please. Tracy recalls talking to Carrie about Vessel, but they had to wait until the seven-week training period was over. As soon as it was, Tracy immediately reached out to see if Vessel was adopted, and when she wasn’t, the pair asked if she could undergo a two-week service training period. During this time, Vessel was working with inmates from the Randall L. Williams unit when Carrie realized that Vessel was developing a strong ball drive. She describes this moment as “full throttle” believing her drive was unlocked. This means Vessel wasn’t suited to work with someone who has disabilities because she just had too much drive. Carrie and Tracy weren’t deterred. The trainers believed that Vessel’s love of learning and her ball drive would find her a place to help. They knew there was still something special in store for Vessel. Getting Vessel’s Feet Wet Shortly after unlocking her ball drive and losing the prospect of helping someone with disabilities, Vessel’s destiny was realized when CAW came calling. Carrie and Tracy originally didn’t like the name Vessel, but when this opportunity came up, they knew the name was the right fit. Vessel’s name, her demeanor, her drive, and her desire to please all came together at the perfect time. CAW wanted to start from the ground up. The company asked Carrie and Tracy if they could train a dog to detect water leaks. The pair responded with an emphatic, “sure”. Carrie admits she had little professional experience in scent detection. Her only experience, as she puts it, was “playing around with some of [her] training dogs.” However, Carrie was confident that she knew the fundamentals, and she was confident in Vessel’s ability to learn and her drive to please others. On the Nose Water Leak Detection Dogs Founded by Tracy Owen and Carrie Kessler Trained the United States’ first and second water leak detection dogs Works closely with Arkansas Paws in Prison to not only lower the number of shelter dogs euthanized, but also in helping inmates gain valuable skills that can be transferred to life outside of incarceration Seeking to provide former inmates stable work and life skills once they are paroled by working to train the dogs For more information visit their website or email Tracy at dogsamust@icloud.com. Follow Vessel on Facebook https://www. facebook.com/CAWDetectiveDog/.
Tracy knew Vessel would be the perfect candidate for this job because she is ball-driven rather than food-driven. This means Vessel views rewards as completing a task and getting to go again. In other words, because Vessel wants to please her handler, she will complete the task as quick as possible. Once Tracy and Carrie got Vessel to focus on the smell of CAW’s water, her own nature will allow her to continuously hone her skills as long as she is allowed to do her job. Although Vessel’s training is ongoing, the initial process takes around six months (as well as the previous service and handler training). Most of the time during this training period is spent changing the scenario and making the dog work in different environments. For a worker like Vessel, this is extremely important. Vessel is responsible for detecting water leaks that occur in different environments, and it is extremely important that she can stay on task. Carrie believes one of the keys for training a detection dog like Vessel is to start with short training sessions that are set up for success. The sessions must be short because, as a younger animal in training, the dogs don’t have the longest attention span. As the training continues, however, the sessions increase in duration and the tasks become harder. Vessel’s training began in this way with short sessions that took place mostly indoors. Tracy and Carrie describe this stage of the training as short. The trainers ask the dog to find a smell that is just a short distance away with little else to distract them. As the dogs complete these shorter tasks, they then begin to move outside and are given more and more distractions. Vessel is also different from other service animals in that she has public access training. This training adds a few extra months onto the pro- gram, but it offers a few key benefits. For example, Vessel is able to interact with the public for demonstrations, and she can fly on planes with her handlers. This training also allows Vessel to give educational demonstrations to children. Vessel’s public access training allows her to travel more widely and spread the message about what she is doing, which was one of the main goals when CAW began this project. Vessel’s reward for a successful demonstration is a game of fetch with handler Stephen Sullivan.
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may 2020
csengineermag.com
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