On Saturday, July 27, at 3:30 pm at the West Tisbury library, dog trainer Karen Ogden will give a presentation titled, “Training the Conservation Canine.” According to a press release, we all know that dogs have an amazing sense of smell. Scientists have discovered that while the human nose has approximately 6 million scent receptors, the average dog nose has over 300 million. Dogs are an ideal detection tool, and are used not only for locating illegal substances and explosives, but also invasive or harmful pests, as well as rare and endangered species of plants and animals. This presentation will give a brief overview of the dog training process from the initial question of “Can a dog be trained to find …” to working in the field to locate a specific target species by odor alone. This event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served.
Karen Ogden, CPDT-KA, has been working with and training scent detection in dogs since the early 1990s. She was involved in canine search and rescue first in working a trailing dog, and later a human remains detection dog. In 2014, Karen was approached by two ecologists from Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation and Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank with a question: ”Could a dog be used to located eastern box turtles by scent alone?” The answer was a definite “Yes.” Karen has trained two dogs to detect eastern box turtles. Her active dog, Myles, has been in training since he was 5 months old.