WE CHAT WITH FBI AGENT SONJA NORDSTROM ON K9 TRAIINING

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Situational Awareness Tactics Podcast. This podcast provides the
crucial art of understanding current elements in an environment to
increase your safety and survival. Here's your host, forensic psychologist
and consultant, doctor Carlos A.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome back everybody.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
We have a great guest today, Sonya Nords Dramas son Jaa.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
You gonna want to remember that name. We'll go to go.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
To Sonya's Dog Training dot Com son jas dog Training
dot Com.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, who is she, you ask?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Let me tell you she has incredible accomplishments with dogs
and training credentials achieved during the last twenty eight years.
In twenty fourteen, sign You retired from the FBI after
twenty three years of service as a special agent and
open Signa's Dog Training hence Signa's Dog Training dot Com.
While serving with the FBI, Signa completed thousands of hours
of training under the mentorship and guidance of world renowned

(01:03):
canine trainers and experts. Compete in the protection sports of
I'm not sure how to say, well, we'll try it.
Shuts on and mondoring and French ring. If you're familiar
with the sports world, because you know, I probably miss it.
It attained local and national level Search Dogs certifications, completed
one hundreds of field missions for their canines for the
FBI and others, and has trained and worked with hundreds
of dogs of all ages and type. So if you

(01:25):
got the funny I feel ever talking about dogs, you're right.
So we're gonna find out what Sonya did about what
these dogs. We're gonna learn about how they sniff things out.
You're gonna see how the FBI uses dogs, what's going
on with that.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Before we get started, you know what to do, share, subscribe, hit.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
That like when you don't. We like it and it's
not waste any more time. Oh actually, before we get
to the show, Peasville visit Canine Top Tails, Canine Top Tales,
t A l E. S Our guests. Sonya Nottstrum also
has a podcast. I think you'll be really interested. So
without wasting any further moments or time, let's welcome Sonya
Nottstrom to the show. Welcome Sonya, thank you for having me.

(01:59):
Boy really fun a lot over there, That's all right,
They're used to it by now. So Saya, thank you
so much for being here. And first and foremost, thank
you for your service as well.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
You're welcome.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Now let me ask you this, did you go into
the FBI think and I want to work with dogs
in the FBI or did some other thing pop in
your head about the FBI.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Interestingly, as a child, my goal was to be a cowgirl,
a veterinarian, or a dog trainer. Nowhere did it say
FBI agent, So it was more a matter of nor
did it say electrical engineer, nor did to say violinist,
Which are the three things I've done. So putting those
things together, I ended up as an agent. It was
a career that I absolutely loved. I had the advantage

(02:41):
of my mother having worked for the FBI for a
period of time when she was a steno in the
nineteen fifties, and she maintained wonderful relationships with the people
she worked with, and so I got a little bit
of positive exposure in that regard. And my dad was
an engineer for MIT. So all of those things kind
of came together and I ended up as an agent,

(03:03):
and then I was able to incorporate my passion for
dogs into the job.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
Wow, that's interesting engineering.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
I talked to somebody the other day. He was telling
me how shocked he is about how many people are
leaving their professions and heading over to dog training. He's
talked to a couple accountants, so he actually mentioned an
engineer too.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Have you seen that too.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
I think a lot of people have changed what they
think they have to do after COVID. I think COVID
really gave people, I think the rat race, so to speak,
of driving into the work at six in the morning
and getting home at six or seven or nine at
night or whatever it is, and funneling into large buildings.

(03:46):
All of a sudden, there were alternatives to that, So
it's possible. I can't say that I've noted a particular
profession gravitating that way.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
COVID changed a lot of things, didn't it.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
Yes, it did.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Sure sped us in certain direc action. Back to this though,
so on the dog training, let me ask you this,
how did that happen in the FBI? Because I know
I always crack up because every class I teach, the
students immediately go into Well I was looking at becoming
a behavioral profile. Yes, you can't quite do that like
you think you can. You're going to have to become
an agent.

Speaker 4 (04:19):
What? Oh? Yes, So The important thing to know is
that I did maintain a full caseload, and so within
the FBI, we have specialty what they refer to as
alary duties. So SWAT Team members are not generally full time.
There will be one or two that are full time coordinators,
but generally we all maintain caseloads. That's our primary goal

(04:43):
is to work cases and bring people to justice. But
then there are sort of the other tasks that require
skilled people as well. So the Evidence Response Team is
one of those. And the Evidence Response Team is made
up of both support staff and agent staff that get

(05:03):
specialized training for crime scenes to include post blast and
other end body recovery and homicides, whatever the crime scene
may be. They have teams that are on a rotation,
so that can take up to twenty percent of your time.
And so when I went to Los Angeles, I joined

(05:25):
the Evidence Response Team and then I incorporated in. I
had started a little dog who didn't make it, and
then I got a good dog that did make it,
and I started training with them with the local police
canine groups and the local search and rescue groups. I
pretty much had like another forty hour week job on
top of the sixty hour week job during those years,

(05:46):
and because I trained like a lunatic and I then
when I had a mission ready product, I then came
to the FBI Evans Response Team and said, look, this
is a product and an expertise that you can tap into.
And so they started tapping into it. And there were
about six of us in the country that did that.
Because the FBAD did not have a formalized program at

(06:06):
the time, the six of you only six of us
across the nation. And then when they formalized the program
that was kind of at the time when I was
transferring out of Los Angeles and going into the Salt
Lake Division, which was not does not have as robust
of you know, it doesn't have the volume right that,
it's much more spread out, it doesn't have the you know,

