Barney's Rock

On Tuesday evening, Blue and Gray SAR Dogs got a call for a missing person in Marshall, Virginia.  I rushed home from work to pick up the dogs and switch trucks, when no more than 10 minutes down the road another page came in, subject found.  Big sigh of relief.  But, another call came in for a lost berry picker.  Only this one wasn’t the next county over, but about 300 miles away in deep southwest Virginia, Wise County to be exact.

I had to psych myself up for not only the epic overnight drive  without sleep, but also the next day: 8 hours of searching and the reverse 300 mile trip home.

We were looking for an older gentleman that never returned from berry picking.  He has lived in the area all his life and intimately knew this part of the Jefferson National Forest.  The police found out that his favorite spot to hang out at was a place called Barney’s Rock.  Problem was, no one, not even his family knew where this place was.

Barney’s Rock is named after a local guy.  Sometime in the 60’s this Barney got in trouble with the law.  And, rather than face up to his crimes, he headed up into the mountains with his daughter.  They came to an unfortunate end though, passing away up in this little hide out.  No one is sure if they died of natural causes or what happened.

So the team is sitting at base, waiting for their tasks, but the search management team hasn’t made it there yet.  There is nothing more impatient than a dog team waiting for something to do, you really want to give them something or they can make the search managers life miserable.  We are doers not planners.  To us time is our enemy.  We want to be out there looking for the subject, not sitting in base and chit chatting.  We are trained from the very beginning how to attack a search, what the subject profile is and how to develop an initial search strategy.  One of my teammates finally had enough of waiting and developed three dog tasks, starting from base and radiating out.  Laurel Strotter and her dog  Baby were searching along the top of a ridge, when Baby takes off.  She goes over the top of the ridge, through some thick mountain laurel, and Laurel loses sight of her for a little while.  Baby comes rushing back and indicates and takes Laurel back to…. Barney’s Rock!  She and Baby found it.

Baby is trained to find articles as well as people and she found some articles that our missing person left behind at the rock.  This only the second or third mission Baby has been on as Laurel just got her certified this past spring. 

Barney’s Rock is a boulder as big as a house.   The original squatter, Barney, quite inventive with the caves under it.  He picked the most spacious cave and made it into the main living area.  He put up a wall of stone to block off the opening of the cave and make a doorway.

He was clever to design the fireplace and chimney so that the smoke dispersed without a sign.  He put the chimney in a large crack between two halves of the boulder.

Can you find the chimney?

the fireplace

I don’t know that I could live like that for too long without absolutely losing my mind.  Mainly because of my claustrophobia.  But black doesn’t describe how dark it is in that small cave, even when we were there in the middle of the day. And cold, even in July. 

the spacious living accomadations

back porch

front porch

haute cuisine

The day I got there (the first day, I tried to make it, but woke up with food poisoning, bleh), the search managers were calling for HRD dogs (cadaver dogs) because he’d been missing for so long and there’d been absolutely no contact with the family.   So my task was to cover the drainage from the road up to the Rock and down the ridge on the other side.  The police officer that was with said that it only took him and his team 30 minutes to get to the top earlier in the week, but they weren’t looking for a body, but wanted to try and sneak up on him.
  

With an HRD dog, you’ve got to work much more slowly.  Because scent can do funny things and trick you.  So as a handler you’ve got to be able to think about not only major climate conditions, but also the microclimate.  What is the air current doing around that large rock, is scent being drawn in or can any scent escape, what about that hole there, is it big enough for someone to fall into, if the person is deceased, have the animals gotten to the subject and are there places small enough for things to be cached.  

Many things go through a handlers head while they are working their dog, we don’t just walk behind them.  It took me and Cora about an hour to make it up to the boulder.  She kept getting drawn up the drainage next to the boulder, but nothing ever panned out.  We waited for the other dog team to make it to the Rock, giving Cora a break and some water

Me and the other handler figured out what our next task would be from that area and off we went.  I went down the ridge on the other side of the drainage.  I turned to take one last look at the Rock before we headed down, and it was completely gone.  Couldn’t see the cave and I was only 50 yards away.  What a great hiding place, but not any longer.

can you see the cave?

Here’s what the out come was: http://www2.tricities.com/news/2010/jul/23/hubert-ramey-found-facing-charges-ar-348747/

Coffee with a Diet Coke Chaser and an 80’s Pop Sound Track

So why am I driving down Interstate 81 with a cup of coffee in my hand, loaded with enough sugar to put an elephant into a diabetic coma and listening to Madonna, Huey Lewis and the News, Debbie and New Kids on the Block?  Because I have an 8AM base call 300 miles away, in southwestern Virginia and I left my house at 10PM to drive through the night to get there on time.  And there is nothing like caffeine and bad music to keep you awake. 

I hate coffee.  The smell of a fresh pot of coffee makes my stomach acid churn and my nose burn.  I made it through four years of vet school and its attendant late night without the ubiquitous cup of joe at my side.  But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I really don’t want to run into a tractor trailer or a guard rail at 75 miles an hour.  

