Scenting On The Wind

This book gives us a detailed account of how dogs work and how we might properly train and harness their abilities to serve our needs.

This book on the training of scenting dogs explains the composition of scent, how it works in the dog's nose, and what affects scent. It contains chapters on the sense of smell, anatomy and physiology, the human as scent source, the transmission of scent and factors that influence the working with scenting dogs.

Reveals the techniques and skills of the professional gundog trainers Informative and invaluable instruction for all gundog owners This book, the long-awaited new gundog training book from best-selling author Joe Irving, reveals the techniques professional trainers use so the average gundog owner can apply them in his or her own training program. Set out in an easily-accessible A-Z format, this book, at times controversial, will open the world of field trials to a wider public while giving invaluable information to every gundog owner.

Dogs detect scent from a source that is carried to them in a plume by the wind. The most important tool for a detector dog handler to have on searches is a knowledge of scent plume movement or "scent dynamics" (the science of scent movement). Such knowledge resides primarily in scientific journals that are largely inaccessible to detector dog handlers and written in language that is difficult to understand. Detector Dogs and the Science of Scent Movement: A Handler’s Guide to Environments and Procedures retrieves, reviews, and interprets the results of pertinent scientific research on scent dynamics and presents these results in terms that are easier for handlers to understand. Information on the physiology of the dog’s nose, their sense of smell, and the properties of scent provide the essential information on the process of scenting. The composition of training aids for explosives, narcotics, human remains and other sources is discussed. Recommendations are made on the use of training aids, their placement during training, and the resulting availability of scent. Potential problems and handler errors in the use of training aids are also examined. The characteristics of scent plumes and how wind influences their movement are a key focus of the book. The primary task for the handler is to get the dog into the scent plume so that the dog can detect the scent and follow it to the source the handler seeks. As such, a knowledge of scent and scent plume movement will vastly improve the ability of the handler to accomplish this task. The influence of weather and physical settings such as terrain, vegetation, ground cover, soil and water on scent movement are examined in detail. Strategies for searching, detecting, and locating sources in all physical settings are presented. Specific effects associated with hills and mountains, fields and forests, bare soils and soils covered by vegetation, different soil types, and lakes and rivers are examined in detail. This includes specific recommendations are made about weather and physical settings that result in higher probability of success on searches. Detector Dogs and the Science of Scent Movement will be a vital resource for K9 handles in the private and public sectors—including in Homeland Security, law enforcement, and military settings—as well as a useful guide for lawyers, forensic, and investigative professionals who need to better understand K9 operations.

This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.