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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Grant Blackley from Orkney Native Wildlife Project about transitioning from airport screening detection dogs to working with conservation detection dogs.
Science Highlight: Olfaction-based Detection Distance: A Quantitative Analysis of How Far Away Dogs Recognize Tortoise Odor and Follow It to Source
What is similar between airport detection and conservation detection?
- Dog care is the same; health checks, etc.
- Training foundations are similar
- Educating the public is the same for both
What things are different?
- Quick controlled rewards in the airport vs toy rewards for conservation
- Dogs on leash at all times in the airport, can be off leash for conservation
- Taught to speak a lot to airport detection dogs, but not for conservation
- Overall search styles are different
- Small differences in training elements
- All airport dogs are trained the same, conservation dogs trained individually
- Different hours of work, different work environment
- More human sided work with airport detection vs conservation
- There is more work and funding for airport detection
Links Mentioned in the Episode: None
Where to find Grant Blackley: Website | Facebook
You can support the K9 Conservationists Podcast by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/k9conservationists.
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Transcript (AI-generated)
Kayla Fratt
Hello and welcome to the K9 Conservationists podcast where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs join us every week to discuss ecology, odor dynamics, dog behavior and everything in between. I’m your host, Kayla Fratt and I’m one of the cofounders of K9 Conservationists, where we trained dogs to detect data for researchers, agencies, and NGOs. And unfortunately, I am still getting over this cold I feel fine, but my voice sounds funny. I apologize. Maybe you enjoy this Husky new, new voice? I don’t. Anyway, today I have the joy of talking to Grant Blackley from the Orkney Native Wildlife Project, about transitioning from airport screening detection dogs to working with more of kind of our traditional free ranging conservation detection dogs. I’m really excited to get to this interview like a couple of other other recent podcasts. Grant is a Patreon and he and I have had the pleasure of getting to know each other and work through some of his training goals online together for over a year now. So I’m really excited to have him on the podcast. A little bit more about Grant he’s a conservation dog handler again based in Orkney mainland in the northern isles of Scotland, working on a non native invasive stoat eradication project, a career dog handler having previously worked in New Zealand as a biosecurity dog handler at the international border. His hobbies include all things dog hunting and fishing. I’m super excited to get to this interview. Again, I really think you’re going to learn a lot and enjoy just absorbing from Grant he’s got a wealth of experience again, starting out in airport biosecurity, and now working in the open heathlands of Scotland. But first, we’ve got a science highlight to get into. This week we’re reading olfaction based detection distance a quantitative analysis of how far away dogs recognize tortoise odor and follow it to source. This was published in sensors by May, Mary Cabo, John SamMobile, Jill Heaton and Cindy Valentin, I apologize if I’ve butchered any of those last names, there’s a lot of consonants in there. Their aim was to devise a methodology that would capture the fine detail of, of a dog working to target source for the purpose of determining what an expected range of detection distances for Mojave Desert desert tortoises on the landscape as opposed to the dogs, as opposed to tortoises that are in burrows might be so again, they’re just trying to figure out okay, what is the fine detail of the moment the dog catches odor, to the dog actually sourcing odor to an aboveground tortoise. This research was conducted for one month in April 2014. As at the desert tortoise Conservation Center near Las Vegas, Nevada, the surveys were conducted within plots that were either a half acre or two hectares in size, or half hectare to two hectares inside the dogs has GPS backpacks fitted with GPS units that recorded their movements in one second increments. With pretty high level accuracy, the distance the distance between the change of direction and the tortoise location was calculated as the detection distance. So basically, they had the dogs wearing the GPS, and then when they mapped it, they would have mapped the the moment where the dog changed direction to orient towards the tortoise. And then that to the distance to the tortoise, as the detection distance, each change in direction towards the tortoise was evaluated against recorded environmental conditions to determine if the fine was likely based on wind carried sent or due to visual observation by the dock. Which is a really cool thing that they they thought of that if the dog was upwind of a tortoise, it was assumed to have seen the tortoise rather than smelled it, which there could have been some lingering odor codons of it somewhere. But okay, that makes sense. The dogs detected 184 Tortoises with eight misses. The researchers believe that 21 detections were visual, and 163 or olfactory again, it’s kind of hard to tell, but that seems pretty reasonable. The dogs also detected 64 Wild tortoises that had lived in these pens but were not handled or untethered. For the purposes of the study. The detection distance kind of range from a half meter to 62.82 meters with a mean of 13.91 meters and immediate of 1113 11.13. So remember, the mean is kind of you add up all the numbers of the detection distances and then divide it by the number of detection distances versus the median is basically if you’d like take the lowest number and the highest number and then just go to the middle of those two numbers. That’s the median. So but they’re pretty close number 11.3 meters to 13.91 meter is pretty similar. Based on their findings, the dogs had no biases for detecting tortoises based on sex size or anthropogenic sense, such as the tortoises that had been handled were wearing backpack transmitters, or had been eating unnatural diets.
