It's just a dog

Except when he isn't. Just a dog. 

Trapper was an elkhound shepherd mix with a little West Virginia Mountain Walkin’ dog mixed in. Nothing special, no titles earned, no tricks learned, no search and rescue finds.  Just loved and adored by his family. 

The first year of his life was a horrible mixture of abuse (outright- being kicked while chained) and neglect (no food or water or shelter).  But, somehow, he kept a flame of self-respect and pride burning.

That flame was covertly and sometime not covertly fed by his neighbors.  During his first winter, the son would sneak over before the school bus came, and tuck him under his coat to warm him.  The father started checking on him to make sure he had food and water. And once stopped the owner during a “training session” that seemed nothing more than a kick the dog festival. The family dog, a Golden Retriever, would go and play with him.

Then the family moved away and left Trapper behind, tied to his box. It was probably the best day of Trapper’s life, being left like that.  The neighbors took Trapper in, not realizing what was ahead of them. He was a difficult dog to get to know and a difficult dog to accept.  He growled at everyone. He wouldn’t go in the beautiful dog house they got for him; he’d rather pee on it and sit on top of it. And he wouldn’t come in their house.  So rather than make him, they accommodated him. They put a strong roof over his pen to keep the snow out in the winter, rain out in the spring and the hot sun in the summer.  During the winter, the walls were stacks of bales of straw covered with ply wood.  In the summer, it was just plywood, used to keep the wind out.  It took three years to teach him to accept a dog house and they did it once piece at a time.  The floor first, a couple of walls at a time and finally the roof.

He couldn’t trust this wonderful family at first, he didn’t know how to, he was never taught that humans can be more than a source of pain.  But, I am sure he remembered a little of what they did for him.  Because with patience and kindness and a lot of time, they won him over.  They allowed him to be the dog he wanted to be, not a fenced, leash walked city dog.  But rather confident unconfined protector of his domain.  He would have been euthanized long before now for biting, or killing small pets, if someone tried to turn him into a city dog.

But his confidence shown through.  He was never argumentative, or acted like he had a chip on his shoulder.  You just couldn't make him do anything, unless he thought it was his idea first.  Even to the end of his life, he didn't trust humans to make any decisions for him.

And that’s why his owners called me. Cars were never going to be his idea of a good time, and he wasn't getting in one.

I only got to meet Trapper three times, all within the last 10 days of his life.  But, for some reason, he struck a chord so very deep in me that I mourn for him almost as much as one of my own.  I don’t know why he made such an impression on me but he did.  And I guess I just need to accept it.

He was hiding under a lilac bush the first time I came to his house.  His owner and I pulled the big branches out of the way, and I politely asked if he would come out and let me take a look at him.  He laid there for a moment, thinking that proposition, and me, over.  And decided he would allow me to take a look at him.  I think that was the moment I fell in love with him.  The utter dignity and strength, even as sick as he was, was evident. 

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything we could do for him.  That’s wrong.  There was a lot we could do for him, but he told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to happen to him.

I saw him my third and last time last night, under the faint glow of a flash light in the field of his choosing and lying next to his devoted dad, asking as only he could, to be allowed to pass with the dignity he’s earned. 

And I helped him the only way that was left.

Good night, Trapper.  I feel lucky to have known you, even if it was only 10 short days.

A Nightmare

There are three things in my life that I am terrified of:  having my dogs hit by a car,  a house fire with my pets in the house, and poisoning of my dogs .  So far, none of my dogs have been hit by a car.  I’ve already lived through a house fire. Then this past spring, I lived through one of the worst experiences of my life with my dogs, antifreeze.

I got home late from a surprisingly dogless afternoon and let the crew out before dinner. After a few minutes of stretching their legs I called them back for dinner, which was inhaled in seconds.  And as Labs, they soon went into a food induced nap.

