Alerting to Other Diabetics | Air Scent SAR

There is a correlation between DADs alerting to other diabetics and air scent search and rescue dogs alerting on the "wrong" person. Our dogs worked off leash, oftentimes in large wilderness areas. Note: the dogs were trained to find any human scent, on cue, off leash ... then return to the handler, alert, and take the handler to the found person. Both in training and on real searches it was not uncommon for a dog to "find" another searcher in the process of finding the victim. In all cases, when the dog found that spare person, he was given an "atta boy" and a "let's find another one". He was, however, not given his big reward (the thing each dog works for - a tug toy, a tennis ball for some of the retrievers, etc.) reserved for real finds. As with DADs, we never punished or discouraged finding the "wrong" person (scent) but acknowledged it and moved on. Knowing that your low/high scent is not unique will help you respond properly to your DAD alerting on the "wrong" person.