(06:27):
I think LA had about seven hundred agents in the
division and Salt Lake maybe has one hundred and thirty.
So although they all have an evidence response team, you know,
people are spread more thinly. So and then at that
time Headquarters was kind of taking over a program and
they actually hired people specifically to work that that were
non agent staff.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Now, this product of yours, no, what did you train
them to do. I'm assuming it's the sense absolutely.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
So initially my first dog was actually what we refer
to as dual purpose search and rescue, which is they
find live people and they also find deceased people. So
with the FBI, if there would be a kidnapping, we
didn't know initially if the person was alive or dead.
My next dog I ended up I started as dual

(07:20):
purpose live and deceased, and then I went strictly to cadaver,
and then all the subsequent dogs have been strictly cadaver.
And even the environment of search and rescue or whatever,
it's not really the right word. The needs have changed
over the decades. Because I started in ninety five, didn't

(07:43):
have a pager, didn't have a cell phone, didn't have anything.
We didn't have a GPS. We went out with a
map and a compass.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Thomas Guide, yes, and the Thomas Guide.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
That's another one. But even into the wilderness, we went
out with a popographic map and a compass, and there
were no electronic anything. Now people have satellite pagers in
their phones if they get lost in the wilderness without
cell service, or if they get stuck down in a canyon.
So people are not seemingly getting lost as often as

(08:15):
they used to, and typically it's the person who is
infirmed or cannot call for help because they've maybe had
a heart attack or they've been a victim of a crime.
So as we sort of evolve through this, the specialization
toward cadaver work and human remains detection and then the
crime scene work within that discipline has become more my specialty.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
Interesting, there's a lot of things now that's not to
stir the hornets nets for me.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Sonya, Yeah, that's interesting because I know it brings up
the Thomas Knight situation. But I guess also animal attacks
are going to be something too that could possibly happen
in the wilderness, right, that could be attacked by a
bear or whatnot.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
You know, interestingly, yes, that does happened. I've not actually
been called for that kind of a search, although we
have had remains that are scavenged and pulled apart. So
it's hard to I can think of a couple of
searches that I did where we suspected potentially that a cat,

(09:22):
especially in California in Big Bear area, we suspected that
a cat had taken a child. And it's hard to
know what actually has happened. And I know that living
in California, I remember when there was an attack by
a cat. Often they'd go out to look for the
cat and then they'd find another victim that was already deceased. Right,
But we were not involved in those searches. I have

(09:45):
not been involved in those per se and I don't know.
And just bear attacks up in Yellowstone pretty much every year.
So we train and certify up there, and we all
carry bear can and canisters a bear spray, and it's
a real thing. I mean, we get briefings before we

(10:06):
go out. And if you don't have your canister, it's
not just like a little mace thing. It's like a
full on, like be ready, a.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Little big things.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
Right, it's a big thing. It's like a hair it's
like a hair spray bottle.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Big bears tend to be kind of big.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
That's a problem the grizzlies up there. We only have
black bears around here, which infrequently will become aggressive, but
the grizzlies are nothing to fool with, and those are
up in the Yellowstone area for sure.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, that's right. I forgot the bear colors. I know
there was different things you do with.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
The polar bear. You're up a creek.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
You don't have a choice on that one.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah, pretty much you're done grizzly bears. You don't really
want to challenge black bears. You can tend to scare
off is what my recollection is. But I'm not claiming
to be an expert in that, just sort of you
know what I remember, I'll bear experts and then you
have to know which one you're looking at, So good
luck with that, you.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Know, Yeah, stand still right, Yeah, you have know Andrew Bringle. No, okay,
there's another FBI agent buddy of mine. But I know
listening to your episode, Robert.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Cabral, it's another good podcast, folks.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
You can go check out Robert Cabral C A B
R A L. He mentioned you guys were talking about
nine to eleven. But I'll get back to that in
a minute, because I know I was reading something. But again,
I'm not the expert. I'm just reading the book, you
tell me, And the book had insinuated that some people

(11:31):
will use dogs to find people who are alive, some
people use dogs to find people who are dead, and
sometimes it gets complicated if you have a dog that
does both, because they may get distracted with one or
the other and get lost.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
What are your thoughts on that? How is that working on?

Speaker 4 (11:48):
Very much? It is mission dependent. So I tell new handlers,
if you're working in the wilderness, you may want to
have a dog that does both because you don't know
if that person that's missing is now deceased. Right if
you're working at a disaster site, you really need to
be single purpose. If there are you know, as in

(12:10):
the World Trade Center there are you know, thousands of
deceased people, there might be that one live person and
your dog needs to actively hunt for that person. And
if they're alerting to all the decedents, you'll never find
a live person. So very important that the disaster dog
is trained specifically for live find and now FEMA in
particular for disaster circumstances has incorporated a number of dogs

(12:35):
that are also trained to single purpose find decedents. So
those were dogs that were called to Maui recently. There
really wasn't a circumstance where they were looking for live
people at that point.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
I want to ask you some questions now, and I
completely get it as you can't answer them because sometimes
we don't want to tip off the band guys and
gals out there. But I remember who, I don't know
it was Mike Redlin or not. We were talking about
something in regards to sniffing dogs and let's do it
this way when you.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Thought you're out in the wilderness.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
How does rain play a factor here, because it seems
like that could complicate things or does it actually make
it easier? Does it increase the sense.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
Fild There are so many facets to what we refer
to as odor behavior in certain circumstances. If it's particularly dry,
which I live in the high desert, and when it's
incredibly dry, there often will not be odor really available.

