Pine Marten Scat Searches for the Vincent Wildlife Trust in Scotland

Well what a busy time it is for us at the moment, both at Wagtail UK Ltd and Conservation dogs we have been inundated with various tasks, from training specialist detection dog and handler teams to conducting operational searches ourselves.

However now we have details of Luna's search that we conducted in Scotland in Early March, although Luna's training wasn't complete prior to our visit to Scotland we are still delighted to have a successful trip.

During the two days of searches in the magnificent terrain in areas around Argyll, Luna had covered over 10 miles of searches through some very difficult yet exciting terrain.

We are still awaiting full details about the results but so far we are aware that all scats Luna indicated on where all positively identified as Pine Marten scats through DNA analysis. Therefore it was confirmed that she didn't false indicate on any other animal scats present throughout the 2 day tasking. This is fantastic news and we are delighted that so early on in Luna's training she has been able to find fresh pine marten scats in real life searches.

To add to this the Scats that Luna positively identified where so difficult to see to the human eye or positioned in such a difficult location, off the beaten track that we are happy to say that it would have been very unlikely that human search teams would have been able to locate these scats.

We are still training Luna and we will be able to use the findings from the Scotland trip with VWT to help us train for specific requirements needed from a conservation dog.

We are delighted with Luna's motivation to work, confidence when working and overall focus, she was a dream.We will keep you posted on Luna's continuing training and of any other exciting searches we will be conducting with her.