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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Jens Frank from the Scandinavian Working Dog Institute about teaching dogs multiple alerts to discriminate between targets.
Science Highlight: Relationships between personality of human–dog dyads and performances in working tasks
Links Mentioned in the Episode:
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Where to find Jens: University Website | SWDI Website | SWDI Instagram | SWDI Facebook
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Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt 00:19
Hello and welcome to the K9Conservationists podcast, where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs. Join us every week to discuss detection, training, canine welfare, conservation biology, and everything in between. I’m Kayla Fratt, one of the cofounders of K9Conservationists, where we train dogs to detect data for landowners, researchers, agencies and NGOs. We haven’t gotten a new review on Apple podcasts since February. I am recording on August 1. So if you’re not driving, please take a moment to leave us a review on Apple podcasts. It means a lot. Thank you.
Kayla Fratt 00:50
So today, I’m super excited. I’m going to be talking to Jens Frank from the Scandinavian Working Dog Institute about teaching dogs multiple alerts to discriminate between targets. I get asked about this all the time. And I’ve always kind of mirrored saying that it seems challenging, but possible, and I was super excited to hear Jens talk about this on the Canine Detection Collaborative podcast. So you know, I had to get him on to talk just about this topic with us. So for anyone who doesn’t know who Jens is, he has a PhD in ecology and is currently working as an associate professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. And as one of the founders of the Scandinavian working dog Institute, Jens has extensive experience in working in training dogs and handlers, as well as setting up quality control systems for professional dog teams, and managing working dog programs for authorities as well as the private sector. I am super excited to get to this interview like, oh man, I’m sweating. I’m so excited guys.
Kayla Fratt 01:44
But before we get into it, we are going to dive into our science highlight. So this week, we read “Relationships between personality of human dog dyads and performance in working tasks,” which was published in Applied Animal Behavior Science in April 2016 by Sara Hoummady and seven co authors who I’m not going to read because it’s seven, they have French names and I don’t want to embarrass myself or offend anyone. So this study looks at the link between dog and human personality traits and how they work together to influence performance. 14 teams from the Paris firefighters brigade went through a repeated search task for speed, precision and improvement were all measured. The researchers used a questionnaire to assess quality of life of the dogs, the NEO-PI-R questionnaire to examine human personality traits, and several sub tests to assess the dog’s personality traits. All of the 14 Dogs included were Belgian shepherds, either mals or tervs. The search tests took place in a quote, industrial wasteland that was regularly used as a training area for the dogs searching for people in the rubble. The test stopped when the dog alerted either correctly or incorrectly, or after five minutes, I find it really interesting that they expected to see and did see improvement at all over three days of searching. So they did a search each day for three days in a row. And they saw improvements in an area that the teams already used to train, which is really interesting to me, because I wouldn’t necessarily expect improvement in that situation. But they did see it. And it doesn’t necessarily say by how much in the paper. So kind of interesting. So the paper highlights that the quality of the dog human relationship as characterized by having a more toys at home, doing more joint activities and less physical punishment punishment, correlated with improved precision in the search. Interestingly, search speed was negatively correlated with sharing activities. So doing more stuff with your dog made us slower in this particular experiment. It is possible that self reporting was to blame here because the the fire brigade really encouraged doing a lot with your dogs. So potentially people self reported inaccurately about how much time they were spending with their dogs. Because this does contradict earlier research. This paper did drive me a little bit nuts as I was reading it because the abstract says the opposite about toys in the abstract. It says that toys in the home negatively affect improvement. But then in the figure and in the discussion that they say that toys correlate with improvements. I think that’s the right answer. I did try to email the authors and my email bounced. So I’ve sent them a message on LinkedIn. But they didn’t get back to me by the time we sat down to record. So several human traits were correlated with performance modesty in particular was related to higher precision. And then conscientiousness was associated with precision and improvement. extraversion was a mixed bag excitement seeking was associated with lower improvement. But gregariousness and activity are associated with more speed and improvement. The authors expected neuroticism to negatively affect the results but did not find a relation. And all of these are kind of the big five personality traits, which you may have heard about if you spend any time really and like the personality science, or pop psychology world’s pretty popular stuff. And I think there’s actually a decent amount of like research behind these, unlike some other kind of personality trait metrics, did not have time to double check all that, but that’s what they used. Then there’s some research on zebra finches that suggests that matching personalities improves success in chick rearing. The researchers were curious if that would apply to working dog human relationships. And they found that matching dog human pairs on neuroticism improved less from search one to search three, while exploratory dogs and extroverted people were faster but less precise. Teams that matched on quote positive emotions and activity for the people and quote, human familiarity for the dogs were faster, more precise, and improved more. I’m kind of one of those things that it’s interesting to see this association but I don’t know if there’s much that you can do about it, I guess I’m curious to know if matching is more important or scoring higher on these things. Cuz I guess maybe what you want to do is try to figure out where you fall on that line, and then find a dog that matches that. But again, this is a pretty preliminary study, that’s just finding association. So we might not be able to pull much out of this. Now to quote the discussion, quote, “One limitation of our study is the relatively low number of dyads, limited by our study site, the Paris fire brigade,” and I’m gonna end quote there and interject. Also we’re looking at teams that it’s all the same breed, they all train together, they all work together, they all presumably have similar the same protocols. There’s a lot of standardization there that is helpful, but also kind of reduces the variety and might kind of make it harder to pull out the most significant results. Now I’ll continue the quote. “Moreover, given the high number of behaviors included to determine dogs traits, and the low sample size, results should be treated cautiously in future future studies with larger samples are needed to confirm these results. Another major limitation to our study is the high number of correlations we observed. However, our purpose was to investigate associations without causal interference.”