Kayla Fratt
So the main limitations of the study was that it didn’t include tortoises that were in burrows underground. Again, that wasn’t what they were trying to study. But if you were a desert tortoise researcher trying to figure out detection distances, and you want the dogs to be finding tortoises and burrows, this study is not necessarily answering that question for you. Previous studies have shown that dogs can detect tortoises in burrows, but this study didn’t actually look at the detection distances for that. So again, it’s not that it’s useless. It’s just that it didn’t ask or answer that question. This study was only conducted with one month in one month with two teams, one dog and one handler per team. The tortoises were tethered in groups of two to four tortoises. And they also didn’t set up solo tortoises. Although it seems like they did have wild tortoises that were so low, the paper didn’t go into detail on how long the dogs were searching for each survey plot. So we can’t speak to the limitations of how long or difficult they search would have to be. And, you know, potentially a half hectare plot that only takes x amount of time. True search may not perfectly apply to having a dog search 10. Heck, there’s in a much longer period of time. But again, as far as we know, now, it seems like the dogs, on average are detecting tortoises from distances between 11.3 of 11.13 meters and 13.91 meters, sometimes as good as 62.82 meters away. So without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Grant. Well, Grant, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We’re happy to have you here.
Grant Blackley
It’s a pleasure.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. So why don’t we start out with you telling us a little bit about kind of your history in the detection dog industry and where you came from before coming into this, this current project
Grant Blackley
by previous history was with biosecurity detected dogs in New Zealand, at the interest of border and my work for the Ministry for Primary Industries, and when Christchurch airport and so that was basically on incoming passengers looking for biosecurity risk items in everything from eggs, Hooters seats, plug material, you know, animal goods, etc, etc.
Kayla Fratt
Wow. Yeah. So you were you were still very much working in kind of this, this conservation dog umbrella just in a much more different, much different setup. So was that were you kind of screening luggage, or were you in an airport or what was kind of the search setup like there?
Grant Blackley
So we were based in an international arrivals hall. And so we served incoming passengers luggage and incoming passengers on body search, as well as the door. Okay. And we’ll we also did a little bit of cargo stuff, but not too much in Christchurch. The guys up in Auckland, and the other part of the NPA buildings, the the meal center as well. So the the outweighed the range of stuff to do, whereas we were just basically International Airport.
Kayla Fratt
Gotcha. Yeah. And were you were you partnered with a dog? Or tell us about your your partner or partners that you had throughout that project?
Grant Blackley
Yeah, so the student ID is that you apply for a role, and then you get assigned a dog. So you go in a 15 week training course. And you can either it’s either an experienced dog or a green dog, you get what’s available at the time, I was fortunate enough to be given a chocolate Labrador. Emmett was his name. And, and he was green, but I started very green. But we built a great partnership together. And it was a it was a great dog. Not any chocolate Labradors make it through the program. In fact, he was the only one in the Hall of April MPA program. And he was actually a gift dog from a family. He was just too much for them as purebred, but he just was too much for them to home. And so the gifted him to MPI. And I was fortunate to be as is keep it for a little while.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, I grew up with a chocolate lab. And I feel like there’s a lot of they get a lot of shade in a lot of the detection, dark mysteries. But the dark I had was the I mean, she was the dark my life she was amazing. So glad you had similar likewise, Hammett.
Grant Blackley
It was hard to leave them. But I left New Zealand to come to this project. It was a it was a good good partner for all that time. And the slight difference being that those dogs are kenneled and commercial kennels, simply because they can’t be at home and be around, obviously all the food items that we are seizing. So you couldn’t have apples in the house. You couldn’t know from all the fruits, I think because it’s just an indicator. You couldn’t have fruit meat or anything. It would just indicate that everything in the house every possible thing that you had. So there’s also a commercial or kenneled so we only had what came together we didn’t have together.
Kayla Fratt
Oh that is so interesting. That is because that is a true scenario. And I don’t know how many other disciplines we would run into that with because even you know Even an accelerant detection dog or a drug detection dog in theory, they should not be running into their targets anywhere else in the environment, especially if they’ve been appropriately kind of proofed off of, you know, your accelerant detection dog shouldn’t just be alerting to gasoline on its own in most cases. In my understanding, I’m obviously not an expert.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, no one. I know the partner agencies like customs. Diedrich, the dogs are the poster dogs at all. He’s a customs officer wasn’t exposed his dog to methamphetamine.
Kayla Fratt
Presumably they don’t have methamphetamine at home. Yeah, yeah. Versus you obviously probably do have meat, eggs, fruit veggies, like, basically everything that you would want to eat your dog would have been alerting to. That’s fascinating. Yeah. Yeah,
Grant Blackley
even as far as how we live in trees in the garden, and you know everything about them. We didn’t reward outside. So you can take your dog for a walk, and he’d find a banana outside. But we don’t reward for that. And we’re just just a part of the ego. Yeah, we don’t reward for things outside and across them. Just take away from that. But it was more of the fact that exposing your dog to the odor of constantly, may cause you know that an extinction of it really. Because I’m so used to that odor, but it’s not going to alert me anymore. Not get rewarded and formed and why would I bother?
