Humility, or why I shouldn't believe I'm a god- even if my dog does.

The general public loves dogs and especially our search dogs.  The pedestal gets higher and higher with each book and each newspaper article that writes about the daring feats SAR dogs do.  More than once I’ve overheard someone say at a search I’ve arrived at, “oh thank goodness, the dogs are here.”  I look around to see what super dog they are looking at and it’s just my goofy dog, with his head hanging out the window, tongue flapping in the wind, his drool sliming the window.

Our dogs are given superpowers by the general public, many times encouraged by news reports.  They  desperately want to believe the myth of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.  Where week after week, TV shows and films that star the four legged actors, extol the deeds of these furry super heros that put the needs of their humans above their own, sometimes to their own detriment.  

News reports like to ascribe supernatural powers to their noses, their endurance, their undying devotion to us puny stupid humans.   That they can find lost children in snowstorms, drowning victims in hundreds of feet of water, track down the wandering dementia patient through wind and rain on a trail weeks old. Or they find the drop of blood, the finger nail, the scrap of tissue that breaks open a cold case.  And occasionally they can, which drives the cult of dog even further.

Our dogs are well trained and can do amazing things, but they aren't supernatural. Their nose is only as good as the trainer at the other end of the leash. And that's what Hollywood never showed, the super hero dogs with their very failable humans at the other end of the leash like every other normal working dog does. This past fall several things happened to me and my boy Deacon that reinforced to me that I am just human and he is just a dog.  Neither one of us have supernatural powers; that we are only as good as the training we do, and the trainers we use to help us.  First, we were in Florida when Hurricane Sandy hit the north east, at cadaver dog seminar.  The specific intent of this seminar was aged buried remains.  We aren't as good on buried as I thought we were.  We were only right on our blanks and about 30 yards off on the task areas with a source. Second lesson was at a search.  I explored an area that I shouldn't have done. There was a lot of pressure from several agencies, and I should have known better than to give into that pressure and the rush to my ego that came with it.

90% or more SAR dog handlers are hard working team members.  We, here in Virginia, take pride in the entire SAR community when a find is made, no matter who made it; ground pounders, dog teams, or civilian searchers.  We just want that lost loved one to come home, and take very seriously the slogan "so others may live".

Then there are the 10% that aren't team players.  They probably never were team players and don't recognize that a search is machine-like.  Maybe not well oiled at times, and other times not firing on all cylinders, but still needing all the parts to mesh together to get forward motion.  That 10% thinks because they are the front wheel, the car couldn't get anywhere with out them, and therefore they are indispensable.  What they don't realize is that there is always a spare tire available....

So they move on to a reality of their own creation.  The most blatant example of this is a dog handler from Michigan, Sandra Anderson and her dog Eagle:

She ended up being the darling of several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.  She and Eagle were hired the government of Panama to search for the mass graves of victims of Manuel Noreiga. They were even sent to Bosnia to look for more mass graves.  With this fame, came the cult of personality. She surrounded herself with people that believed the religion she was preaching and never thought to question her. The inward spiral of the Ponzi scheme that she was trying to maintain became harder and harder to maintain and it was inevitable that she would fall.

Her downfall was swift and of her own doing.  She started planting evidence at crime scenes and falsifying statements.  She became careless in her planting of that evidence and got caught planting bones and a carpet sample at a possible crime scene.  This very detailed paper by Liz Burne: No Your Friend Cannot Do Magic  paints a very sordid picture of all of her crimes (it's long and has ALL the details).

Sande and Eagle are the most blatant example of what happens to a handler that believes what the press writes about them. They get sucked into the Lassie and Rin Tin Tin mythology and their dog becomes an extension of their ego.  But, it's also the lesser known people that function in their own reality, that perpetuate the myth in a lot LEs minds that dogs and their handlers are clueless and useless. Those are the ones we need to guard against.

In Virginia, we aren't perfect, but a partnership has been fostered and developed over time by strict adherence to State Standards that was developed, refined and rewritten over many years of trial and error.  The partnership between teams of all skills is maintained with quarterly meetings of the Virginia Search and Rescue Council. With all of this, comes a checks and balance kind of environment, where nobody gets to be "the one".  A dog handler on one team knows just about every other dog handler in the state and has probably trained with them at one time or another.  By training and working with other dog handlers from other teams, we lose the single mindedness that our dog is the greatest, because we see how great other dogs and dog teams are.

Something to remember:

Anderson apologized to the court and law enforcement officials before sentencing, stating, “I lost track of why I was offering my services.” *

And we are not the god our dogs think we are.


*David Runk, Michigan dog-handler sentenced to 21 months for planting evidence, Associated Press, Sept. 28, 2004

The One

So how do you choose? How do you chose your next canine partner? The one that will be sharing your adventures for the next 10 years?  Especially when there is an entire litter of extraordinarily cute, pick me pick me, pups in the whelping box in front of you.

