it’s been kind of coming back and forth in my brain a lot lately.
And I think especially as you gain more experience as a handler, knowing that sometimes the ugly things are the things that like generally you might not want to do this do need to happen at those middling stages to get them from training to operational.
1:00:11
And like one of the things I’m thinking about with both of our younger dogs on this wolf scat detection project is we had to do quite a bit of.
Pretty heavy handling to help them make the leap from our scouts that had been frozen and thawed and handled and whatever to scouts that what we were doing is we were having barley go out first and then putting flagging tape above scouts that he had found and then taking the younger guys through.
1:00:40
And I was having to do a lot of like pretty ugly handling and presenting to get them to run into that odor and source it.
And now we’re working on fading that and getting them used to being handled in a more appropriate manner and doing blinds again.
1:00:55
And as long as you, the handler, have enough experience and the dog team is got enough foundations to hopefully work through the problems that come up through the ugly stages, it doesn’t have to be a problem.
But expecting that and knowing that a lot of the things that you know, you maybe shouldn’t do long term might need to happen in those middling stages.
1:01:14
I don’t.
That’s a whole other podcast.
We won’t go too far down that rabbit hole.
But I’m really glad you mentioned it because it’s been on my mind a lot lately.
Yeah, absolutely.
It’s yeah, it it’s tough to get comfortable with that, especially when you just come off a project and you’re riding high and your dogs been phenomenal and you guys have been just doing these amazing things and all of a sudden you’re like, wait, I broke my dog.
1:01:35
It’s, you know, it, it, it’s a little jarring at 1st to go through that on a new target sometimes.
But yeah, just, you know, sticking with it and being creative and blending that art and science together to like you said, you lose sleep over coming up with these ways that we’re gonna, you know, tackle the problem.
1:01:53
And it it’s really fun.
And at the end of the day, I mean, the dogs are just, they far exceed our smart and anything that we that we come up with, they’re always a step ahead of us.
I, I just have so many great stories I could recollect about, you know, being the dumb handler and the dog teaching me.
1:02:11
And I think it’s, it’s, it’s always fun and it continues to happen.
And I love that part.
So yeah, just getting through that, like you said, the ugly train and knowing that there’s going to be that solution on the other side is, is what it’s all about.
Yeah.
And being willing to experiment a little bit and yeah, admit when maybe.
1:02:29
Yeah, maybe, well, not even admit, but I I’m again, what you said about yeah, it’s so hard to go from them being so successful and looking so nice on one project and then going to the next one and being oh, like, do you have you ever done this before?
Have I ever done this before?
1:02:45
Do I, should I just be an accountant?
Like what is happening right now?
And I think the more times you see that happen, the more confident you can be as a handler to like, trust the process and move through it.
And like, it’ll take time, but the first time is really it’s scary.
1:03:03
Yeah.
And the more, the more that we talk about it, you know, and get that out there, it’s it was hard for me to actually find an example of that in a published paper.
But yeah, you know, here we are having a conversation about it and giving people that forewarning.
So it’s nice.
1:03:18
I wish I kind of had a little bit more of that when I went into it.
But but you know, it’s.
Yeah.
I think we all love this work so much and we all know that there’s been so much success in the industry and that the dogs are really magical and there’s really just unlimited potential there.
So that kind of carries us through those rough spots either way.
1:03:37
Yeah.
But again, I think it’s really, this is exactly what you’re saying about making sure we talk about this as an industry is really helpful because if you’re expecting that magic to just happen, yeah, it probably won’t, especially, Yeah, as you’re moving to newer or more challenging projects.
1:03:56
And sometimes it does.
You know, I remember, like, my first day on the wind farm with Kniffler, he’s nine months old.
They’ve set up a carcass that we need to go and find.
And he went out and he found a carcass that they hadn’t placed.
And I’m like, oh, man, I’m a training God.
My dog is perfect.
1:04:12
I’ve got this.
And like, that’s great.
Glad I had that experience, but I think for people who are listening and maybe are getting ready for their first gig or hoping to get into their first gig, like hearing us talk about how hard it can be in those middling stages is I think really helpful and hearing.
1:04:30
I know I both my, my tech out here and we’ve got volunteers who have been rotating through and hearing me verbally process the doubts and the thoughts and the concerns and the troubleshooting has been really helpful.
Both of our current shadowers intern, you know, the intern volunteer combo have expressed how helpful it is to see that like, yeah, it’s not all the like beautiful spectacular successes.
1:04:58
And you know, it’s not all like nose hooks and snappy alerts.
There’s a lot in the middle between you before you get there, and that’s OK.
Yeah.
And you know, even with the experiences that we’ve had, we still continue to learn.
Arden and I were working on New England cottontail this winter, and we started to identify a lot more nuance in the rabbit scat than we had initially thought, which was incredible because we’ve we’ve got a seasoned dog that has been very successful at finding new sites and new scats that the researchers never even thought that the cottontails were inhabiting these certain areas.