Kayla Fratt
Really see, I can see how you know, maybe like just thinking I’ve got Sarah Owings, I’ve got an interview with her again, and a little bit talking about stimulus control. And I can see how a skilled trainer with a good plan might be able to figure out how to make that work. But it does just seem like a lot to ask for your average dog and handler. So that that’s probably the one of the best justifications I think I’ve heard, aside from the dogs that are kind of dual trained in police work for having a dog that really does kind of need to be kenneled as part of their working dog repertoire.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, it also meant because the NBA had 50 between 50 and 60. Hide loss. They didn’t have display as always vehicles. Yeah, did she have vehicles? But you’re on duty. So it seems that that whole you’re paying for the dog to be at home thing?
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So okay, so tell us about what you’re doing. What what how long were you there? And then tell us kind of what you’re doing now.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, so the career was ended by scripts I did two years, which I recommend, before he got the dog handler as just a quarantine officer. So working just under inspections of the declared goods at the airport. I then went into the dog handling site and was here for years. With him it then decided that yeah, I was I was going to branch out in my my career. And adult was wanted to do the, the conservation dog side of it. It’s a very hard industry to get into New Zealand. It’s although it’s you know, the pioneers of it. It’s quite closed, there’s not that many dog handlers. And they tend to be department contribution rangers who happen to have a dog. And that’s the kind of works. So I looked at, you know, the the various options. And an option that came up was human Scotland in my home country. With the native wildlife project, they were looking for dog handlers want to stick their application program, which has now been running for three years.
Kayla Fratt
Wow. Yeah. So yeah. And that kind of brings us to what I wanted to talk to you about, which is just I think, you know, there’s so much diversity in the detection dog world and you’ve got the really unique position of having done two pretty, extremely different sides of it. So what are some of the things and we’ll we’ll kind of split out these questions in the dog side and then the people slash business side. So what are some of the things that are the same on the dog side between the first biosecurity gig in New Zealand and now working with the stoat eradication stuff in Scotland?
Grant Blackley
I mean, the basic training is it’s roughly the same. You’re looking for a passive indication you’re aiming for it’s a difference being a New Zealand device your job will reward you for Schiphol with as the scroll, it’s a ball reward for the dog here. And the reason for that is that you don’t have space to throw a ball international arrivals hall to reward reward was kibble and it’s quick and fast country rolled the biosecurity Darksiders, it’s a very controlled environment. And you’ve got to be very spiritually aware around you have to protect your dog. Because people are vicious as trolleys, and they’re just, they’re just on a mission to get the bikes and get out the airport. And they just don’t look where they’re going. It’s just madness. So we actually, quite often had a follower, another handler whose dog was unrest period, and we watched 20 minutes or 20 minutes off. And the other handler was basically your, your eyes and ears. And they would kind of block people. And as soon as you get into layer two, you had to stick with Lego to protect your dog’s tail stop people running over it, and the other person, but try and control people right about you. Just just, you know, get that done with conservation dogs ate on the open, the dogs running free, I don’t see people is a very much it’s a more relaxed atmosphere. And, again, the airport is very controlled, and I your dogs on leash all the time, and the deployed off leash in the work environment. And you talk a lot to the dog, we were taught to talk a lot and using commands, off road this way over here, seek etc, etc. Whereas that’s a hard thing to have with a conservation dog where I don’t have to speak a lot to my current dog. Thornton, who’s an English Springer Spaniel. He just he just gets on with it. And, you know, if I need to see something that I see it if I don’t if he’s working, then why speak to it’s just white noise at the end of the day. It’s a great, it’s been a big, big job, you know, stopping talking to them. A because I spent so many years just sort of jumping to a dog. And then suddenly, I’m just silent and just get on with a walk really, and he’s gone to the job.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, it seems like especially kind of having watched some videos of you and Thorin working together and you’re in these pretty open, open areas where you’re really doing quite a lot of arranging the search style is really very different between between these two gigs. It sounds like
Grant Blackley
Well definitely you know, as I see from never been off leash to suddenly just the dog from the to, you know, whatever distance he wants to go and really need to go and find to further order. And she’s not the meter to get up behind them and keep up and he has isn’t natural range of about 20 to 45 meters is comfortable walk into that distance is not a not a really far ranging dog. And I’m not going to continue any further reading, because I need to be in a position to reward to confirm and reward without him building frustration for me getting there. And because of the danger of cliffs and etc, etc. I’ve got to be within, you know, recall distance, stars whistle just just to have them that range in all the time.
Kayla Fratt
It takes a village to keep canine conservationists running. One of our valued team members is Sonny Murphy, who runs black flower content writing sunny started out as a volunteer creating infographics based on our podcast episodes, but quickly earned her place as a paid member of the team. If you need a creative, enthusiastic voice to help your company or nonprofit with blog writing social media planning and or email newsletter campaigns, check out black flower writing services, I cannot recommend sunny highly enough. Thanks. And let’s get back to the episode.