Deacon's Litter

 Teagan's litter

Tally's litter

I didn't pick my first two search dogs,  they picked me.  Ben was found wandering the streets of Harrisonburg.  When he showed up in my life, I just made him my search dog.  Never realizing in my neophyte naiveté, that rarely ever works out.  My second dog, Finn was given to me by a team mate, and he has done everything I ever asked of him. From cold cases in Virginia to New Orleans after Katrina even to the jungles of South America.  Luck out number 2, for I dog I didn’t pick.

Then I decided that I can breed a better search dog.  I’ll have my pick of the litter and can take the greatest one.  But first I had to go find the right bitch.  Didn’t pick Cora out either; she was just the last one left.  She made it too, as an HRD dog with several finds.  So far I am three for three (can you find the theme here?)

It’s up to me then to carefully pick the sire of these super SAR dogs, to combine the best genes I can find in a package that I want to look at.  I tirelessly scrutinized the pedigree of countless dogs, nag friends for their opinions and when I still don’t like what I see, I bug them for more suggestions then finally settle on a sire. 

And agonize that I might have picked the wrong one and play the game of what if.

The sire of Deacon's litter, I loved on sight.  He was sweet, smart, gentle and a real go-getter.

Ch Ransom's Armbrook Indigo Hue, CD MH

Problem is, I kept a boy out of this litter, which really isn't conducive to keeping your line of dogs going! So on to the next litter.

For Teagan's litter I picked a show dog.  Liked him because even in the make-out suite at the kennel where Cora was bred to him, he still wanted to play ball.  Didn't hurt that he was yellow and gorgeous too.

Am BISS GrCh and BISS Can Ch Gateway's Nothin' But Trouble

Then last year my heart was broken, when Teagan, the pup I kept from this litter, suddenly passed away.  She was almost everything I wanted in a SAR dog, but her independent streak was bigger than she was.  

For Tally's litter, I reached way back in time to a dog that had been long dead, and the collection I used was 16 years old.  Ed had an old fashioned pedigree that had everything I wanted.  He was able to compete in the Field Trial arena, basically unheard of for a breed ring champion.

Ch Topform's Edward MH, QAA

Got the genetics down, wait for the puppies to be born and then the real fun starts.  I try to do everything right, early neurological stimulation the first 16 days of life.  Keep careful notes on each pup, expose the pups to as many different people, places and surfaces as possible.  There is something called the rule of seven developed by Pat Hastings, that I try to follow.  The pups get exposed to seven different surfaces, played with 7 objects, gone 7 different locations, exposed to 7 challenges, eaten from 7 different containers in 7 different locations, and met and played with 7 different people. 

I put an incredible amount of work into each of my litters.  They start with baby agility courses on my kitchen table.  I set up a tunnel for them to crawl through.  Little cones for them to cruise around.  I make them climb little “A” frames.  I think I am the only person that will wander through Bed Bath and Beyond, looking at the bath mats or the shelving units or rugs and think “that would be a cool thing for the pups to walk across”. Or under, or around, or through… I even bought them a child’s play slide for them to climb up and slide down.  When they were weaned, the pups graduated to big dog stuff.  I have modified weave pole I got them to cruise around and they learned to climb my wood pile.

And watch and worry over every single sniffle, loose stool and stumble.

At 7-8 weeks, it is time for the temperament test.  Here’s where you find out what your pups are made of. This is where my evaluator picks the smartest, most out going, bidable pup in the litter. There are many temperament tests that can be done, but the most popular is the Volhard Puppy Apptitude Test.  I’ve done it with all of my litters, the same evaluator each time.  So she knows what I like in my pups.  There are other tests that SAR dog handlers that have different ways of testing, most will see about ball drive and comfort levels when walking across unusual or unsteady surfaces.

My friend spends hours testing my litters for me.  She is usually exhausted by the end of it.  Especially this past litter since testing took place in July. She’s usually dripping with sweat and legs cramping from crawling around on the ground with the pups.  She does an amazing job for me.  We talk about each pup and I get a written report on all the pups both good and bad.

So alot of work goes into each litter and each pup.  

After all of that hard work, I promptly pick the pup that picked me. 

They usually pick me long before I ever think about picking them.

*************************************************************

Glendair's Devil's Preacher JH VDEM HRD, he takes after his daddy, Digs.  The sweetest, hard working dog I have.  Born in snow bank behind my wood shed.

Glendair's Teagan, if she could do it her way, she would.  And give me the paw while she's doing it.

Glendair's Tullamore Dew, high hopes for her, I'll see how she turns out.  But she was climbing storage bins to get to the cadaver source at 5 weeks old.