(13:37):
It just it's just lies away. But if you get
a light rain, it can almost hydrate the odor and
repurpose it. So a light rain can actually sort of
regenerate the odor in the way that if you have
clothes that are stinky and they get wet, they like
wet dog really smells bad, right, So sometimes moisture can
sort of hydrate odor and bring it forward. Heavy heavy

(14:01):
rains can if you have a clandestine grave or something buried,
sometimes it'll hold the odor down so it doesn't have
a chance to propagate up and then that goes to temperature,
it goes to soil compaction, it goes to soil type,
whether it's sandy or silty, or large particles or small particles,

(14:23):
and how it compacts. So everything about scent work and
odor detection goes to odor availability and whether the if
the dog can't find that if the od is not available. So,
for example, one of my dogs did a case and
he indicated over bodies that were three hundred feet deep
in the water. It's not that he's indicating and smelling

(14:46):
quote through the water, it's that that odor has propagated
up to the surface and he's able to pick it up.
And then it becomes a matter of what threshold he's
able to detect. So some dogs are a lower threshold.
Some dog want like the big, big, huge pool before
they're going to indicate. That's also missions specific as to

(15:07):
how low do you want to go, How low of
a threshold is practical. So are we training on a
tooth or are we training on a full body? And
we don't really have a dial to put on the
dog to say today you're looking for a tooth, Tomorrow
you're looking for a full body, So there's so many
it's really like an infinite permutation of weather and soil

(15:31):
conditions and scent conditions and wind and humidity and altitude
and thickness of air and thinness of air and whether
or not this heavy foliage where the dog holds its
nose because the odor will hang at different places, So
in a heavier climate or in high pressure, the odor

(15:51):
is going to be lower. And then there are other
times where it's lofting and if a dog has its
nose over the ground, it'll go right through it and
under it. So it's a very where that's where the
skill of the handler comes in. So you have to
have the dog that hunts for it and communicates to
the handler when it gets little pools and pockets of it.
But the handler has to be the one to work

(16:13):
through what we refer to as field craft, where you
sort of say, okay, i'm getting interest, and I hate
the word interest, but I'm getting changes of behavior that
I only see when the dog is in the odor
of human remains, or changes of behavior that I only
see when the dog is in target odor, whether it's
bombs or drugs or whatever. And when you're working all

(16:33):
of these different odors, they all have different odor behavior.
So certain drugs are more lofty than others, so the
odor might plume up more, and others are heavier. Same
thing with different explosives, same thing in human remains. Blood
seems to be very lofty, and then other things are heavier,

(16:54):
just as I mean, I guess if you look at
a bottle of salad dressing, things split up right. And
I don't know if that that's an appropriate analogy, but
things do tend to have their own properties of how
lightly they move or how heavy they are.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
I knew it was going to be a complicated question.
A lot of nuance.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
There a lot of nuance, and it seems like it's
art meeting science.

Speaker 4 (17:16):
It absolutely is. It's really a touch of both.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Interesting doesn't matter. I mean, I don won't say it
doesn't matter. Have you noticed or do you know if
certain well you mentioned loath thresholds. Let me go back
that way. So many questions I want to ask loath
threshold Is that contingent upon the dog or upon training
the dog?

Speaker 4 (17:38):
I think it's a little of both. I think I've
worked five of the same breed. Each of them has
been dramatically different in personality, which you wouldn't think, but
they really have been. I think some of it goes
to bid ability. I certainly change my training over the years,

(18:00):
so I have evolved as a trainer. Back in the day,
it was throw the big thing under a bush, a
big thing like somebody had a knee replacement and put
it in a PBC pipe and threw it under a
bush and trip the dog by, and he went for it,
and they said, good dog. That used to be how
we trained, you know, a good have a dog twenty
five years ago. And then it became far more sophisticated
and far more purposeful, and not that people didn't know

(18:23):
how to train. But it has evolved, right, Everything continues
to evolve, and people continue to tweak their methods right
and just shape them up a little. So the dog itself.
Some dogs their methodology of searching is they really kind

(18:44):
of want to run and it's difficult for them to
slow down. It's hard mentally for them to slow down.
Other dogs are much more methodical and they like Some
dogs like to carry high, some dogs carry low. If
you look at the class, A silhouette of the working
German shepherd often has that sort of tracking posture with

(19:06):
the nose on the ground, going footstep to footstep right,
it's hard for that dog even to mechanically hold its
head up. Versus the Malwan. The Dutch shepherd has a
much more erect posture. So I think that dog is
going to be more prone to air scenting right than
the tracking. Not that they can't track, not that they
won't track, but if you look at the physiology of

(19:26):
a bloodhound, nose to the ground, big floppy ears, wrinkles
in the face, lots of slow to kind of hydrate
the odor. So there's a whole lot of factors there.
They all have phenomenal sense of smell that far exceeds ours.
I certainly wouldn't recommend a pug as a odor detection
dog because of a whole lot of reasons. Not that

(19:47):
they can't smell, not that they can't have fun and
enjoy the game, but it isn't a dog that you
would want to really stake your repreentation on in the field.
I wouldn't think.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
I think that's some studies so I know, I think
dogs have like three hundred million factory receptors and humans
have like about ten or twenty million, and I think
they were saying, there's certain dogs actually had.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
A little bit more than other dogs.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
I guess the set surface area of the nose can
go to it also, right, So even the shape of
the physiology and the shape of the nasal cavity can
play a part. And if you look at the different
you know, we don't breed humans for purpose necessarily, right,
but we do breed dogs for purpose. And if we
look at you know, the sighthounds have maybe a different