Kayla Fratt
Okay, so we were talking a little bit about some of the things that are different on the dog side, what are some of the things that you have really found the same as far as you know, maybe that’s foundational training, maybe it’s just overall dog husbandry skills, what are some of the things that you’ve really found to be the same between these two really different applications?
Grant Blackley
The dog care obviously, is just the same. It’s the same, same daily checks and your dog, it’s the same you know, health checks, done daily, the same health checks them at the end of shift to make sure the dogs you know, happy healthy. A the training side is a bit different in that we know industrial use calm as your base order, an MP of Stuart’s got to the calm. So we’ve always got cognitive your back to in a training scenario. Whereas in the airport, we actually just cardboard boxes and with the actual food item in either an open box or a sealed box. And that’s just the way that we treat deer and we didn’t use corn etc. and trading that but it had us corn and other applications. And there’s a couple other little scenarios that are Ellington to Emerson conservation dockside. They put up with a had been shown how to use a comb and it’s a great base system a For instance, at the world, we can take Stuart Scott to a predator free Island. We have innovated on a on a presence or absence basis, we don’t want to take scabies because we could create a false indication. So it’s good to have him calm, because we can just take a little bit of Congress. And for the dogs are seemingly bored, finding nothing after five hours, we can throw out a bit of calm within the 70 effort with apples and oranges and fruit and whatever items, because we’re periods of certain countries, certain nations are higher fines for the dog on incoming pastures, but the general day to day, they’ll be long periods of deep will not find anything. So Chuck’s an apple in somebody’s bag of tea in someone’s trolley, and then you know, the duck is a fine, but it comes through just to pick them up a little bit, as you know.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, of course. Yeah. And even with 20 minutes on 20 minutes off, which actually sounds somewhat similar to like the wind farm work that I’m doing right now, where we kind of do one turbine, and then we have to input all of our data and then load everyone up and then drive to the next turbine. So they get quite a bit of those natural breaks. But otherwise, in the conservation outfield are often working with much longer searches. So do you think kind of going back to what you were talking about as far as how much direction you were kind of giving with Emmet versus what you do with Thorne? Do you think that that was necessary because of the environment? Or was it a little bit more kind of cultural in the airport world or a little bit of both.
Grant Blackley
I feel though, it was quite cultural. It’s kind of what the vote was done. It didn’t sit well with me at the time, I’m speaking so much to the dog, and just really distracting them quite a lot. But again, it changed the airport airport. Other reports that dogs are working out, we’re far busier, the airport I was up. And so having that direct control in that direction or control of the over here, wrote this, we almost was like the belly dance you’re doing with the dog, because you’d have to twist and turn round trolleys. And everything was presented, you presented the box. So you actually flipped the passenger’s luggage to make a sound for the dog to go there and sniff that item. Again, we don’t do that at all, with the conservation dog. Anything. So
Kayla Fratt
it’d be very hard to cover 300 acres if you had to touch everything you wanted your dog to sniff?
Grant Blackley
Exactly. Yeah, really end up with the dog just get on with it, the dog would go and sniff. If it was good enough. I think it was just basically, it was a way to have a standardized approach for 60 handlers. Because you had 60 handlers of all abilities. That having a standardized approach. Everything was the same at any airport. So yeah, definitely dog reacted the same. So you could work other people’s dogs on shift if your dog was ill of someone was having a break. And it just meant every door. Dizzy.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, it’s, I think the closest thing I’ve ever done would it be when Barbara and I were in Yellowstone and doing boat work? So we were searching boats for invasive zebra mussels. And the nice thing with a boat that I can see being really different from like a line of passengers, because I’m imagining this is kind of like at the arrivals. You’re kind of searching these people as they’re waiting for their visas or whatever.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, the bucket switch Nadya’s. Most of the exits for digital or green lean exit work, sort of declared nothing, and just pop a door. I bought off the dog and run it random. Just see if they actually have anything on them.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, cuz it’s like the most directed work I’ve ever done was with the boats. And, but the nice thing with a boat is within reason, pretty much all boats are kind of in, you’ve got the same basic plan. So you can kind of get the dog and handler to really pattern it. And then I could step back, one of the things that seems really interesting to me about this airport work is that you are not giving an official demonstration. So you do not have the chance to communicate with these passengers unnecessarily. And you’re in work mode. But I can see how some of these presentations and the directions and whatnot are almost I want to say performative, but I don’t mean that in a negative way. As far as just letting the hundreds and hundreds of people who are watching your work really know that you’ve got this dog under control. You’re a professional, this dog is going to do what you’re asking it to do. I wonder how much of it culturally could also come to that?