While I was sitting in my recliner, reclined and half asleep, a loud crash startled me out of my half slumber.  Thinking that it was just one of the dogs falling off the couch while they were asleep, which they've done before, I didn't think anything of it.  Until Deacon crashed loudly into the crate behind my chair. That had me leaping up to find out what the heck was going on.

Deacon was standing there swaying as if he’d hit his head and had his bell rung.  I tried to get him to walk it off, to see if he could regain his balance.  But he didn’t, it just kept getting worse. He stumbled around the living room getting more ataxic by the second. He was knuckling over, crossing his back legs and when he stood in place, he just swayed like a tree in a high wind.

 I could feel the bile burning the back of my throat, the nausea was so overwhelming.  This wasn’t a seizure, which was bad enough. No, he had to have been poisoned.  And the only thing that makes a dog stumble around like a sailor on a three day binge is antifreeze.

I called one of my team mates (she’s a licensed veterinary technician and she also worked at an emergency clinic) because, while I can keep my cool and work on anyone else’s dog in an emergency, I immediately turn into a quivering pile of Jello if my own dog is in trouble.  Unable to string two coherent thoughts together, let alone think of what I am supposed to do next, she, surprisingly, understood what I was trying to say.  Me, I wasn't real sure I was making any sense. All I could hear was my heart beating in my throat and then the overwhelming urge to puke. 

I finally got myself together enough to get Deacon into the truck and headed down the road to the Shenandoah Valley Emergency Veterinary Clinic.

Danielle met me there, I calmed immeasurably; something about shared terror.  We were the only ones in the waiting room so there was no waiting.  I told them to not even examine Deacon, just do the damn antifreeze test. Because I knew in my mind it was going to be positive, even though my heart refused to believe it was a possibility. 

Five minutes later, and I was right. They whisked him to the back to get him started on his three day treatment.  And I headed home to come down from that incredibly stressful evening.

I settled in to finish the rest of the “Big Bang Theory” dvd, when Darcy comes stumbling into the living room.  The first thought that went through my mind was, “You have GOT to be kidding!”.  And called Danielle on the way down to the clinic. It seems that I was winning the unlucky lottery, because Darcy also tested positive for antifreeze.  At first, I thought I was over reacting, taking her to get tested for antifreeze, that she all she really did was get her toenails stuck in the carpet and that was why she stumbled. Nope, that wasn’t the case, so she got to spend the rest of the weekend as Deacon’s roommate.

Two in a row; that was too much of a coincidence.  I asked the DVM that was taking care of my two if I could take home the rest of the antifreeze test strips test the remaining three dogs. Not really believing that they would test positive.

Danielle followed me home to help me draw blood on the dogs left at home.  By this time it was past midnight.  Neither one of us were very coherent.

Every. Single. One. Of them came up positive.

All I could do was sit there and stare at the test results in despair. How could this happen, WHO could be so cruel to do this to my dogs? While I was paralyzed with disbelief, Danielle jumped into action. She drove back to the EC and started grabbing things off the shelf, the most important: a bottle of Everclear grain alcohol, I'll explain why later.

She may have been half asleep but she knew what we needed to turn my dining room into an emergency clinic treatment room.

That began the 3 longest days of my life.  Basically, it was either Danielle or I up the entire time.  Monitoring the IV lines, switching bags back and forth, taking them out to pee, cleaning up after them when they couldn’t make it out, replacing IV lines when they pulled them, cleaning up the blood from the catheters when they pulled the administration sets out, cleaning up the vomit. Tally was the worst, even in her drunken haze, she still managed to rip not only the extension set from the catheter, but the entire catheter out of her vein.  Blood went everywhere. I couldn’t have done this without Danielle! 

There are three stages to ethylene glycol (antifreeze) toxicity.  The first stage is drunkeness. EG acts just like alcohol, so if the dog drinks enough to be poisoned by it, there is enough to make him drunk.  The dog then appears to recover before heading into stage 2.  At this point cardiac symptoms appear.  Third stage is when we vets usually end up seeing them.  This is when the kidneys have shut completely down and can't produce urine anymore.  And there is nothing that can be done at this stage.  Kidney failure is complete and irreversible. 