(20:32):
alignment of their eyes. And then so there's just all
these different things that people have tried to focus on
in their breeding and trying to capitalize on the traits
that they, you know, want to enhance.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
They open the Pandora's box. And I'm not going to
really touch too much.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Yes, sorry, that was maybe politically incorrect. I'm just saying
there's a lot of there's a reason why there's so
many different breeds because people people have selected them for
specific reasons. And uh, you know, it.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Just reminded me of Himler as Emler did try that out.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
I'm sorry, I didn't mean no no, I tend to
imply that no.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
No, no.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
But it's interesting because some people are arguing that we're
back into that world again with some people selecting certain
types of individuals to have their children, and they have
certain looks and all this other.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, that's fun. We'll we'll get out of there now.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
Well, that's why parents all think their child is the
most beautiful child on the planet, and that's how they
should think. It doesn't matter what they.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Look like nor at all. So anyway back to this, Okay,
that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
So different noses.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
We know that they have incredible They actually have the
ol factory cortex, and their brains much more larger than ours,
a lot more powerful than ours when they smell them.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
I've heard the I've heard the comparison of a p
to a golf ball in terms of size, right of
all factory.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
You know, yeah, it's interesting to see it. They're so
different than us.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
But let me take you back now to so we
got a little bit of.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
A difference in the type of dog. And again, I
don't know if you can answer these questions or not.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I get it.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
If you can't, uh, work, well, I don't want to
do that. That's going to definitely not go real and
things complicated for the dog. In other words, I know
the cartel is always up to something. I got buddies
that worked out a lot, and they're known to hide bodies,
and they're going to do a lot of things with
bodies that we won't necessarily mention, but they do a

(22:26):
lot of things to the bodies and sometimes cover it up.
We know, if you believe in the theory of disorganized
and organized killers, organized killers will sometimes do things to
try to cover up the scent of the body.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Can the dog most of the time get through that.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
I think it falls into I can't give a percentage,
but I think it falls into two categories. There are
distractors and then there are masking, right, So those would
be the two if you were to try you would
try to do distraction odors or you would try to
maybe do masking odors. Right, So if you overwhelm the dogs,

(23:04):
so for example, the old you know, I'm going to
cover my drugs with pepper, Well, when a dog sniffs
a package and starts sneezing, that's a good little bit
of probable cause right there too. Right. So interestingly, just anecdotally,
I know that we would send dogs through gas and
you know, gas a room and they go through it

(23:26):
and they find people. Yeah, and they still will find people,
so they still can work their nose, which is really miraculous,
but maybe because they have a longer nose to filter
it through. I don't know my own dog, you know,
he'll get sprayed by a skunk and he can continue
to work, which is also pretty heavy maskigoder, you would think, right. So,

(23:51):
I don't know that anybody's done studies on these things
per se, But as far as a bad guy's concerned,
you know, certainly people put is it lie or lime,
I don't know what to call it, but the powdering
white chalky stuff they put that on bodies, It really
just encapsulates it better and you can't fully cover it.
So that has not proven to be a problem. I've

(24:14):
had a couple of patio fines where the person is,
you know, buried four feet deep, and then they put
the bags of lie over it, and then they bury
it and then they put concrete over it. Well, the
dog doesn't get it through the concrete. They get it
on the edges. So as long as odor finds a
pathway to escape, and it's available to enough of a
level under the right conditions that the dog can can

(24:37):
get it if the odor is available, the dog should respond.
So the question becomes more about what is odor availability
than what is the capability of the dog. The dog
has the capability, it's more a matter of whether the
odor is available. And I can't imagine the countless stories
at the border of all of I mean, they put
drugs in gasoline tanks and the dogs find it. They

(24:59):
put you know, the it's just amazing capabilities. And every
day dogs are finding things through all sorts of distractors
and maskers.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Good point.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, they really go through a lot of stuff. By
the way, folks, again we're talking to Sonya Nordstrum.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
It's s O n j A.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
You can find her out Sonya Sonya's dog training dot
com s O n j a s Dog Training dot Com.
Also catch your podcast Canine Top Tails T A L E. S. Yeah,
that's fascinating how they do that? I know, Thank god
they can't figure it out out. Hopefully they never do.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well. I had a train of thought and I lost it.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
But keep losing my train of thoughts today.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
It's just such a unique topic.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
It's it's really interesting when I when I look at
the different variables there that are play especially Uh, this
is what I was gonna say. I can't foresee a
way that sounds like I have a murdered. I can't
foresee a way for individuals to, let's say, stash a body,
hide a body in the wilder where they're not going
to leave a trail somewhere. In other words, park the car,

(26:05):
get out of the car, pick the body, go walk
fifty feet, dig drop in. Does that leave like a
trail maybe elsewhere that the dog says, Hey, there's something
that was here that I'm looking for.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah. In terms of investigatively, it really depends how quickly
you get onto that right and you don't necessarily get
onto that path as quickly as you'd like to. So
the idea that perhaps a dog could follow the trail
that the person left has to be within a very

(26:38):
short timeline, generally speaking, if you're going to and again
depending on the conditions, the amount of traffic, the amount
of what traffic going through an area, the amount of disturbances.
So and then there's a bit of a catch twenty two.
If you leave a body on the surface, it is
more likely to be discovered, but it will degrade more quickly.