Grant Blackley
Oh, yeah, definitely. As we know, some cultures have a fear of dogs, of course. And so you know, you have to take everything into account. I’d be I had to scan the passengers to know when I was going and who I was. So yeah, it did. It doesn’t an environment where people are varying acquisitive, and you have to so there’s a lot of PR skills involved in. And again, the problem is having a chocolate lab was everyone wanted to park them before they’ve seen Don’t touch my dog. Yeah. Yeah. You loved it. You know, he was a chocolate lab, just like the past because he know he’s supposed to be working. No kidding.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, cuz I can imagine like, you know, hypothetically, we could take Thorne and release him into Glasgow airport. And he could, you know, make sure nobody’s got any stoats in their bags. I don’t know why they would. And he would probably do his job just fine with at least with appropriate proofing and whatnot. But that would just it would look so hectic and so crazy to the airport that even though and it wouldn’t necessarily be safe. Anyway, yeah, it’s just it’s the search style stuff. It’s so interesting to me. These differences were like what’s necessary and what’s cultural? Go ahead.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, we did try a couple of Springer’s. But they’re just too too frantic. To be an elite and use get tight knots. And you see it doesn’t look particularly tidy. getting the job done, but you will having to work a lot harder to keep up with him. But as a nice smooth, he actually preferred the dog of choice in for NPI was beagles. Because a non threatening really good dogs sniffing. And really take us back to the whole non threatening thing. You have certain fields, certain breeds of dogs. And so it’s just a very good public image thing.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know. I mean, here in the US. I’m very tangentially involved in this. But just because I listened to a lot of the same working dogs, podcasts that are not conservation dogs, like, there’s they’re all about trying to figure out how to get more pointers and labs into a lot of these particular airport. Or like stadium bomb dog sorts of searches, because, you know, the point that you’re at Ballena was freaked people out a little bit.
Grant Blackley
Doo doo, doo doo. Now, you know, the way we’ve been portrayed? Yeah,
Kayla Fratt
yeah. So, yeah. So then let’s kind of shift gears a little bit to the human side, what are some of the things that are like the same or different as far as the human and the business end of things between these two applications?
Grant Blackley
Well, I’m no longer a regulatory enforcement officer. I no longer have to wait a uniform. And that’s, as well as being a dog handler. I was, you know, a regulatory enforcement officer handing out $400 And centric fines. You know, everyone love to see my dog, everyone loves to dog until it finds something under bikes, indicating something in the trolley. And then no one likes me anymore, because I’ve just find the problem. But, you know, that’s, that’s just the way it works. Yeah. difference being though, yes, so much, I’m doing a conservation job. Again, there’s still a lot of PR involved. We work quite closely, it’s with the community. We’re in a lot of farmland, so we have to build a relationship with farmers and ensure the dogs are safe. The wood, Chase livestock are under direct control, under recall. And so that’s an important part of that, that farmers are happy that adults are able to walk in their land. And sometimes kicks we have to actually go and show people and say look, this is a dog this is what he does. And docx recall and you know that just what’s fine again, working for charity conservation project slightly different than working for central government. Different structure the whole different piece of of life here not being it obviously we think of New Zealand as a as a relaxed pace of life. But yeah, I’ve turned down a few years. We weren’t we weren’t fiddly. hectically and again, much shorter hours in this business. No longer half shift work night shifts. daily posts, so that’s, yeah, I love working outdoors. I’m you know, I was a farmer, a shepherd before I came into this conservation out of coming to the stock market really, I trained and bred sheep dogs are my life. So yeah, yeah, it was I just have a team of six working dogs as a shepherd, and so I enjoy the outdoors and the great outdoors Yes, to enjoy being on be on farm. I’ve kind of got an affinity with farmers and people to understand your point of view. And I understand why they’re hesitant to allow. Yeah, dogs on some of the funds, obviously exactly the same. Yeah, of course, through my career. So yeah, it’s a it’s certainly a much calmer atmosphere.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I can imagine just about the most laid back country, their airports still is probably a relatively hectic place, that’s a really good way to amp up just about any any environment is, let’s make it a big international, coming and going place where everyone’s stressed out and exhausted.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, and it’s just a timescale. So you’ve got arrivals, lots of flights arriving, and everyone’s got to be cleared. By some time, there’s just this big push all the time to get passengers cleared. Because people have scheduled so people are going to get onto the lifeboat, the airport, arriving, getting buses, etc. So we just have to get it cleared as quickly and efficiently as possible, which didn’t often sit well with doing dog work. You know, we’d like to restore peace and for some of the people going through, but that was dictated really by, yes, the higher up the chain, getting things through, and as long as we’re taking risks, items through then you don’t want to try not to delete passengers as much as possible.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, that’s a whole other human element that, you know, again, the only corollary I have is the yellow stonework I did where yeah, sometimes we had people who were a little irritated that they couldn’t just go launch their boat right away, and we had to run the dog through it. But at least the nice thing and that situation is the dogs are faster than the human, aquatic invasives soldiers. So even though they were a little annoyed about the fact that they had to be searched at all the dogs are faster than their other option. So, and most people are excited. That’s about a nice, cute, I was handling a yellow lab for most of that job, as well as barley. And you know, especially that big yellow lab, people would be pretty thrilled to see him.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s, again, similar it, it’s all about education. It’s about educating people, that you come and talk to us. So if I could educate someone, that the reason I’m fighting you is because this is a risk to the company you’ve brought into you is exactly the same though, as saying, I would like to hear Radek ating, Stuart’s because he present this risk to the environment of auditing, being non native invasive. And so again, it just comes down to educating people as you go along. And, you know, make them understand why you’re doing a roll.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So we’ve got just a couple more questions here. So one is from Meg, who’s also on Patreon, asking if there was anything that you thought would be really easy in the transition, that turned out to be surprisingly hard or or vice versa. What kind of blew up your expectations. I didn’t have
