I have been “rattlesnake proofing” dogs since 1969. It all came about through the Search and Rescue work I had gotten into in northern California. Al got out of Vet School in '68 and we came home to the Phoenix area. It dawned on me, real quick, that we were going to put all this work in to the dogs, take them out into the dessert, and they were going to get “snake bit.” Not a good idea anyway you look at it. So in 1969 I had to find a way to keep these enthusiastic furry friends safe. The only way I could do that, reliably was with live rattlesnakes and an electronic collar. When done correctly, it seems to be a life lesson for the dogs. I have tested dogs nine years after their initial training, and they were just as reliable about avoiding the snakes then as they were the first day. It is not necessary to brutalize the dogs, in training, just one tap of the magic button, when all their senses are focused on the rattlesnake, is all it takes.
I have used four different species of rattlesnakes in our training, and we get the same response from the dogs, no matter what species we expose them to. The training is done in two sessions. The first time the dogs are exposed, the snakes are in a double-sided cage and no one has ever been bitten, man or beast. The owners are part of the training, as it is my goal to teach them to read the dogs’ body language. If I can do that the dog may save not only his life but his owners as well. The dogs are easy it's the owners I'm concerned about.
I have the people come back a second time, when I hide the snakes, so no one can see or hear them. Owners think, because our noses don't work, that the dog has to see or hear the snakes. Wrong. It is the scent that tells the dogs to “stay away, danger.” We can’t rely on seeing or hearing to warn us. Snakes don't always “buzz” before they strike and you don't always see them before either. They never can disguise their scent, and that's what we base the training on. LIVE RATTLESNAKES MUST BE USED. It would be oh so easy to haul a frozen rattlesnake out of the freezer, every Saturday morning, but your dog would avoid every frozen rattlesnake he came across, which probably wouldn't be many in his lifetime. Live and dead rattlesnakes smell differently. It is the scent, so hard for us to accept, as our noses don't work, but it's not about us in this incidence. How nice to go trekking in rattlesnake country with a dog you can rely on to be an early warning system for you. Reason enough for some, to go through the training.
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