As I have stated before, this program uses the ACS/TSA Hunt Test to measure progress of pups going through the program. I cannot express my gratitude enough to those who have submitted testing videos using a validated measure of performance. This test is not the “end all” to detection behavior nor is it the most perfect test. I have however used this test nearly 3000 times watching and measuring young dogs’ development. I spoke at this year’s Penn Vet Working Dog Conference on this very subject, based on research I have coauthored.
We would like to compare our participants with dogs not in this program, but we needed a baseline to compare behavior. We decided the Penn Vet C-BARQ was the ideal tool.
https://vetapps.vet.upenn.edu/cbarq/
Anyone can use this tool for free and it allows us an owner-generated baseline to compare dogs. This tool has been used in many research efforts. I recently discovered this thesis that shows how such a tool can be used for comparison.
http://archives.evergreen.edu/masterstheses/Accession86-10MES/Uhrich_AMESThesis2015.pdf
There is no shortage of opinions on dogs, but we can always use more proven facts.