Trying to stay awake for the 5 plus hour overnight trip from my house to Coeburn, Virginia, was nearly beyond me.  Therefore the need for a more efficient caffeine delivery system:  hazel nut coffee with chocolate creamer and four packs of sugar.  I made it to Marion, Virginia before the inevitable circadian rhythm pulled me under.  

I ended up taking a nap at a rest stop near mile post 50 close by the town of Marion.  I figured I was pretty close and since it was only 2AM, I could stop for a little bit for a rest.  I didn’t realize that I had another hour and half of driving ahead of me before arriving at base.  My F150 is an extended cab, with blankets and padding to make it a soft place for the dogs to sleep while they are in the truck with me, and it doubled as my bed that night.  The hardest part was trying to convince Cora to move to the driver’s seat.  She’s been scolded enough that she was very reluctant to sit up there while I was stretched out in the back.  She wouldn’t go easily and actually tried to sit on my knees and stretch out to the console between the front seats, her butt higher than her head.  She was painful to watch, all crumpled up in that position.  After a little more urging from me, she realized that it was probably more comfortable to get into the front seat.

After only an hour and half of sleep, and complete lack of REM sleep, the rumble of the tractor trailers woke me up and back on the road we went.  With the weird hangover shakes that come from too much caffeine and too little sleep.  Sucks, cause I didn’t have any fun getting that hangover.

It was still hard trying to get through the last little bit of the trip.  I am glad I couldn’t see how steep the drop offs where the cliff disappears since it was still dark.  We all made it to the base with more than two hours to spare.  Kind of a good thing, since I could feed the dogs in time for it not to be an issue while they are working, but I still could have used the extra two hours for some sleep.

The dogs could nap, but I couldn’t and I still had another 15 hours in front of me.

Teagan the Terrorist

Teagan at 10 weeks, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth...shoes are another story.

Four months ago, my beautiful girl Cora, had a healthy litter of pups.  All yellows, my favorite color Lab.  The first month, Cora did all the hard work; feeding, cleaning, keeping the squirming bundles of joy warm and dry. My turn came the second month, after their baby teeth came in and Cora had absolutely no interest in letting her litter of piranhas nurse on her anymore.   In the middle of taking care of everybody, I felt like it would never end. But my caretaking of the little ones came to an end and all, but one, went to their new homes.  For someone else to clean up after them.  You can see them here:  http://glendairlabradors.com/puppies.html

I kept the boldest, most independent of them all and named her Teagan (which means beautiful in Irish, or poet).  Oh, the hopes and dreams I have for her.  So many things to do, so many places to go and people to meet.  There is so much on her little shoulders, it’s amazing that she hasn’t collapsed under the weight of it all.  But because she’s a dog, she doesn’t care.  She doesn’t care whether she gets her AKC champion, a Master Hunter, or if she can find people.  Her favorite escapade in the entire world is to run full force into whatever dog is in front of her.  If she can make them yelp she’s happy, if she can bowl them over she’s ecstatic.  If she can get the others caught up in her puppy crazies and chase her round and round and round and round, her days work is done! 

I wanted to keep the pup with the most outgoing fearless and independent personality.  I did, but she personifies, be careful what you wish for, you may get it.  All the pups I’ve had before her, adored me and couldn’t wait to do whatever I asked of them.  Teagan on the other hand has given me the paw more times in the eight weeks I’ve had just her, than all my other dogs have ever given me in their entire lives, COMBINED!

She is fearless.  At training, a team mate of mine has a van full of German Shepherds that go absolutely ballistic if anything or anyone comes near the van.  Her preferred choice of entertainment when I let her out of the truck is to go around to the back of Misty’s van and stand there.  She’ll watch the dogs go mad, flinging themselves at the crate doors, screaming at the top of their lungs, slobber flung far and wide and generally lose their marbles.  She doesn’t run, her hackles don’t elevate, she doesn’t bark back at them.  She calmly squats and pees in front of them, marking her territory, then wanders off.  Ignoring me completely as I am trying to call her back to the truck.

What Parents Ask Us to Do

Parents are always proud of what their grown children have accomplished.  They brag to their friends over their accomplishments, the doctor, the lawyer, the business man/woman.  The good mother, how good their grandkids are, and so on.  So, if they have some bad plumbing, they call the son that can fix things.  Health problems, call doctor.  Trying to set up a will, call the lawyer.  I am a veterinarian, but they don’t have any pets.  However, I do train cadaver dogs.

Their part of the county is still wooded and the road behind their house is tree lined and a good place to go walking.  But, they haven’t done much of that lately.  When I went home over the 4^th of July weekend, my dad asks me to do something for them.  About 3-4 weeks ago a body had been found on the road behind their house.  And they didn’t find out about it until it was in the newspaper: 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/2-arrested-in-death-of-silver.html

They ask me to go out and look for the drop site. They were just so excited that they might be able to gossip a little with their neighbors.  There are so many things that went through my head, the loudest: "how cool is that" and the other thought was "some people have all the luck"!  But, there are several ethical things that doing what they requested that would have been compromised.  So I didn’t look, I walked the dogs in opposite direction.  Very tempting though.