To treat EG intoxication, you need to understand a little of how it works in the body.  Because it isn't the antifreeze that is toxic, it's the metabolites that are deadly. In particular, the final metabolite called Calcium Oxalate.  That nasty by-product settles out in the kidney and destroys them.

EG is an alcohol, very similar to regular alcohol.  In fact it is so similar, that several Austrian wine producers added it to their wines to make it sweeter and heavier.  Austrian wine scandal  When first ingested, ethylene glycol will cause the animal to appear drunk (first stage).  It then latches on to the enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which metabolizes regular alcohol into fairly innocuous by products.   But when EG attaches itself to ADH all kinds of badness ensues, by-products produced include metaldehyde (a cousin of formaldehyde) and worse, Calcium Oxalate crystals.  The good news, though, is EG is basically harmless if it passes through the kidneys unmetabolized.  And in order for that to happen, it can't get attached to ADH.  That's the reason for the Everclear, 190 proof clear grain alcohol.  Regular alcohol has a higher affinity for ADH than antifreeze, that means that the dogs have to go on a three day drunk to keep that enzyme occupied and let the antifreeze pass through unchanged.

You can't make a dog drink enough alcohol to treat the antifreeze, so I had to make up an IV infusion, using a formula that gave me 20% alcohol in an IV bag.  For all 5 dogs, I ended up using almost an entire liter of Everclear.  It sounds simple, just get your dog drunk and let the antifreeze pass through.  The problem is I could over dose the dogs and then I'd have to deal with alcohol poisoning.  And having them drop into an alcohol induced coma that could kill them too.  There is a safer way of treating, with a drug called Antizol.  But just my luck, it was on indefinite  back order.

It was a harrowing three days, but we all made it.  The dogs with an incredible hangover and Danielle and I with severe sleep deprivation. It took several days for my house to lose the moonshine stench, and I swear I could smell the grain alcohol on their breath for days. Even their poop smelled like grain alcohol.   Two days after everyone woke up from their hangover, all their blood work was normal. 

It was kind of anti-climactic, but I am ok with that.

Darcy, Tally,Cora, Finn, Deacon

I never did find out where the antifreeze came from.

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.

Waiting in the Wings

I know mothers are supposed to love their children equally, but I also know in their heart of hearts they have their favorite.  I have four Labradors that I love dearly, but it is not hidden by any stretch of the imagination that Finn is my heart dog.  Sometimes I feel like he takes up one half of my heart.

There is little room for the others that want to show me in their uncomplaining way that they can love me as much as Finn does.  That they will work just as hard, just as long, and just as completely as he does.

When I got Cora as a little 9 week old pup from her breeder, she was second to Finn because he was still in the prime of his working career.  We still had our adventures in New Orleans after Rita and Katrina and the doomed trek through the jungles of Guyana in front of us.

Cora at 10 and 14 weeks

She and I worked steadily through her training.  Taking Finn out when the calls came, and leaving her at home.  We trained through her little idiosyncrasies that, only with consistent training, will I come to understand and become a partner to her.  

She easily breezed through her certification process, with only one hiccup:  at her first time for her above ground test, she ate one of the gauze pads a source was on.  I was mortified, since she never gave me a clue she’d do something like that.  The evaluator, on the other hand, was about to toss her cookies thinking that Cora was going need surgery from a blockage from the gauze.  However, that too, shall pass!  I was able to reassure the evaluator several days later that she didn’t need to worry any more.  

Everything else was perfect, so we went home to work on that little problem (I believer it is genetic, because her son had the same problem with his first test!)  She and I got some real life training before she finished her certification when, as an exercise, several cadaver dog handlers were called to help find the rest of a decomposed body in southside Virginia.  The police already had all they needed and we were offered the chance to get some real work.  Three weeks pregnant with her first litter she made her first find, a clavicle and part of a shoulder blade!

