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:
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
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
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