(26:59):
If you bury a body it is less likely to
be discovered, but you'll preserve a lot more of the evidence.
So that's the debate that a murderer has to decide
which dice do they want to roll, right, because because
if you bury them, you're really preserving quite a bit
of evidence, but if you leave them on the surface,
they're far more likely to be found. So that's kind

(27:21):
of the catch twenty two that someone has to consider interesting.
And I'm not going to give you an answer to
which is better or not.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Oh, I don't want it. That's the last thing we
want to do.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
It reminds me of the tragedy of the Gabby Patino incident.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yes, and I remember there.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
I'm not a fan of the news ever have been.
It's my being of my existence. But either way, when
I listen to them, they mentioned something and I wasn't
really sure at the time about it, but they were saying, well, well,
I don't know if they're going to be able to
find them with the dogs because there's so many other
scents out here. Da da da da da da dad.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
I don't know if we're going to be a too.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
I'm assuming they had something from Gabby's either wardrobe or
something their family gave the dog handlers. I'm assuming to
try to find it where they're going for a general
smell of humans. I guess there's multiple questions here.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
My recollection was that she I don't know that they worked.
I think that they had intel, and I don't know
that they even used dogs to find her shallow grave
that was up in what was it, Montana? I guess
I think the dog search that got the most press
was the one down in Florida where the boyfriend Abe

(28:35):
was and then the water was up, and then the
water re seated or I don't remember the specifics at
this point, but I remember looking at that and hearing
all of the hullabaloo about it, and I remember thinking,
as a handler, this is another thing that will impact
how a handler works their dog. If I'm in Florida, yes,

(28:57):
the dog can find someone if they're in shallow water,
absolutely the odor will be available. But am I, as
a handler letting my dog go through horrible nasty stuff
and get eaten by an alligator? So I would be
kind of like okay over here. So the handler does
influence the search. The handler's job is to put the
dog where they think they may find odor, but that

(29:20):
is not always safe. So therefore you have to as
a handler, you have to weigh, am I going to
lose my dog on every am? I going to lose
a dog on every search because I throw them into
the middle of traffic, because I throw them into an
alligator infested water thing, because I do this or that.
When it comes to human remains in particular, we are
not scenting the dog off of a specific individual because

(29:45):
theoretically there should not be a whole lot of I mean,
if you're hiking, there shouldn't be fifteen dead people out
there that you have to distinguish to the one you're
looking for. So it's a generalized training on human remains.
The dog will generalize that odor across you know, the
spectrum of decomposition. But they're not you know, taking a

(30:07):
pillowcase of someone and saying, okay, I'll go find this
dead person because again really not relevant to the mission.
The dog can generalize and say this is human remains odor.
It's the trailing dog and sometimes the aircent dog that
will be given these scent article is what it's called
that has that individual's odor that is not contaminated by

(30:28):
other people. And then that dog will be sent out
to match that and either find that odor in the
air or follow the path that that person took.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
I was going to ask you another question, but I
think I answered it while you're while I was asking
in my head.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Okay, that makes sense. I know it's it's complicated. You
have to take the dogs with the certain.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Terrains, and that would be, as you said, of putting
them in danger like the alligator's thing. That's not going
to go well for everybody there. But it's interesting that
I might pick up the scent. I guess I'm a
tune or something like that.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
You know they do that.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
Meaning on a boat, riding from a boat.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
You know how they have those little boats. I forgot
what they're called now that has.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
Like the little airboat things. Yeah, Florida Everglades boats or
whatever they are.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think it was.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
Yes, it's exactly what came to mind as flipper. That's okay,
we're the same age, it's exactly. Oh boy, no, we're
not the same age I'm holding.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah, okay, I wonder if that could if you slow
those down, I mean, you're still pretty darn clothes.

Speaker 4 (31:32):
I would be I would not be thrilled to work
a dog off of one of the airboats, because it
would be pushing all the odor all over the place
just by the nature of how it moves, not that
your propeller and the water doesn't move things around, but
that one boy, you'd really only be able to work
into the wind. And that's not always how you want
to work when you when you strategize working a dog

(31:53):
off a boat and gritting through a scent pool. Right,
So some people want to work into the wind, meaning
across tacking up into the wind. Other people want to
kind of start upwind, work into it see the dog
hook when they get older, and then they're more localized
instead of being in this huge fan of odor the
whole way. So it's an interesting I don't know how

(32:15):
an airboat would impact that, an interesting little story, just
again anecdotally. One of our challenges in training cadaver dogs
is we can't leave our scent sources out for any
length of time because we fear them being taken by
animals or discovered by people. So we have to be
very protective. And so one of our challenges is getting

(32:36):
our dogs to not want to inadvertently teach themselves to
follow our path in, so we go to great lengths
to drop them in from another direction. So one person said, ooh,
I'm going to do it with a drone. I'm going
to drop it in with a drone. Well, that drone
kicked odor all over the place the whole pathway to
go drop the source. And it's like, okay, that didn't

(32:57):
work right because it was all it was blowing all over.
So when I think of that airboat, that's kind of
what's coming to mind.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
That would cause it.

Speaker 4 (33:05):
That's late plans didn't work out.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
So well, you know, eventually, I know we're starting to
head towards the.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Tail end of the interview.

Speaker 5 (33:12):
Un Believably enough, we got about fifteen minutes left, and
I definitely wanted to cover a little bit about training
these dogs to get them to become top notch, and
then also how the dog.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Affects you, how does it change you as a dog owner.
But before we get to that, since we're talking about
dog sense, and it reminded me of I don't know why
this stops come in my head, but my daughter loves
she's nine, but she loves winning the poops. We were
reading a blustery day and it made me think, as
a wind windy days, I causing problems for the dog.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
It depends on what the wind is doing. It depends
on what whether it's high pressure, low pressure. It depends
if it's spanning, it depends if it's coning, it depends
if it's swirling, it depends if there's topography. There's just
so many factors that it literally it's like an infinite thing.
So on the one hand, you just work your damn
dog right and just trust the dog. That's you know,

(34:06):
just let your dog work, and the dog will actually
learn how to problem solve. And I'll give you a
good example when I bought my Yeah, it's really amazing.
They teach themselves like okay, because if you get a
dog and you get him to really want the odor,
then he will work hard to figure out how do
I get to the odor? Right, So they get pieces

(34:27):
of it and they're like, I got to get there.
I got to get there. So when my dog was new,
you know, we're doing this large area wilderness, So I
took him out to Goblin Valley, which is sort of
this like wide open desert of craziness, right, and there
was a stiff headwind so we wanted this big ranging,
you know, several hundred yards, go out and do it

(34:48):
by yourself and just figure it out.