 We finished up her certification when she was about to turn three. 

But, I still took Finn first when we got called. Cora was always back up.  Around 2008, Finn was still recovering from several nasty shoulder injuries and wasn’t quite back up to speed.  So with Finn 8 years old, I finally had reality give me a hard slap. My yellow dog wasn’t indestructible.  Time to give those waiting patiently in the wings a chance to shine. 

And shine she did.  The first search I made the very difficult decision to run Cora first, was a publicity rodeo.  We were briefed that this was a search under the radar; that we should be able to get into and out of this small construction site quickly.  It was just me and another dog handler.  She was going to run her dog in the half constructed buildings and Cora and I were given the task of the mud pit outside of the half built frames.  It was a half acre site surrounded by chain link fencing, enormous earth moving equipment parked helter skelter, piles of construction debris (lordy, do I hate rebar…), mounds of other scary stuff and pools of water that could very easily cover deep pits. 

Me and the other handler park at the site, and I get out Cora to give her a potty break.  I get no more than three steps away from the truck and I’ve got a police officer stuck to my side like glue.  He informs me that “this isn’t a very nice neighborhood” and I really shouldn’t wander off without some assistance.  Hm, this is turning out a little more interesting than I thought. 

The two of us were standing on a large mound of dirt next to the construction entrance, when we both look up at the sound of “whoop, whoop, whoop”.  What should we see, not one but TWO news helicopters and then all the news vans start pulling up next to the chain link fence surrounding the site.  Not sure how that can be considered under the radar anymore:

Charlotte search

Quite the scenario for her first solo search!

The other handler and I look at each other, and we shrug.  She gets her dog out first and heads for the dwellings.  And I get Cora out, put her search collar on, shake the bell a little and “Go Find!”

Thirty seconds later, she plops her ass on the ground, WTH?  and I throw her the ball to fill her mouth so she can’t bark.

I don’t want any of the cameras pointed towards me until we figured out what just happened. Me and my walker turn to each other open mouthed. This was supposed to be a burial situation and she never made a move to dig.  Our minder is completely unfazed.  Cora’s a cadaver dog and she’s supposed to find dead people, so what’s the big deal?

Come to find out that a man had been murdered on that spot, knifed and bled out, 3 weeks prior.  We never found what we were looking for though. And the guy is still missing.

Falling down buildings, dark crawl spaces covered in cobwebs, junk, debris, back firing cars, heavy equipment, crowds now that is her element.  The more noisy and distracting the environment, the happier she is.

I trust Cora implicitly now.  And it started with that search in North Carolina.  She has slowly, steadily and consistently shown me that she is just as much a partner in this world of search and rescue as Finn.  I still miss having the yellow dog along with me, but I don’t feel like I am “missing” anything when Cora gets out of the truck.

Daring Darcy

Darcy finally got completely certified in August.  

She’d finished all the big tests in May, but we still had to jump through the rest of the hoops of obedience, agility and temperament testing.  I was dragging my feet because once Darcy was certified, Finn would really be retired and I wasn’t sure I could actually handle that.  Anyway, as Hurricane Irene was moving up the coast in August my team, Blue and Gray SAR Dogs, were put on stand-by for possible deployment.  I couldn’t go unless Darcy was certified; that was all the incentive I needed.  At lunch, the Friday before Irene was scheduled to hit Virginia Beach, Darcy and I were getting the last little check mark we needed to finish our obedience.  The five minute stay.  In the parking lot of Steven Toyota, in Harrisonburg. 

Darcy is not a patient dog.  Particularly not with cars buzzing here and there.  People walking to and fro.  And especially not with the bushes rustling next to her.  Thank God we didn’t have to do the AKC sit stay.  Because, she laid down, sat up, laid down again.  And sat up again.  But didn’t move from her spot.  The third time was the charm for her (this was the third time we were trying to get that five minute stay check mark), and she and I passed.

