Dog Training Tips

It has been a busy few days with the field trails on Stradbroke island and the main land with Oscar the “World’s first Koala Detection Dog”  Oscar’s owner and handler Mr. Jim Shields PHD is a very talented and experienced man with Koalas and Australian wild life.

After several months of training Oscar to locate Koalas and their scats and ignore all other native wildlife we were ready to go to the next stage of training. During the trail Oscar was able to locate several Koalas and Koala areas by the scat on the ground. It also allowed us to evaluate the best possible operational training methods to best serve the wonderful people doing their best to protect the very important Australian.

As some areas were scent saturated with urine and scat in populated areas, Oscar had a large scent pool of around 30 metres to work in. In some cases with the koala up very high in the tree and with a strong wind blowing, Oscar is picking up a much stronger scent of urine and scat a long way away, it was stronger then the base of the tree where the koala climbed up.

This  information will assist us during the final stages of training and will become valuable for the training of future Koala detection dogs. It is easy to see the absolute compassion of all the people we worked with during the trails, I was very impressed with the depth of knowledge and the enthusiasm.

Stradbroke Island  {Minjerribah} is owned by the Quandamooka People http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/stradbroke/pdf/nsi-nattitle-fsheet.pdf  and managed by the land council who has given approval and we are truly grateful. Redland city Council are so committed to protecting Stradbroke island and are doing a great job protecting the Koala and the massive task of irradiating the foxes. The men and woman from Redland City Council I worked with are true professionals and a pleasure to work with.

Jim and I also had the pleasure of been hosted by Jan and Glen Aldenhoven who are very compassionate wildlife protectors and live on the island. Their production company Green Cape Wildlife Films have produced some award winning nature documentaries around the world. Jan worked tirelessly traveling with us and you can easily see why Jan is the Koala’s best friend. Romane Cristescu MVDr soon to have a PHD also worked very hard and has an amazing talent of spotting Koalas and the commitment to match.

I was also very lucky to have the very experienced Animal Management Officer from Redland City Council  Mr. William Clifton that assisted me with detailed local knowledge of the island. Mr Clifton had a wealth of information in regards to the wild animals and their impact on the Koala population.

On the main land Oscar is continuing his search for Koalas and has located several scat areas ranging from a few hours old to over a week.

Logan City Council are so committed to the Koala corridors and green space within the shire with many innovative ideas at work now to protect the local areas.

Getting us to and from Stradbroke island we did it in style on the Big Red Cat http://www.bigredcat.com.au and we stayed at the best bed and breakfast in south east Queensland the famous Mt. Cotton Guesthouse http://mtcottonguesthouse.com.au The Owner Sue Panuccio made us and Oscar the most wonderful meals in a Bali plantation inspired rain forest setting, After the massive days in the field relaxing in the rain forest Spa was perfect. 

My hats off to all the people that has worked so hard to put these trails together with Oscar, I will be working on a second Koala detection dog this year and I hope to donate the dog so the dog will be permantily based on Stradbroke island and utilized around south east Qld.

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