Lisa's VideoBlog

Ever wonder what happens when a dog gets lost chasing a deer? This dog was wearing a Garmin Astro GPS collar and I made a video of what happened. You can see the dog work a moving person track on a harness and be walked back to the vehicle. At the beginning of the movie, the moving person is out front and the dog catches up and finds the person. On the way back to the car, the dog spotted a deer and blasted off. About two hours later or so, the humans got close to where the dog was circling around and around trying to find her back track. The dog approached when called and relieved humans and dog went back to the vehicle along a trail. The total track length was about 10 miles long. Too bad the deer wasn't wearing a GPS, too!

Here's a dog GPS track recorded on TopoFusion of a subject "running away" (well at 1.5 miles an hour it's a very slow run!) and the dog running a track to catch the person. It would be much more exciting it this were a true adrenalin track, but the dog still found it very motivating.

Laura bought some Randy Hare boxes and we pulled BB out to see what he's think of this method of training. BB is already a trained and certified cadaver dog. It was neat to see that Laura could introduce a distraction into the game almost immediately. We didn't have any tennis balls on a string handy, so we used a rubber ball on a whip. The whip part was torn off fairly quickly. But that made the ball on a string rather perfect for this purpose.

This movie shows how to drag a GPX track onto Google Earth Plus and add overlay data. Overlays are generated by GPSVisualizer.com. Both 1-meter imagery and topographic map overlay data is available.

This is a video captured by the RCA Small Wonder EZ-201. It uses variable rate recording and is about 16 MB vice the Flip's 20 MB. However, you'll easily be able to see the difference in quality in a side-by-side comparison (previous blog entry).

I've uploaded two videos recording the same scene at the same time. This is video 1 of 2 -- and it's the Flip Video Camcorder. The quality is definitely better... better detail and fewer artifacts.

    Here is a video from my new flip video camera. I wrote a mini-review on my blog.

BB demands his walker and subject play with him while waiting for an evacuation team (simulated) to come to our aid.

This video is meaningless without an accompanying explanation. In short, this is a demonstration of how one staples maps to the backs of carbon copy task assignment forms (TAF) for search management. SAR management is still extremely paper-based and manual... base operations keeps one copy of the TAF form and accompanying map and distributes to the searcher a second copy of the TAF form and map. More on my blog... http://www.lisaharper.org

Here's a post-surgery movie of BB at about the 4 months point. He looks pretty good and flies through the woods at his usual speed, but still needs a lot of strengthening and conditioning. I won't work him at night until the Spring since it's not worth risking injury at this point. Now at the 6 month point, he tires at about 2 hours of strenuous activity. No where near the 4-6 hours from before. But yesterday he scaled up-and-down a 6-foot vertical drop into a stream bed -- so I continue to see progress. I cut this movie down to eliminate long boring parts of me tromping through the woods. The whole thing took about 8 minutes. The subject was about 500 feet from where the dog blasted off to make the find. We had a really nice breeze so it was an easy problem. So I didn't see much until about his 3rd re-find (BB came back to tell me 3x that he found someone; in a re-find, the dog is supposed to go back and forth between the handler and subject until they are together).This was the first problem where anyone ever said that BB sneaked up . A 90 pound shepherd running through crinkly leaves rarely sneaks up on anyone. :-)

BB had back surgery in June. He had 4 ruptured disks repaired. The injuries were caused by his crazy exhuberance in play -- he's an over-the-top dog who loves to retrieve despite his large size and relative clumsiness (he's had a few nasty rolls and slides...). It took a while for me to realize he was so badly injured. He was still searching, playing, climbing and, generally, being a nuisance. But after the surgery, it was clear to see he was feeling much better -- the deterioration had been slow enough I had though the changes were more due to aging or other, lesser injuries. I made a flickr album that shows some post-surgery shots and also a few shots of his water therapy. For two weeks after surgery, BB was strictly crated. But after that I took him swimming. For 4 weeks, I walked him in the water and then tossed balls for him. After that, he was strong enough to plow in from shore. This is a movie of his water therapy at about 2 months after surgery. Notice Zooey working very hard to train me to come into the water to get the ball. She's an incredibly patient human trainer. It was helpful to take them together to swim. They are a bit competitive and both work harder when they feel they are competing to get the ball. It's been about 5 months now and BB is recovering well and gaining strength. I don't think we'll be playing retrieve anywhere else but the water now!