 

Then we waited and waited and waited for the word to get on the road to the shore.  Thankfully, Irene was being the typical fickle woman, and only side swiped the Beach rather than hitting it head on, so we weren’t needed.  So we waited more for that first call out.

On October 2^nd, Deacon and his mom Cora where with me at Hone Quarry doing some water training.

While we were training that Sunday, an unlucky private plane was flying close by on a course from southern Virginia over the Allegheny Mountains to its final stop in Pennsylvania.    It was raining that day and the trees in the higher elevations of the mountains that ringed the quarry lake were rimmed in ice.  Quite pretty to look.  Deadly for the plane.  It disappeared from the radar around the time we were finishing up and loading the boat on to its trailer.

We got the call Tuesday evening to meet with the rest of the team and other dogs and handlers from several other Virginia SAR teams at 7AM Wednesday morning in the northwest corner of Rockingham County.  There was only a skeleton crew available for planning, and none of them were dog savy.  Then the head guy got a bright idea and snagged a few dog handlers from each team, told us what we were going to be searching, then left it up to us to plan the dog tasks. 

   

Our search area was the entire Gobblebark Mountain.  We split the mountain we were to search into smaller areas, 8 task areas in all.  The easy task I’d devised first, was snatched up quickly by another dog team and I was left with the task at the very other end of Gobblebark Mountain.  According to the map we had, there should have been a two track we could drive on that would get us close to the start of our task.  This little piece of short lived joy just reinforced the lesson we were taught as young orienteer’s- maps lie.  Especially about man-made stuff.  There wasn’t a road, let alone a two track in the area; there was just a path.  A boulder strewn, tree blocked path that not even an ATV could get through.

Do you see a trail through here?

We had to hike to the end of this “path” to even start the task.  Darcy was overjoyed that she got to run free for the whole time.  She found the teams that started before us several times.  She ran up the side of the mountain to find a team that was already in their sector.  And she kept stealing one of my team mates gloves out of his back pocket when he wasn’t paying attention. 

We had no radio communication, even with Civil Air Patrol in the sky to relay for us.  We did our radio check at our trucks, had one short communication a short distance in and then nothing until we got back to the trucks seven hours later.  However, we could hear what was going on over the radio at certain points.  Actually, we mostly heard what was going on in West Virginia and their search operations near Peru (pronounced PEE-rou J ).  We even could hear the Hardy County sheriffs office.  But nothing from our own base.  Twice during trek to just get to the start of the task, a Medi-vac helicopter was needed to extract two searchers on the West Virginia search teams.  One was heart problems and I think the other was a broken leg.  Thank goodness we didn’t have any injuries on any of our teams.

Two and half hours later we finally got to the GPS way point that showed us the drainage we needed to start up. And up and up and up we went.  All the way to the top.  Then all the way down to the bottom into Hardy County, in West by God Virginia.

The trip to the top was breath taking.  Literally.  I had to stop about 5 times to catch my breath.  Darcy on the other hand, probably ran up and down the mountain 3 or 4 times in the time it took me and my team to reach the top.  I had two skinny country guys from our local ground pounding team and one VA State Police officer with me.  The skinny guys ran circles around me and the police officer.  The police officer didn’t have to stop as much as I did, but he wasn’t running up the side of the mountain either.

Darcy having fun "finding" my walkers

 

  This guy could run circles around me, while climbing the mountain

 

Even out in the middle of nowhere, there was always evidence of a human presence.  There was a broken down cart with bicycle wheels, the ubiquitous glass liquor bottles 

and even this little trail marker up on top of the mountain:

We ended up sliding down Gobblebark into Hardy County, WV.  