Grant Blackley
a huge amount of the conservation experience side for this rule. I don’t have degrees in ecology or anything else. And so it was a bit of a worry, I can do the dog stuff on you. Again, Thorin is a project on dog. He’s not my dog. So I arrived here from New Zealand and got given a dog, like no idea of what dog I was getting going again, he came here. I didn’t see him until he you know, the training daily arrived. So it was quite hard. I didn’t get any kind of choice. much choice in the matter. Today, that year is a great dog. Excellent dog. Yeah. One of the best dogs I’ve seen. And that, again, when I’m training for the biosecurity dog, we’ve appeared with two dogs during the program for the 15 weeks, and then by week 17. It was the chosen which dog had had clicked better with with me as a handler. And then again, the bosses made that decision that that was going to be my dog. But I got to spend a lot more time with the dog beforehand and could see he you know, that’s I don’t think it was a dog for me. Yeah, whereas this project had already kind of bought the dogs before my arrival.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, with a smaller program. There’s less less flexibility for that. That makes sense.
Grant Blackley
Yeah. Again, just getting used to being outdoors again, having spent a lot of years at an air conditioned indoor environment. Working shift work. It was a bit of a change. Yeah, during the the delay of shifts again, and the having weekends off. was quite amazing. Fight five the week is like, well, that’s great. Yeah. The transitioning wasn’t too hard. A dog training wise, I had the basic skills. And I do a lot of reading and a lot of podcasts listening. Office obviously. And I’ve tried to keep up to date with this most of the modern knowledge, because it’s just constantly evolving, and growing. And there’s this great contacts out there, I’ve made some great contacts and the industry through both Patreon, and in the world of detection conference, was it was a great setup, to again, make some some great contacts. So much. So that actually sent some Stuart’s got off recently to Switzerland. For a project there, they were looking for suit skirt. And so I managed to split a couple of jobs here after with just a bumper season of finding stocks go. So hopefully we help someone else out.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, oh, that’s great. I love hearing stuff like that. So I guess one of the other questions I had was, is there anything that you kind of see being done really well, in the biosecurity realm or kind of airport? Security dogs in general, that maybe is missing of the conservation dog field? Is there anything that you kind of brought to this new job that you think was helpful for yourself or for the project that more of us need to know about?
Grant Blackley
That’s an interesting question. One thing that I being once I go learned, one thing I, I suppose enjoyed was structure. In my previous jobs, working for central government offices, very structured, and very organized. And some of the conservation bottles side. It’s very hard to, I suppose plan ahead when you’re funding based. And yeah, there’s a lot of great talent out there looking for work. And there’s not a lot of money in the construction world, giving them work. And so that’s really hard thing to look in to look at. And see that there’s, there’s no real kind of pooling of talent and seeing all these handlers. And we need to, you know, prove this knowledge of information. Again, having some contact with the department conservation in New Zealand, where it’s a, again, a government run scheme, the hands deal, it’s funded by Kiwibank. Try annually. And so it’s difficult, a lot more, I suppose, for planning on what they’re doing. I find it hard. Looking at industry here, the conservation dog side. People tend to for jobs and not know if you get a job or not, it’s very hard to live day to day. Knowing that you’re just basically, you know, one funder away from
Kayla Fratt
from you’re really hitting that fire, it hurts.
Grant Blackley
Yeah, it’s just a difference. I see me your wages, having even visceral, you know, I have a decent wage, and my dogs provided for me, and that’s quite unusual and contribution topper. Or Natalie, I would have expected to have to find my own dog or then be on a on a contract. So yes, it’s going to be interesting. Covenant time, but eventually this project as to where the future goes down.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah. Yeah. Are you on a contract basis where that is something that is going to happen for you? Or are you staff that is around for the for the foreseeable future, and you don’t have to go into that if you’d rather not
Grant Blackley
do too much with a contract. So there will be a contract end date. And then, unfortunately, depending on how he’s how he’s feeling, then again, thought and doesn’t belong to me. So that’s something that I’ve kind of had to live with throughout my career, that the dog doesn’t belong to me. And I have to move on and depend on points needs to project is, if the project has completed then there may be other work. But he’ll move on to another conservation project. He was in the weight of partnerships that are part of this project.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, yeah, it’s The it’s one of a Yeah, I think both of those are really tough things in this field. And I think not owning the dog is maybe I think that’s relatively common in a lot of the Working Dog fields, but the lack of financial and long term security. I think it’s especially pronounced in the conservation dog field. And, gosh, I feel like all of the handlers and trainers out there like we all know it. And I don’t know if anyone really knows how to fix it. I don’t know if we are the ones to fix it. Yeah, I don’t know. We, you know, I don’t think we have the agency to get that done. So then what, what do we do to start moving in that direction? Anyway? That’s a whole other can of worms.