1:05:37
But at the same time, yeah, at the same time, we learned that, yeah, the more samples that we could expose our dogs to in the training environment, the the better.
And we did see, yeah, you wouldn’t think that, you know, a rabbit eating the same kind of stuff in the same kind of area could have that much variability as scat.
1:05:59
The scat and scats kind of what detection dogs or conservation detection dogs are sort of known for, like it’s sort of their wheelhouse.
But there, there was a lot of nuance to it.
And so that’s, that’s another thing, you know, sometimes we have not a lot of time before the next project or it’s just really bizarre how, you know, sometimes there’s only one project on the horizon, but all of a sudden it just is happening right now.
1:06:23
And we have to train the dogs really fast.
And you can have these really good successes in the lab where it just looks like dogs on fire.
You’re 100% on all your or tea testing in the lab, but then you get out in the field and, you know, things look a little bit different.
Yeah.
1:06:38
We just, we.
Yeah.
So we need so hard to yeah, the scat sample.
I like what you were talking about with the plants.
I’m like, Oh my God, I would love to do that with my wolf scats because my wolves eat my wolves.
My wolves eat like they eat everything.
1:06:54
I don’t know.
They’re they’re, they will go.
We’ve detected, I don’t know, like 1520 different species of fish in their scats.
Sometimes when the salmon are running, they’re eating salmon.
They eat obviously fawns.
I, I suspect a lot of the mammal meat smells pretty similar, but like even the first time our dogs ran into a scat that was mostly sea Otter, I’m, I’m sure the mastelids and the marine animals smell different.
1:07:21
We’re dealing with a lot of really fascinating stuff that, you know, those hormonal signatures from the canids are really, really intense and very, very, very different.
And Kniffler had a pretty significant fear response to a couple of the Scots.
And we didn’t have any of that with the frozen samples.
1:07:37
None at all, no problems at all.
And I think I, you know, maybe those hormonal signatures are just more delicate and they were disturbed by a moving the scat and AB freezing it.
But I would love to know how different our wolf scat signatures can be.
1:07:56
And then you’re looking at the difference between a scat that’s maybe 8 hours old to a scat that’s like 8 months old.
Yeah, it’s it’s endlessly fascinating.
Even again, with something like scats that are kind of considered our bread and butter.
Yeah.
1:08:12
OK.
We.
Should absolutely.
And all of our scat samples were frozen too.
So yeah, we should wrap it up here ’cause we I I’ve been having a bad habit of turning my episodes into two parters lately.
But we can always have you back to talk more and and yeah, hear more about this.
1:08:32
I would love to maybe we need to get some people together and do an ugly training episode and just talk about like that.
We’ll call it something more inspiring than ugly training, but talking about that lab to field transition because, again, it’s just been on my mind.
So yeah.
1:08:49
Is there anything that you would like to make sure that the listeners know about before we go?
It could be something we didn’t talk about, something you didn’t clarify as well as you’d like.
Or just, you know, plug the New York New Jersey Trail Conference social medias.
Yeah, well, thank you so much again for having me.
1:09:05
It’s just been so delightful talking to you.
I could talk dogs all day, and I’m going to live vicariously through you.
You have to keep talking more about your field work in Alaska because it sounds absolutely dreamy and I can’t wait to learn about all your days.
But if folks want to follow our program over here on the East Coast, you can find the trail conference at nynjtc.org.
1:09:30
And within the stewardship department on the website, you’ll find the Conservation Dogs program.
The trail conference also has an Instagram and Facebook and New York, New Jersey Trail Conference, or I think it’s the acronym.
And then our conservation dogs program is NYNJTC under SCORE Conservation Dogs.
1:09:50
Yes.
Oh my gosh, no.
And thank you so much again.
We’ll probably be bugging you again about coming back on at least for the volunteer update, if not for that field to lab, lab to field transition.
Actually, the field to lab transition is also hard.
That’s a that’s a whole other episode though.
1:10:08
OK, well, we just, the episodes multiply daily.
Everyone at home, thank you so much for listening.
I hope you had as much fun as I did because I sure enjoyed this episode.
I learned a ton.
And I hope you’re also feeling inspired to get outside and go be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and your skill set.
1:10:27
I hope the weather is lovely where you are.
It is not here in Alaska.
Our podcast is edited by Jenna Acker with help from Katie Voss.
Our social media intern is actually, we don’t have one right now.
We are hiring.
I almost read one that was inaccurate.
Bernice Murphree was our intern.
1:10:44
She was wonderful.
If you’re interested in applying, you can find that on the opportunities tab of our website.
Or if you scroll through our social media, you should find an intern’s wanted reel or TikTok that tells you a little bit more about the position.
We also have a whole suite of volunteers that help get this podcast polished and published.
1:11:02
Thanks so much to Meg on the website and Brooke helping with bookings and organizations and Madison Davis organizing our coaching group.
You can find show notes, donate to Canine Conservationists, and join our Patreon coaching group.
I’ll at canineconservationists.org.
Thanks so much.
I’ll talk to you later.