Speaker 5 (34:50):
Well.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
Interestingly, without even realizing it, there was a big dip
and then it r rose up and then it went
out to where the odor was and the wind. So
what happened is as the dog's running toward it, it
disappears as he goes in the dip, and he would
run backwards to try to recur, and then he went
again and there was a big dip and he came

(35:13):
back again. The poor thing ran himself silly. He's like,
I lost it. I gotta circle back and get it.
He kept doing this and doing this, I mean he ran, ran, ran.
I'm like, oh my god. So just to kind of
help him just a little, I didn't tell him where
to go, but I just kind of pushed him forward
so that he could get up on the rise, get
it again and succeed. So then four weeks later I

(35:34):
brought him back. He learned from that episode, I can
move through this and I'll have success. We see the
same things with odor. When we have shade versus sun,
you'll have a shady area, you'll have sun, you'll have shade.
The odor will be in the shade. It'll when it

(35:54):
hits the sun, it rises up and dissipates out, but
then some of it ends up in the shade. So
the dog's stuck in the shade, stuck in the shades,
stuck in the shades, stuck in the shade. But it's
not the shade with the odor. And then the dog
has to learn like, Okay, if I push through that blank,
I can still have success. So part of our training
is teaching the dogs to self learn and to self

(36:15):
discover how do I get this puzzle. But you've got
to have a dog that really wants it and will
persist through the frustration, because these are self learned games,
you know. And I just noticed with mine, I was
working them in the snow when I first got him,
and I thought, he's in the cone. He's in the cone.
He overshot it because he's working it and it's deep

(36:35):
in the snow, so it's not where he expects it.
He's never worked in the snow. He did a big
circle to reacquire. He knew how to do that, he
knew how to problem solve his blank. He's like, if
I circle back, I'll get it again and then he
could take it in. So they self teach in some ways.
So we just have to provide the opportunity for them
to and then we have to observe how they're problem

(36:58):
solving and what they do and how that dog works,
so that when I'm in the field and I see
him start to circle on his own, or when I
look at my GPS and I see big, huge circles,
I'm like, ooh, he thinks he has something as opposed
to just flowing normally. Right, So when I watch his caller,
I have a GPS caller that shows me where he goes,

(37:19):
and I can see, oh, he's zigging and zagging, and oh,
he's doing a big circle. He's in odor. He's got
a pool of odor there, and then I can help
to sort of sort through that and make sure that
he gets to all the nooks and crannies within that area.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
This is part of I guess back that you referenced
early on in an interview of how you've changed as
a trainer because you've had to adapt and learn and
technology and all that.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
Yeah, it's I don't know how we did it without
GPS is because it's so much more effective and to
really know. We used to come into command post and say,
all right, I had a forty percent probability of detection
pod they called it. And now I'm like, this is
my track, this is what the wind was doing. Feel
pretty good about it right, Like it's we know exactly
where the dog went. Really is amazingly helpful. And especially

(38:03):
on the water. You know, you don't have any landmarks
when you're out on the water, so you're dropping pins
here and there, and those pins start to make a
little picture like an arrow toward where the body's located.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Wow, that's fascinating.

Speaker 4 (38:17):
Yeah, it's really kind of fun. I mean, I'm a geek.
I'll admit I'm a geek. Not everybody is a geek
like I am, and you don't have to necessarily be
a geek. But the more I do it, the more
I realize, Wow, my whole job as a trainer is
make that dog respond to odor. If he gets it,
the rest of it. If the dog, I have full confidence,

(38:39):
full faith and confidence that if that dog gets older,
he's working to get to it. He's not just going
to ignore it. Right, And so as a trainer, from
his standpoint, oder find it, show me from my standpoint,
make it so desirable that I can count on that.
But then I'm the one who has to figure out, Okay,
if somebody's here in the wind doing this and it's

(39:01):
draining in the shade and it's rising in the sun,
so I have to know kind of well, where would
I have to get him? So I'm never on a
path looking for somebody. I mean I sometimes am, but
generally am side sloping and the terrain of screamy slopes
and killing myself because we don't get to go the
easy path. We have to go where odor.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Will go, I can imagine.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
So it's complicated fast, you know, we're down our last
I hold, it's ten minutes now. And that's a fascinating,
fascinating discussion. By the way, folks again, Sonya and Northstrom.
You can find her over at Sonya's son j as
dog training dot com. You can catch more about her
at Canine Top Tails t a l s podcast really fascinating.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Stories about dogs.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
A dog lover.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
I love the podcast. I think you'll love her program too.
You know, it's interesting because I know people are probably wondering,
I'm wondering, how long does it take to train one
of these people always crack me up. Sometimes, you know, well,
I told it it's and it didn't sit.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Well. How long have you trained the dog? I'm supposed
to train the dog.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
No, I guess not. Maybe it'll figure it out on
its own.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Yeah. I think it goes to what discipline your training.
It also goes to how old the dog is when
you start it. So within the search and rescue community,
which is predominantly volunteer, people often start with a puppy,
like an eight week old puppy. So when you're starting
a puppy, you're obviously you have to wait for development,