Grant Blackley
Yeah. So it’s a growing industry in the UK, conservation dogs at the minute, and there’s quite a lot of handlers coming forward, you know, looking for work. And so how do you grow the industry and sustainably? Because you don’t want to that you flood the place with handlers and dogs? For the short term? Usually, there’d be no future in it. And that not to be the sustainable way. And going forward? Yeah, I think we’ve got to look at it very carefully as to how the, how the employee people. Yeah, and hand on the REITs, you know, it’s conservations always been very poorly paid, compared to other industries. And so that, again, would be the industry needs to look at what they want the future to be, can be pay for someone to train the dog, can you pay for someone to, you know, keep that training up? And not have long lead times projects? So it’s a it’ll be interesting to see how it goes forward.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, we’re at a very, very interesting point in the, in the conservation log history right now, I think. Yeah. And, you know, on the on the flip side, I know, you know, there’s so there’s quite a bit of interest, which I think is a good thing. And hopefully, we can get the interest from agencies and zoos and land managers and nonprofits and all that to match the interest from incoming handlers. But there’s also, I think, some mismatch and communication. And that’s, I mean, that’s one of the things we’re trying to work on in this podcast. But for example, I was just speaking to someone earlier, earlier this month about, they’re trying to get a citizen science conservation dog program up and running. And the person who is in charge of trying to get this program up and running has actually never trained or handle the conservation dog herself. And it was one of those things where, you know, hopefully, we’re going to be able to step in and help them out. But that project seems likely to not go really well. Because there’s too much enthusiasm and not enough expertise, and how do we match the enthusiasm from the, from the agencies or the NGOs or whoever with the expertise and enthusiasm that’s coming from the handlers? It’s kind of a, you know, again, we’re still working on that one.
Grant Blackley
Oh, definitely. And I think you’ve just saved us a lot of work ahead. Just got to balance expectations. A, there’s quite a lot of overseas input in a lot of projects in the UK, where they’ve done something similar. But there’s quite a lot of difference when you actually look at it underground. And so it’s, you’ve got to kind of balance the knowledge overseas, with the conditions in the territory of working with doesn’t, you know, square pegs, round holes.
Kayla Fratt
Yeah, just thing we learned when we were in Kenya. It’s like, oh, gosh, yeah, it turns out dealing with elephants is is not something that we’re we’re experts in we should really probably sit down and shut up and let them tell us about this. Because we know dogs, we don’t know elephants. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, did you? You know, one of the things you mentioned you wanted to make sure we touched on is kind of career planning in the conservation dog industry. Did you have anything else you wanted to add on that or anything? Like other directions? We want to take that because I think I think you’re right, this is so important for this field right now.
Grant Blackley
I think you’ve got to just temper your enthusiasm, and really learn from the best. Just say goodbye, the career path route. What I did initially again, I’ll go back to start the biosecurity dogs. When I arrived New Zealand 18 years ago, sorry, nearly 20 years ago. I was fascinated by dogs in the airport, right? So what a cool job. I’d quite like to do that. integrate other You know, 12 years DeBose itself round to get that job? Yeah. And what I looked at is, how can I put myself in the best position to get this job? And so I had to look at what were the people who were employing, what was your backgrounds? What was the knowledge? And how can I, you know, get that knowledge and try and grow my brand new, but to position myself in that, and that involved workings of rural vet technician to get some, you know, to be able to put rural VIP technician on my CV, because I realized they employed a lot of ethnicities, and I thought, How Not to Die in the Vietnam fruit. But if I can have some big victory involvements, then that’s good experience in it. So did that, again, working as an animal control officer, and which is dog control in New Zealand, I spent five years doing that, to expose myself to all sorts of dogs every dog possible, from little yuppie chihuahuas to Big Angry petals. Just to, again, build my dog knowledge built my dog handling skills. And, you know, get that through, again, during two years as a as a quarantine officer before I got the dog apply to the dog roll. Again, just build your knowledge of the core role here. There’s going to be a dog cart and up, you’ve got to know what is legislation, you’ve got to know, your legal right there. And what you know, it was all about. So I think the conservation, I would love to have, you know, had an ecology degree. But for I did have no job for this project was stoats I’ve trapped in and, you know, that was a hunter in New Zealand. Yeah, and so I’m just, you know, trapping shooting everything else. So I’ve got the knowledge of how to catch a stood and a trap. It’s quite regulated here, and that there’s always so many traps you’d like to use now and trap control order. What you have very, very, I wouldn’t say hamstrung by legislation. But it certainly is very, very limited here. We can’t use poisons, we can’t use some of the traps of what in the past don’t bind. So it’s it’s a, it was just having that knowledge? I think. So. Yeah. Look at what you’re aiming to do. I you know, I love the non native invasive stuff. Yeah. And I’ve had a little bit exposure, again, in New Zealand to that. So just kind of building on that.