It is not easy walking a contour line in that kind of elevation.  As much as I wanted to skirt around the back of the mountain to the other side, my aching ankles and knees told me it was going to be easier leaf skiing down into the hollow and find the right drainage to go back over the mountain.  Darcy was still bouncing between me and my team mates, just out of her skin excited she got to be the only dog out with three humans to watch her strut her stuff. 

This search ended up being about 7 hours long.  We travelled about 6-7 miles, had over 1000 foot changes in elevation, and only were active in our task area for about 2 hours.

 

The plane was eventually found near Peru, West Virginia.  Ironically, the end of our sector was closer to the crash site than it was to our trucks.

I was dead, but Darcy… she was ready for another 7 hours of fun on the mountain.  Not bad for her very first search.

Hitting the Wall

I’ve been stepping up the pressure on Deacon as we get closer to his certification tests. 

Deacon has got many flashes of incredible brilliance, interspersed with times of a southern California surfer dude attitude.  That’s the attitude where “I’ve worked long enough, it’s time to go home”.  Not what you want when you are in the middle of the woods, two hours into a five hour task. 

Just about every one of my dogs hits this stage in their training.  This is when training changes from fun and games into a job that has to be done. I call it hitting the wall.  The tasks move from being able to fall into a scent pool to tricky scenting conditions like swirling breezes, overlapping scent pools, buried sources and trying to extend the time between placement of source and the actual running  of the task.  I do this to start making Deacon think.  To make him start developing some problem solving ability.  I also move from just one or two sources to many multiples because, contrary to popular thinking, dogs know how to count.  And Deacon got to the point that after locating two sources, his brain went into neutral. 

There is such a thing as mental endurance, or as I read somewhere, nose time.  It is the time a dog is effectively using its nose to detect the target scent.  This also plays into the “hitting the wall” scenario.

To me, developing physical endurance is the easy part.  It's the mental endurance that is difficult.  Deacon has good physical endurance, he can run beside a bike for two miles, can hike three to fours hours or go on a fast trail ride with me on the horse for a couple of hours.  However, when I first started pushing him, he was only effectively using his nose for about 30 minutes at a time.  The 30 minute timer went off and, boom, it was like a switch got flipped off.  To the uninitiated, he continued to run around acting like he was actively searching.  To my eye, though, he really wasn’t working anymore. His whole demeanor changed.  He would work a bit manically, his nose was on the ground, snort like a pig pretending he was working, but he just wasn’t getting anywhere.  Just running around frantically, pushing his nose under this log or that clump of grass.

And that is what hitting the wall looks like.  It is messy and ugly and sometimes you just want to throw your hands up, march your dog back to the truck and head home.  The job was no longer fun or easy, it was WORK.  Almost every dog gets to this point in their career.  And almost every dog comes through the other side with a renewed devotion to the task, to the point that finding that source is the be all, end all, of their life.  It may not be “fun” anymore, but it becomes an avocation, a passion that they would rather do with their human partner under any kind of circumstance. 

This change in attitude does not come quickly nor does it come easily. It takes a dedication on the part of the human partner to remember the spark that made them pick this particular canine partner.  To remember what their tired confused canine partner was like, to coach them, and condition them. So the dog can come out the other side.  During this time is when the true partnership develops.  You see how your dog learns, and you develop training strategies that compliment his style. Your dog trusts you.

Ultimately, it is remembering how exciting this journey is going to be with your canine partner at your side.  That is what keeps you plugging away.  Through the ups and especially through the downs.  It is tedious and it is boring, this training to set a work ethic.  But, it will come.  That excitement, that joy, that devotion to the job.  We will get a partner that works WITH us, not FOR us.

By sticking with it, when it is work and not fun, showing to our dogs that we will stand with them no matter what, we get a dog that will perform in the rain, the snow, disasters, the heat, brush so thick a human couldn’t walk through it upright, all night, then all day the next day.  They want to do this with their human partner because it is the reason they live, to find the source and show it to their partner. 

And it is all the better because we are a team.