Kayla Fratt 07:00
So without further ado, let’s get to our interview with Jens. So, yes, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, I’m so excited to talk to you. Why don’t we start out with just kind of give us an overview of what this project was, and kind of what your goals were, as you’re working with these carnivore detection dogs.
Jens Frank 07:18
So it’s actually not a project. It’s an ongoing program that we have for the government in Sweden, and Norway. So some of the rangers have a dog helping them in their work. So they’re the Rangers, they work both with the monitoring of large carnivores, and also with the assessment of suspected predation events on mainly on livestock and the dogs, but occasionally, they also on humans. And then it’s, I don’t remember now, if it’s 15, or maybe closer to 20 years ago, we when we started to use dogs, a little bit more systematic than we have been doing before. So we have an ongoing training program and certification for the dogs. So we know the likelihood that they miss the reward for links or bad track. And we know if there is a tendency to do and false alerts as well.
Kayla Fratt 08:38
Okay, so basically, if a farmer then like loses a calf, and there’s this, it’s suspected that it was a wild animal, these rangers would get called in with our dogs. And then they’re trying to gather evidence to figure out I assume there’s some sort of like compensation or something that then happens for the farmer and potentially repercussions for the animal as well.
Jens Frank 08:59
Yes, there is. And since in the wintertime, it’s easy to make documentation with the snow on the ground. And if there are 10 sheep killed, it’s also fairly easy to skin the animals and conclude on the cause of death and which carnivore was involved. But since most predation events are this time of the year, when it’s the grazing season, and we have no snow, and sometimes, I would say a growing issue, not only in Sweden but also in many other European countries, is that the wolves, yes, scare cattle. So it’s, it wouldn’t be much better if it was just two or three cows killed by wolves or bears. But when they scare 20, 30, or 50, to break the fence and run to the forest, this requires an enormous effort from the farmer to retrieve these animals again, they quickly become more or less feral, and you have to shoot them in the forest. And it costs a lot of money and causes a lot of problems. And it’s extremely difficult to document whether it was mosquitoes or moose or a helicopter that scared the captain, or if it was a wolf or a bear. So then that’s why we mainly why we set this program up, because we we needed that tool in the toolbox.
Kayla Fratt 10:49
Yeah, that makes sense. And then if you can figure out exactly what it is, there’s something that then changes as far as Yeah, these like management decisions. So that that makes sense as far as why it matters. And so these dogs are actually kind of coming in and investigating these sites and finding the tracks or the trails, not just scat, correct?
Jens Frank 11:11
Yes, it’s mainly the tracks that they go for, because animals always leave tracks, but only occasionally the scouts. So the tracks will always be there. But we also use them to search for scats. So the typical protocol, if I am called out, is to first go around the pasture, to see if the dog indicates on any tracks going in or out. And then I will mark them on my GPS, because it’s usually not one or two tracks going in and out, it can be quite messy, especially if there are several wolves in a family group, for example. And then, well, based on where these tracks are going in and out, it’s usually possible to see one or two or three tracks that are more likely to be the longer track leading out of the area. And occasionally, it’s needed to follow the track to get some DNA samples in order to see if this is a specific individual or group of individuals. And this has to do with the Scandinavian Peninsula, we have inbreeding in the wolves. And it’s important to see when there are water status emigrated from the Finnish or Russian part of the population.