(40:30):
you have to wait for maturity, you have to wait
for it to go through hormones, you have to expose
it to the world. So there's so many facets of
the training. When you look more in the police detection world,
that's a dog that has been cultivated from a puppy
in the way that even guide dog program right, they
have puppy razors. So when you it's so hard to

(40:50):
put a number on it, but I think you're looking
at you know, eighteen months to two years, depending on
the breed and maturity of the dog. In terms of
if you start as baby. But police departments will get
a cultivated dog from Europe that they refer to as
a green dog, and then that dog will go through
That dog's already been exposed to hunting for things, and

(41:13):
it's been built up in drive, and it has the
proper it's been selected specifically to the job. They've already
they've already decided which puppies from a litter should work
and which one shouldn't. Right, so you don't have to
wait for all of that, and those dogs you can
imprint them on oder and have them hooking odor in
a matter of days. But then you have to say,
how complex are the environments that this dog will work through,

(41:38):
how much distraction order will there be? How distractable is
that dog? What are we asking them to do? When
I'm talking to search and rescue dog, I'm taking them
off leash and casting them into the wilderness for one
hundred and twenty acres, and so what are all the
things that the dog's going to encounter. What's the level
of control. So there's a lot of aspects to it

(41:58):
that's not just the nose part. So the nose part
comes pretty quickly. You build an excitement for the odor
dog starts saying, hey, that's really great. But to really
solidify that and make it super exciting and sustainable and
dependable is another story. Right, So getting them initially trained

(42:19):
to respond to odor, to sit on oder, all of
that's great, and that happens relatively quickly when you start
with a well selected dog that has been cultivated appropriately.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Right, I guess real quick, here, are you still using
the PVC pipes or using something else to put the oders?

Speaker 4 (42:35):
I tend to quote soak toys, So I don't use
PVC pipes, But that's perfect because I want because then
I transition very quickly actually off of that where that
reward toy has the association but not the odor, And
so I tend to use toys versus the PVC, which

(42:56):
is totally I mean, bottom line is, is a PVC
type as much fun for the dog as rewarding for
the dog as a squeaky toy that's got odor on
it that I'm sucking on and and you know, just
really sucking in and tugging with hard to tug with
the PBC For a retriever that just really their joy

(43:18):
is the retrieve, then I think that's kind of and
In fact, I just saw a new product that is
sort of a modified PBC with holes in the middle
where it's tapered where the dog will grab it around
the middle and be sucking in that odor. So for
a retriever, that could be good. But I really want
that engagement, and I tend to be, you know, flirting

(43:38):
that toy and jiggling it on the ground and making
it like a little mouse, you know, so that the
dogs like, ooh, this is the best and then they
go and find it so and that way I can
really engage the dog on that odor in that toy.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
And so I guess, are you looking for a dog
that is toy driven more so than treat driven or
does it matter both are.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Honestly just a motivated dog is a motivated dog, And
I really don't care. Which I actually used to be all, oh,
it's if it's not toy, it's not good enough. And
then I started working and I'm like, you know, when
you're working with baby puppies, they're not going to be
toy motivated. Those drives haven't really come into play yet.
But they're crazy for food. So you can do beautiful

(44:25):
imprint and association to food on baby like eight week olds,
ten week olds, they're like, whoah, I love this right.
So again, a lot of that goes to the development
of the dog. It goes to how the dog was raised,
it goes to what has become important in the dog's life.
We had an amazing I always talk about this dog,
a phenomenal wine runner on our team and just magnificent

(44:49):
to watch. I just love this dog. Fantastic relationship with
the owner, and that dog is a food reward one
hundred percent. And then when he's done, he goes and
grabs a sagebrush out of the ground. But the handler's like, well,
he'll play with toys, you know, kept trying to sort
of get to the toy thing, and it's like, it
doesn't matter. He works perfectly for food, so we'll just

(45:10):
let him work for food. And it wasn't through deprivation.
It wasn't he has to earn every morsel of food.
It's just how his brain clicked, maybe because we started
him young, and he's like, this is my expectation, this
is what I love, this is what I'm getting, and
he works magnificently, so I am not locked in to
one or the other. The only thing is that it's

(45:31):
harder to engage with food than a toy. So with
certain dogs that want that engagement, it can be maybe
an easier method. A lot of people subscribe to only
food because they feel they can get more repetitions in
and it's less conflict. So maybe, so it really depends.
I will work anything. I don't. I don't care if

(45:51):
they just want their tailpols, you know what I mean.
I'm like, hey, I'll bet you behind the ears if
that's all you want. But it has to be something
that is special that is not always available. Right, if
you work in an ice cream store, you lose your
interest for ice cream, but if it's only once a week,
or you're excited for that once a week ice cream. Right,

(46:12):
So when people say, oh, it should be able to
be just affection, and I'm like, but you're giving your
affection all the time, so how do you make that distinction?
And yes, you layer affection and the dog should feel
your joy and enthusiasm from your heart because if they don't,
if it's not genuine, why would I do anything. So
I do believe, and I layer that praise and that

(46:33):
I'm pride and dog. You can see it in them,
you know they are. I'm such a good boy, So
that has to come from within, So that's very much
part of it. But if I'm just sitting here pet
and my dog all the time, then a simple pet
is not going to make this higher value than something else, right,
So it has to be very.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Special, interesting, fascinating stuff. This leads me to my last
two questions. I figured out the one I forgot. I
knew it would This was.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Actually it was interesting.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
We just get your opinion on if you ever heard it,
and if you want to obviously keep names privately because
you have heard of it, because a friend of mine
had mentioned this a while back. I trained my dogs
to detect drugs, so when my teenagers come home. Oh no, okay,
I guess that would work, wouldn't it.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
It certainly would, Although how was he getting the drugs
to train the dogs?