This was an interesting search exercise that I posted on my blog, but have cross-posted here, as well. BB and I ran this problem one evening in 2005 around 9 PM. At this time of day, air is very unstable on hill slopes. You'll find if you move just a few feet up or down in elevation on a hill that air changes direction. So this is a typically difficult time to work hill slopes. I learned something interesting about my dog on this particular problem. There may be times that he'll return to me after searching for a subject and finding scent -- but not the person. At the time, I called the subject and asked if the dog had found her. He had not. Yet he'd returned as if to tell me something, but did not give his trained indication. You'll see that, in fact, he has a great deal of difficulty finding her on this problem. Ultimately, he does. Keep in mind that this video is playing 60x real time. It was dark, and for long periods of time he was simply out of sight and hearing distance.

VSRDA GPS Seminar, 19 Nov 2006. Dog 1 and Dog 2 played back simultaneously. These two dogs actually ran this problem at separate times, but we are able to put them in a race mode, by having TopoFusion play them back starting at the same time (instead of actual time). The timing of the start may not be precise, but it's close. Notice that one dog does a re-find and one a stay-and-bark.

VSRDA GPS Seminar, 19 Nov 2006. 1st handler and dog.

Using a GPS for tracking is extremely useful. I used my ForeRunner on this track to record what the track-layer did and then to run the track. The track was run semi-blind since I only knew the direction of travel and also that he was making a right-hand loop. Once we got into the woods, things became very hairy. Generally, I don't create a movie out of a track, but we spent a solid hour running this track (the slow parts crawling hands-and-knees through Rhodedendron thickets) and I really wanted to go back and evaluate what happened. The movie is playing 120x speed and color indictes speed. We lost the GPS signal a bit at the very end so I chopped this movie off at that point.Zooey, did a great job and never got frustrated or lost concentration. Pretty much she was constantly looking for the track. In the places where the subject could walk a straight line, it was easy for her to be on track and move quickly. But most of the track was actually very difficult since the ground cover was boulders and thickets of mountain laurel drove how we moved.The track is about 4 or 5 hours old. We ran it at about 2PM and the temperature was in the 80s. First you see Chris laying the track. He placed flags at turns. Then you see Zooey and me run it. I was so happy to see the flags. At one turn, I had to let go of the line to crawl through some thickets and saw Zooey hanging out by the flags. Probably, the best moment of the day! Despite how odd it looks from the overhead vantage, I was very pleased with how the dog performed.

I've been using a helmet cam for a while for K9 tracking and trailing training. Up until now, I used an Archos PMA430 with a Viosport Adventure Cam III. Recently, I tested a Skullcamz Indy System (Archos AV500 Digital Video Recorder, the PowerRunner rechargeable Li-Ion battery, and the Sony 1/3" Super HAD;CCD color bullet camera, with 580 vertical lines of resolution). They are basically comparable systems, though the wiring harness on the Indy System is a bit simpler and I haven't looked carefully at differences in the microphone. Here is a movie that was installed on my Indy system when it arrived at my door. This gives you a sense of the quality of the video. I'll post video from both of these systems and also completely different sort of helmet cam, the Oregon Scientific ATC-1000 action cam marketed toward kids. It's wireless and operates off AAA batteries. This makes it an inexpensive candidate for a dog cam.

Zooey is 8 1/2 months. She' training for search and rescue. The discipline she's training for right now is trailing. But to be good at that, I also have to work on her play drive. Right now she likes to play with balls. Particularly, soccer balls. So until her play drive is strong enough to play other sorts of games, this is the game that we are working on. It's also important that she play with other people besides me. Fortunately, Benjamin and his friend agreed to play with her.

What does a puppy do when she's bored... hide things and play... "attack the vacuum"!

Sometimes a puppy gets bored...