Kayla Fratt 12:52
Okay, oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, if that makes sense. So then, you know, as you’re trying to figure out, okay, so we have these dogs that can go in and help us find these tracks or trails. But we want to know what species this is, this is important for us for a variety of reasons. What were some of the options that were considered as far as actually getting that answer? And how did you kind of think through deciding on the methodology that you went with?
Jens Frank 13:22
We are probably a bit biased towards dogs and didn’t really see any other alternative. Because we are old, all that work in the field Hill, or the Rangers, I would say, are hunters. And in Sweden, we have a long tradition of using hunting dogs. So we use those a lot. And dogs have been used in wildlife management for many decades before we started this program as well. But then more opportunistically searching for scouts and tracks or carcasses. And of course, tracking down large carnivores when they should be counted for different reasons. So, yeah, we can come to think of any other tool and still haven’t been able to figure anything out.
Kayla Fratt 14:22
No, no, I don’t, you know, especially once something has already happened. You know, there’s it’s too late for camera traps or anything else like that. And so then, had you previously done work training dogs on multiple alerts and training dogs to tell you exactly what they had found before? Or was this kind of your first time going down this route as well?
Jens Frank 14:47
Oh, that was my first time doing that. So typically, we would have dogs specialized on wolves and other dogs specialized on bears, and the third dog for lynx. So this was, when we did this with the multiple alerts, it was the first time that I tested it. So the first test we did, then we tried to have different alerts or different indications for the different species. So bark is the dog found bear track, and it should see if it was a wolf and go into down and passive alert. If it was links, for example, we experimented with some different indications. But we never managed to get that working reliably.
Kayla Fratt 15:48
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I know, we, we talked about this during our pre interview, but, you know, I get people who asked me that all the time. And I’ve always kind of said, Yeah, you know, it seems possible. I’m just I’m not sure it’s practical. And, you know, it seems to me like you, maybe with three items, you can kind of come up with that many alerts. But, you know, we’ve worked on projects where the dogs are finding eight or nine different species, and I can’t think of nine different alerts, let alone that actually bother training the dog to do that. I mean, I again, I’m sure it’s technically possible, but I don’t I don’t really know if it makes sense. And you know, we’ll get into how efficient it actually was. So yeah, how did how did that that initial attempt go? Because again, I think that’s where most of our minds go is. Okay, so we need the dogs bill to tell us what it is. So can the dog just do a different alert for each of these species?
Jens Frank 16:44
So it worked very well, I would say, in a training environment where the dog only has to search for a few meters in the controlled environment, and then the arousal in the dog this low. So there, it worked very well. But when we tried to bring it out in the field, where the dog is searching for several kilometers, before it eventually maybe finds track, then it wasn’t reliable, at all, I would say. And I think it’s both that it’s both due to the variation in sent from the different tracks, but maybe mainly due to the arousal and expectations building up. And the dog has been searching for half a day. And it’s that it’s usually warm, and a lot of insects and all these other things. So it’s a lot of things to think about this for the dog.
Kayla Fratt 18:02
Definitely. Yeah. So were you seeing that they were kind of reverting to maybe the alert that they had learned first, or maybe that had been used more previously? Or were they just kind of throwing out random alerts. I just curious what it actually looks like.
Jens Frank 18:20
So my interpretation was that there was no pattern between dogs other than that they seem to do the alert that they had the highest expectation would yield a reward in that context. And whether it was because they have been doing a lot of sick or down indications just before, or just because they associated a certain context with the sitter now, I don’t know. But we were not able to get it reliably associated with the scent from the animal that we were tracking.
Kayla Fratt 19:06
Yeah, that makes sense. And how did you know I guess at this point that the dogs were incorrect, was it because they were like, Could you see a difference in the change of behavior? Were you then kind of able to confirm that the dogs were incorrect?
Jens Frank 19:24
No, so we never put it out in operational use. We just came to the testing phase, where we have radio collared wolves or bears or lynx. So I knew what was the correct answer. The dogs were not showing that consistently.
Kayla Fratt 19:49
Okay, that makes sense. So then, I assume you went back to the drawing board and we’re probably kind of frustrated and bummed out. So then what happened?
