Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was talking to an experienced field ecologist and he told me about the work that the Schwartzs did a while back with labradors that would find box turtles for them. I wanted to try doing it with snakes. There is a concern that the dog could be bitten but if well trained they should be okay I'd imagine. I talked to a herpetologist from a nearby university and he said that snakes don't leave much of a scent trail like other animals because they only shed their skin in one piece.
Has this been tried before? Like with any hunting dog, it may be an issue of just finding the right dog that can pick up the trail of a snake.

I recall an old book that included a photo of a dog that was used by a fellow in Florida to locate EDB's..........can't recall the name of the book. Possibly Klauber's The Rattlesnakes. I'm posting from work and my library is at home...........

They must leave some scent. I know people do the opposite...scent train their snakes to stay away from snakes, especially down here in Texas where rattlers are common on hunting grounds throughout the state. If you can train them to recognize the scent of a snake and train them to stay away, it must me possible to do the opposite. Andy
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

My beagle has brought snakes to my attention by barking. I don't know if she tracked them or just happens upon them. She does keep an eye out when I'm cleaning cages.

It has been my understanding that dogs have been trained to find snakes (brown tree snakes) at airports in Hawaii. I also have a beagle (great for flushing rabbits for my hawk) and have wondered what training technique might be to have her (or any dog) trained to find my target species, the Rubber Boa.

Richard F. Hoyer

I expect it would be much like teaching dogs to hunt certain items, comparable to drug dogs. Rewards for finding the object, lots of work, ect. What I wonder though is if each of the snakes have a typical scent (as I am sure they do) and if the dogs will just pick up on that one snake, or all species of snakes in general. So if you train a dog, like you said, to find rubbers, then is there any chance of it instead finding, let's say for hypothetical reasons, sharptails. I would be interested in knowing the results of something like that...Andy
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Andy Maddox
AIM: SurfAndSkimTx04
MSN: Poloboy32486@hotmail.com
Houston Herp Key
The Reptizone

Burgundy baby, With your blue eyed soul, You play the hits and I'm on that roll, Capricorn sister, Freddie Mercury, Jupiter Child cry

A good friend and herper has an emergency rescue dog that tracks people like no other. He tried to train this dog to recognize snakes figuring that he'd pick up on it real quick. He said that the dog would walk right over them sometimes (in grass) and not even notice. I thought that since this dog had already been highly trained to find people that it just ignored the snakes.
I'd like to try and train a dog to find and identify which general type of snake it finds. Rattlers would be ones to stay away from but others like colubrids or rosys he could get real close to with no worries. I think it will work if I can find a good dog.

After loosing a dog to an EDB I began exposing all my dogs as pups(and cats)to a particularly nasty black racer. This seemed to do the trick as I would see them avoid clumps of grass or debris and I would find snakes there.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

This method is called aversion training and can be very successful at getting them to avoid snakes but I'd like the dog to be looking for them not just avoiding them if he comes in contact. It is a good idea though.

big d

Adversion can actually be agreat way to find snakes. When my dogs were in the woods, I would just look where they showed signs of avoiding something.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

...to follow the pheromone trail that female snakes leave behind during breeding season.

If a male snake can pick up this trail, I would imagine a well trained dog could also.

I tried it once a long time ago but I am not much of a dog trainer and I was unsuccessful in my efforts.

big d

Hello, All..

I have an English Setter (field type) who is a pretty good snake finder. She is constantly hunting the bushes for anything that moves, so she finds them fairly often. She has a certain bark that alerts me when she has found a snake. So far (knock on wood) she has shown respect for any snake that bows up at her, but if they run, she will catch and kill them. Apparently garter snakes are runners. She has killed several. I haven't taken her herping, only joked about it, but maybe I should give her a try.

ShadyLady

That knew the scent of snake and was terrified of meeting one (again)!
The dog could not be persuaded to approach a snake scent trail.
In fact, it was easy to know a snake had gone by because of the dog's reaction.