Speaker 2 (47:25):
So the next question, next question so that I don't know,
I don't.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
I don't know, but that's okay, that's an interesting idea.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Yeah, yeah, I guess.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
The last question is every dog trainer I have talked
to seems to be affected.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
By their dogs.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
We've learned, they learned. One of the things I've always
seen the recurring themes patients. That's what I keep learning
from every doctrine I speak with. I have doctrines who
admitted to me I never had patients before. Now I
have to have patience to be a good dog trainer,
and I want to have it. How has it changed you?

Speaker 4 (48:07):
First of all, I think my emotional survival is because
of animals. Right, So I work gruesome things, and I
can come home to this oasis of peace and quietness
and out in the barn and the horse is nuzzling hey,
and there's sort of a big quietness, and the dogs,

(48:29):
you know, always happy. You know, you really can't walk
through the door and not absorb some of that energy.
As far as an evolution of my behavior because of
the dog, I think it's I don't know that. I
would say that I am far more patient with dogs
than with humans, which is probably It's too bad. It
hasn't changed me to make me more patient with humans.

(48:52):
I give humans more credit, therefore I expect more. But
I have learned, and I often looking at the behavioral
side of everything, right, So I always ask the question,
what is the underlying behavior that drives that in a
human or in a dog? So I do inter relate
them quite a bit and always ask the question, is

(49:13):
that a nature nurture? Is that something that was in them?
Is it something that was developed? So I'm always asking
those questions and always kind of running those circles in
my head. Patients, I don't know that. I don't know
that it takes patience from me to train a dog.
It's more a matter of understanding that I'm asking a

(49:35):
creature to understand language when it's not a language based creature.
And I've just learned wait for it. Give them a
chance to cogitate, give them a chance to try engage
them such that they do try, and let them come
to their own you know, let them come to their
own realization. We can't force it into them. And it

(49:56):
really works beautifully. Just if I give them thirty seconds,
I save ten minutes. Right If I give them thirty
seconds to sort of digest an area, to become comfortable,
to decide that there isn't a threat, then I save
ten minutes. If I come at them, hey you got
to do this, and you got to do that, they're
just freaked out and then they don't recover. So I've

(50:17):
learned sort of this wait for it thing, and it
tortures people when I'm working with them because they're like,
oh my god, they want to jump in the dog
and do it for them. And I really learned like, no,
let's just let the dog think about it and decide
that they want to do it and make it fun.
And so it's an interesting approach, right. And the same

(50:37):
is good if you have people that are dealing with
something that they're apprehensive about to nag them into, oh,
you got to do this, you got to do this,
it's going to be great. That's just stress, right, So
you just sort of learn to back off and let
people digest something, take it to mind, and make a decision. Right.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
I kind of answer my life. The last question it's
just between you n one hundred thousand.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
My last question is have you used.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Any of your dog training techniques? Maybe that's necessarily the scenting.
Maybe I don't know on humans.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
Yeah, well I'll alluded to it now, but yeah, a
little bit. So the question is that's a chicken or
an egg? Right? So does my general interest in behavior
and understanding that fight flight reflex and what I learned
about dog training and what I learned through interview and

(51:33):
interrogation and what is best. There's a lot of parallel.
When you have someone in an interview room and you're
asking them to confess, they're definitely in a fight flight state.
You're just like a leash prevents a dog from fleeing,
handcuffs prevent a person from fleeing. So we are in
this sort of similar circumstance of I need to calm them,

(51:57):
I need to make them feel safe, I need to
give them time to some degree, I need to build rapport,
and then I need to negotiate with them, right, And
that's kind of the approach. And interestingly, when you work detection,
it's not a make them do it, it's a give
them the opportunity to do it. So I'm not good

(52:19):
at what I call the have to. I'm much better
at the want to. And I think if so, I
don't know if my interview skills kind of help with
the dogs or if the dog skills kind of help.
And it's not saying that humans are dogs or dogs
are humans. It's just saying that behaviorally, under stress, you're
dealing with some of the similar things, and the key
to that is taking a breath, building rapport, lowering the

(52:43):
threat and then negotiating. And so with a dog, the
negotiation is about giving opportunity while still controlling your environment, right.
And with a person, it's negotiating them through feelings and
and outcomes and whether they want to have control or
not have control. And so that's what worked for me

(53:07):
when I was doing interviews.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Fascinating. We're gonna have to bring it back. There's not
enough time today, not enough time again. Sonya North Strong folks.
You can find her at sonya son js dog training
dot com, Sonya's Dog Training dot com and catch the
podcast A Canine Top Tails.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Sonya. I can't thank you enough for the hour you
spent with us today.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
It was a lot of fun. Like I said, we
got to bring it back. It was a lot of fun,
and it just touched the tip of the iceberget sounds like.
And I know we were heading into a different direction too,
the intersection of dog behavior and then FBI or just
law enforcement interviewing and interrogation type tactics. Fascinating world there.
Maybe we'll even ask you next time if we come back.
Can they smell.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Lying? Perpetrator.

Speaker 4 (53:55):
I bet they can.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
I get the fun feeling too. Thank you everyone for listening.
You know what you share. Subscribe hif that like button,
don't take a sniff somewhere see what you find out.