Jens Frank 19:58
So the dogs are still useful for, for the managers, because as it is now in the Swedish government, if the dog indicates if one of these specially trained and certified dogs indicates that it has found a track from a large carnivore, then that is enough for the government to pay compensation to the farmer, and for this to be counted as predation. And that is maybe the most important part. But for the preventive measures that we want to apply immediately before the next night comes, it’s important to know if it was rewarded for a bear, because Flandre, for example, will work for wolves. As an immediate response measure for bears it’s more or less useless. So we still could do a big thought of the work without recognizing the species.
Jens Frank 21:18
But I didn’t have any good ideas on how to solve that I was actually driving back from Bjorgvin or Bergen, you may say, on this Norwegian west coast. We have the, the the course there. And then on the way back, I was driving, and I have my colleague, Josh Felt, who is he’s, unfortunately, dead now. But he was a very experienced thought stunt dog trainer. And he was one of the persons setting up the Swedish government dog training school for the armed forces that 60 years ago. And we were discussing this and then he suggested that we should do a secondary indication so that all the dogs should show passive indication either sit or down and stare when they find a track from the launch carnival. And then the hander goes in front of the dog and puts three different objects and give the cue to mark is what we say. And then the dog goes and grabs the object that represents the species to us, and sent to the dog. So it was his ID, and it, it works much better in record requires quite a lot of training. But if you put in a lot of training, then we have also been able to get reliable results.
Kayla Fratt 23:11
So yeah, what does that training look like? Obviously, we’re not going to be able to explain exactly how everyone’s going to do it at home and in a podcast. But um, yeah, what did that look like? Somewhat briefly.
Jens Frank 23:26
So there are some mistakes that you would like to avoid. And I have not made all mistakes when it comes to this. But I have made this several, at least. And I would strongly suggest that if you want to have a dog that has a passive indication of tracks, you add this indication as the last step of your tracking training. So first, go through your whole progression plan on how to train a tracking dog and make it have a crazy high expectation to find and follow the tracks and then start adding the indication because if you add it early in the training, you will get a dog that quite frequently when tracking goes into the indication because it’s not unusual for the dog to lose the track when it’s following it. So it loses the track goes off for three meters, finds it and makes the indication and this will drive you crazy.
Kayla Fratt 24:44
Yeah, I can see that slowing you down and starting to drive you nuts pretty fast.
Jens Frank 24:49
This so don’t start doing that until the dog is the perfect tracking dog that you okay then at the And you, you teach the teach the passing indication, on a track, I find this fairly straightforward because the dog wants to follow the track. And you to start with, you can either just hold the dog back. And if you have been training a lot of repetitions of sit or down just before this session that will be on the top of the dog’s mind. So it will be one of the first behaviors the dog tries. And when it then starts to go into a sit or down, you give the cue to continue tracking and the dog tracks finds an article and is reinforced.
Jens Frank 25:48
So pretty quickly, the dog learns that I find the track in order to be able to follow it forward, I need to first sit or down. So that’s what we first establish. And then I start with one species, and then I do it on artificial tracks. So I then have a sock, usually just no no sock with hair from wolves all in. And then I can set the track just pulling this sock behind me. Because not It’s not like the dog thinks it’s following a wolf. But it’s something added to this track, so that the dog can discriminate between other human tracks, and this human track with the bulls hair pull behind it. And then when the dog finds the track goes into the down, I take the wolf object, and I have kind of textile cones because they are fundable. So you can just take that out of your pocket, put it on the ground. And then I say, Mark, the Swedish word for mark. And then the dog is allowed to go and grab the article and we play with this article.
Jens Frank 27:23
And so that’s how I start. So I do that for Wolf. And then I do exactly the same thing for Lynx, and then for bear. And then I started discrimination. And then I, I do exactly the same plan instead of placing just one I place to chill. And then the first time of course, I placed the wolf closer to the dog and the bear one one meter behind, and then gradually moves it closer and closer. And should the dog then go and grab the bear one, I would say no. Take it away and punish the dog by putting it into a seat and let it sit for one or two minutes while I set a new track and the dog gets a new chance. Okay, and yeah, pretty quickly, they want to avoid being cued just to sit instead of tracking. So then they choose to do what brings the continued tracking instead.
Kayla Fratt 28:29
Yeah, no, that makes that makes sense. And that seems kind of more straightforward than I thought I actually. So that’s, that’s always nice to hear. It’s like oh, okay, I think this makes sense. Um, so yeah, where where are you at right now with this project? Are they’re still kind of problem or, I guess not project but um, this program, or they’re still kind of problems that you’re working on? Or do you feel pretty happy with where the dogs are out right now?