Kayla Fratt
I mean, it seems, yeah, it seems like one of the two of the big things that I’m hearing you say are one kind of knowing where you’re at and where you need to be and figuring out the gaps. And then being kind of patient and systematic as you work through that. Like you said it took you 18 What was it about 12 years between you see the dogs and then actually getting the position that you really wanted? Yes. Yeah, I know, for me, it was five, five years, which is a lot less than 12. But still, it’s not the sort of thing where this is not a position that you can just kind of go out and find about like, even if you are willing to move anywhere in the world and work for free, you will probably not be able to get a job doing this next summer.
Grant Blackley
No, I’m not. So people have to understand. Yeah, there’s a lot of people have their own dogs. And again, it’s, you’ve got a look at what you’ve got. And you may think your dogs are best in the world. Because everyone’s opinion of their own dogs. Yeah. But you’ve got to just get somebody else in to look, get an expert round. And just and take their take that advice. I’m on board. It may be that that doctor is not quite suitable for that role. Yeah, but there’ll be other roles that might be more suitable for. So don’t, don’t be pushing yourself into into corners. And pigeonholing yourself saying I’m going to do this I’m only going to do this. This is where I want to be. Just look at the bigger picture. You don’t you can change orders. You can start on you know muscles and an end up on Stuart’s and see that the biosecurity dogs be hyper were trained on probably 40 or 50 orders. So it’s just be patient as you see and build skills. Yeah, we don’t all get it right. We don’t get a rate every day. You make mistakes, and you’ve got to learn from those mistakes. So you know and we’ve updated some clients might map down
Kayla Fratt
our Yeah, well, like I know, for me, like half of this podcast was me being like, Okay, I’ve been in this field now for four or five years. I’m at a point now where I’m on my own, how do I keep learning? Okay, great, I’ll just interview a bunch of people and all learn from them. And then you know, so that it doesn’t feel quite so selfish and that they’ll agree to talk to me, I’ll make it into a podcast. And I’m constantly like, kind of frantically taking notes as I’m listening to the episodes before they go public before they go live or anything being like, oh, my gosh, this is so smart. I know, I already heard this once. But like, like the Skylar psychology episode that just went live, like, I’m gonna have to listen to that like five times over and over, because Tracy and Fiona had so much good stuff to say and just, you know, be humble and try to keep learning and know, you know, and if you don’t know your own gaps yet, then join Patreon will help you figure out what they are,
Grant Blackley
ya know, and, you know, people have found people very willing to give you advice. I’d give you help, just flip an email and say, hey, you know, I’m struggling with this. Can you give me the advice? And, you know, people are quite willing to, yeah, to give you that, but to help this industry? Go could go a long way.
Kayla Fratt
No, I agree. Yeah. Is there anything else you wanted to circle back to? or expand on a little bit more before we wrap up here?
Grant Blackley
No, I think, um, I think you have given quite a good overview of where it came from, and how to get to your goal that I’m, you know, I’m growing every day. And hopefully, from this role, I’ll go on to another great conservation rule overall, somewhere. Just over Yeah.
Kayla Fratt
Well, given your border collie experience you, you’d be welcome here, if you ever decide you want to move on the other side of the pond, we
Grant Blackley
don’t have Joe Biden or give big green card.
Kayla Fratt
actually actively looking at PhD programs overseas. So I don’t know why I’m inviting people here. That’s neither here nor there, though. Well, great. It’s been a pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you over the last year or so online. I hope we get to meet in person someday. Are you active on social media in a way that you want people to come find you at all? Or would you would you rather not?
Grant Blackley
Yeah, so I have one page, which is conservation.org on. And it’s just something that I put together that I share a few articles on that I find, shared a few pictures of myself and so on. And it’s yeah, it’s just just a way of keeping in touch with a lot of people in industry. And it’s yeah, it’s a instagram or twitter. Sadly,
Kayla Fratt
I think I’m starting to lose interest with Instagram. And now I’m just like, I guess if I’m going to do social media, I might as well do LinkedIn and Twitter where the scientists are. So we’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. And grant thank you again for coming on. To all your listeners. Thanks for sticking around. Hope you learned a lot in our learning inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and your skill set. You can find show notes, donate canine conservationists, buy merch, and join patreon to hang out with me and grant mag and all of our other lovely patrons all over at K9Conservationists.org. Until next time!