Jens Frank 29:00
No, it’s continuous. It’s because it’s a trade off. So the Rangers are like most dog handlers in the police or military, they are first and foremost Rangers, and like the police are first and foremost police. And so the dog has to cope with a lot of different things. And it has to live in the house with the family and be able to do all these things.
Jens Frank 29:40
So currently, many of the dogs or hunting dogs and they are we are not able to currently to have a selection system. So it’s the county the administration boards in Sweden who are responsible for the large carnivore management in their respective region. And then we have the Swedish EPA, which is the National Authority trying to coordinate them, but each region decides for themselves. So it’s it’s readin who decides if they want to send a dog arranger to become a dog handler. And in that case, which Ranger and they then come with a dog.
Jens Frank 30:40
So many of the dogs or at least some of the dogs are not really suitable for this type of systematic training. They are hunting dogs. Or some of them are maybe closer to pet dogs. So the days when they feel like it, they work very well. They days when they don’t, and they don’t work. So I think that is an issue. We could become better if we were able to select the dogs of the typical working breeds so much loss, working Labradors working Springer Spaniels, for example. I don’t think we could have dogs with shorter legs than a Springer Spaniel, because then they will not be able to keep up navigate the terrain, because it’s very messy.
Kayla Fratt 31:47
That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, that seems like a huge challenge. And do you run into a lot of the same problems that it seems like a really common for police and military dogs, where there’s just kind of not enough time allotted in the Rangers schedules for the training as well?
Jens Frank 32:08
Yes, yes and no. So it’s, yeah, these two issues come together, because some of the dogs are not really motivated to train for a long time every day. So then it doesn’t matter if they have time, a lot. Some of them struggle finding time as well. But I would say all of them are extremely motivated. And yeah, most of them do at least one training session, per day. Because yeah, that’s awesome. Yes. And they are very motivated. And I would say you quickly become motivated in this job, because you feel for the people that you help when you do the documentation, and also for your own ego, because we are quite critically watched by different organizations, both those who are for the large carnivores, and those who oppose the large carnivores. And also the media shows large interested in this. So all the work with these dog handlers do with there will be persons following them, either the animal, the livestock owner, and or media or other representatives who want to see if this actually works. So it’s not like they are out there in the forest just doing their thing. They are closely watched. So you want it to be reliable and work good.
34:11
Yeah, no, of course, that’s a lot of pressure. And yeah, I know. I don’t know how the climate is in Sweden and Norway, but yeah, large carnivores and especially when they come into conflict, conflict with livestock. It’s, it’s an emotional, it’s intense. And it yeah, there’s a lot of money and livelihood on the line. So that that makes sense. And especially you mentioned as well, dogs potentially being the victims at times. And that can also be emotional. Which I guess people can be emotional about their cows too.
Jens Frank 34:43
But yeah, but with the dogs. It’s even worse. Yeah, people get very emotional. But they’re actually these these dogs have been a great help because you Many of the smaller dog breeds. If a wolf grabs one of them, they can carry it for several kilometers. So, before we had these dogs, there was no way we can document if even if a person claimed that they had seen a wolf grabbing their dog at the front lawn, and then running away. There was no way we could say whether that was true or not. So then they wouldn’t get any documentation, any compensation, or this would not be counted as an official prediction event. But now with these dogs, they indicate that yes, there has been a wolf here. And we can then choose the dog to track the wolf, and then we will find either the carcass of the dog, or at least parts of it, so we can actually document what has happened.
Kayla Fratt 36:03
Yeah, wow, that’s got to be really tough, but really, really important work. And, you know, yes, if something like that happened to yeah, my dog or my cat or something like that, it would be comforting to have that as, as a service. So, yeah, so are there any things that you kind of see in the future, for this sort of work or anything that you would recommend to people if they were considering trying to teach their dogs this sort of secondary alert? Any any words from the wise?
Jens Frank 36:41
I think, the more I work with dogs, the more I realize how important selection of dogs is. So in my experience, most dogs also from the typical working breeds will not be suitable working dog for detection or tracking, or back work for that matter. So be very careful in the selection. And then you need to have a plan, you need to have a progression plan, so that you have a clear goal that you can break down in sub goals. Because otherwise, you will run into problems by creating the expectation to show the passive alerts. If you add that early in the process, you will create an expectation that becomes a problem later on. And I find that just the process of listing the sub goals with a pen and paper or on a computer makes it possible to avoid a lot of these mistakes on the desk instead of doing it with the dog. Yeah. So I think those two are important.
Kayla Fratt 38:14
Now that makes sense. I know it’s something that I’ve been considering trying to teach one or both of my dogs more in the context of identifying scat, which you know, we were talking about, then genetic test to identify scat has gotten so much more accessible and cheap and fast that that necessity might be decreasing, or not necessarily useful anymore. But we don’t currently do any tracking. So that would be the only place in which for us it would be it would be useful right now.
Jens Frank 38:52
Yeah.
38:54
But let’s say I also don’t necessarily need to throw more giant training projects on my plate if there’s not a clear need for that, but it is –
Jens Frank 39:01
But it’s a fun thing.
39:07
Yeah, yeah, I, I started doing some kind of match-to-sample work with my older dog Barley. He had TPLO surgery last fall. So while he was, you know, he was allowed to do two five minute walks around the block a day or something like that. We did a little bit of this sort of work, because, you know, we had to do something to keep both of us from going nuts. But, yeah, no, I mean, again, I’m just so I was so excited to hear someone had actually done this because, again, I know I’ve said it four times on the show already, but people ask us about this concept all the time. And I’ve always just been like, I don’t know I’ve never done it seems possible, but you know, I don’t know how necessary it is. And it’s cool that we finally found a situation in which a it was necessary in which it was necessary enough that someone actually tried it and it does seem like it works. If you’ve got the right dog and the right progression plan, and you stick with it, yes. Well, is there anything that you wanted to come back to and expand on or clarify? Before we go?
Jens Frank 40:14
Yeah, one thing, actually. I think in order to make this skill work successfully and reliably also, in an operational context, you need to be disciplined, and do typical. And that’s why I sent you the abstract of the article. Because in that article, they show that one of the factors that are most important for improvement or progression is the dutifulness of the handler. And that was in context of training explosion, or explosive detection dogs. My experience is that it translates to any kind of dog training. And I think sometimes, we, as dog handlers tend to drift off the dutifulness a bit.
Jens Frank 41:31
So instead of being loyal to the end goal, we tend to train what we think is fun, or nice or stimulating for us at the moment. And that is usually not leading to progression towards another end goal that is specific for a working task. Yeah. And, yeah, I think it’s really important in general, but in specific when it comes to this, where there are so many different contexts that we need to train this secondary indication in, if we want it to work reliably when there are money and other things at stake, depending on what decision the dog makes. And my experience has been that if we can make the dog handlers brain disciplined, with this end goal in mind, and the one or two sessions per day, consistency, really, is what pays off.
Kayla Fratt 42:49
Yeah, that makes sense. I know, when I was a baby trainer, I definitely when I was reading this paper, and it talks about I think it was excitement seeking was negatively correlated with precision in the, in the handlers. I was like, man, yeah, that’s that’s me. I particularly when I was a baby trainer, and didn’t didn’t do this professionally. And I had so many half trained behaviors, and you know, I’d see a trick on Instagram, but to get halfway through it, and then see a different one. And, you know, I had nothing on verbal cue and nothing under stimulus control. And, you know, having it as a job helps a lot, because I have a lot more motivation and focus and kind of a clear goal, I think, you know, when I’m just playing with my dog, it’s it was it was one thing, and I but it’s still definitely something I think this paper was a good reminder of, okay, maybe being aware of these personality traits and these tendencies and how to counteract them, and, you know, still be the best trainer that we can be, and, you know, serve our project partners and our dogs and you know, the wildlife as best as we can.
Jens Frank 44:00
Yes.
Kayla Fratt 44:02
Yeah, that was a that’s a good reminder. Well, Jens, if people are interested in learning more about you, or these projects or anything like that, where can people find you online?
Jens Frank 44:15
So I have two affiliations. I’m an associate professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at the Department of Ecology, so I can be found there. And I also run an institute called the Scandinavian Working Dog Institute, where we train dogs and the dog handlers for different sorties. And we have a web page and a Facebook page for that as well.
Kayla Fratt 44:45
Excellent. Yeah. And as always, we will link that in the show notes. So if anyone is driving, you don’t have to crash your car to try to write this down. You can just check out our website. And for everyone at home, thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a lot and you’re feeling inspired to get outside and be a canine conservationist in whatever way suits your passions and your skill set. You can find show notes, join our Patreon or join our online conservation detection dog course all at k9conservationists.org. Until next time!