I find dead people...

Actually, I don’t, but I have couple of dogs that do the finding for me. I’ve been doing search and rescue(SAR) for close to 15 years now and my dogs and I have yet to find a live person. When I started in search and rescue with my local team, Blue and Gray SAR Dogs, I had no idea that we could use dogs to find dead people. Ben, my first SAR dog, made his one and only find up on the Blue Ridge Parkway. A suicide. Then my next dog, Finn, who is certified as a live find SAR dog, kept finding dead people. So when the Virginia Search and Rescue Council designed their Human Remains Detection Dog Standards, Finn was the first one to pass.

Finn’s ability has taken me places I never imagined I would go. We were in New Orleans after Rita and Katrina.

In the 9th Ward after Katrina and Rita

And in the summer of 2009, we were sent to the jungles of Guyana, South America to look for the flight crew of a plane that was missing.

Trying to get an injured Finn back to the forward base camp on the last day

And too many other local searches to keep track of. Our latest searches have been for a missing college student in Richmond, Virginia and victims of a serial killer in North Carolina.

Friends and family always thought I was a little off. But the fact that I now have 2 cadaver dogs and am in the process of training a third one, has merely confirmed that suspicion. I am a little off. I ask pregnant friends if I can have their placentas to train with. I actually had one friend offer it to me before she told me she was pregnant. She told me this story when she went in to the hospital to have her first child. While she was being wheeled into the delivery room, she told the nurses that she had a request that they may think is a little weird. The nurses assured her that nothing could surprise them, that they’ve heard it all. Well, she requested that they save her placenta so she could give it to me to train my cadaver dogs. The nurses paused a moment, and replied that, yep, that was one that they never heard before. My friend’s only request to me, was that the placenta not still be at her house when she got home with her new baby. It wasn’t.

Training a dog for this kind of work is not easy. It takes imagination and experience to design training scenarios that mimic searches I’ve been on. The tough thing is, every search is different and just when I think I’ve seen it all and trained for it, something brand new pops up. Finn and I have had to deal with many different scenes that I couldn’t train for. A most interesting one was a house fire. My training director at the time told me that unless the house was a log cabin with a tin roof we should be able to find fragments of bones, especially long bones such as the femur, and teeth. A log cabin with tin roof acts as a crematorium, and temperatures can get high enough to completely burn bone and teeth. Usually nothing is left, but a regular house burns unevenly and rarely does the temperature of the fire get high enough to burn bone.

We drove over an hour and half to get to the site of this fire. Then we had to take a tiny two track down into a ravine and then up the ridge to the other side. We rounded the curve in the two track and what should greet us, but a completely burnt out house that started out as a log cabin with a tin roof. Nothing was left but a huge pile of ash. Finn ran over the scene checking everything as if were another training day. Snorting often to clean out his nose and me washing his mouth out with the water bottle. He was eventually able to tell us where the elderly lady was when she passed and also where her ashes had been dragged out while the fire fighters dug through the remains of the house looking for her body. But there was nothing left of her.

I was on another search with my other dog, Cora:

in another state.We were looking for a college student that was missing and might have been buried at a construction site. This site was in the middle of a sketchy neighborhood, sketchy to the point that I had to have a police escort when I was walking the dogs prior to getting to work at the site. We were surrounded by news trucks and there were actually two news helicopters hovering over us as well. Cora was ecstatic to be the first one to work; she was as high as kite with excitement when I let her out of the truck and put her collar with the bell on her. Within the first 100 yards she does her indication, and quick as I can, I throw the ball at her before she can add a bark, because I don’t want the cameras on us! Come to find out, a man had been stabbed about 5 weeks earlier and bled out on that spot. We didn’t find the college student that site.

When my dog makes a find, I am thrilled. They’ve done what they’ve been trained for and have successfully completed their task. Then it is up to the police to finish the job. I get to go home and my dogs get a hamburger from Wendy’s. I get tired of people telling me that the dogs get depressed when they keep finding dead people. That depression comes straight down the leash and the dog reacts to the handler. Dogs don’t care if who they are looking for is alive or dead. All they want is the reward after making the find.

People ask me all the time, “how can you do this kind of work? Doesn’t it make you sad?” My reply to them is there is nothing I could do to change what has happened but I can certainly help the grieving family find some kind of resolution, even if it means a funeral. Then they don’t have to wonder about it for the rest of their lives.

I’ve been absent for the past several weeks trying to get ready for these guys:

The end of January Cora came into heat and I bred her to a beautiful yellow Lab out of Maryland, Ch Gateway’s Nothin’ But Trouble. He’s won many dog shows and he’s got a great personality. So step by step we got closer to her due date, which was supposed to be April 2^nd. I could tell, almost immediately, that she was pregnant. She thickened up quickly, got some rosey nipples and then started moving very carefully. But, I wouldn’t know for sure until about day 28 to day 35 whether she was truly pregnant. On day 35, I got to see this when we ultrasounded her!

I didn’t look for how many pups she had, because ultrasound puppy counts are notoriously inaccurate. All I wanted to see was one fetus that said she was pregnant. And I did. I continued to train her and take her on searches. But, about five weeks into her pregnancy, she turned to give me “the look”. It was the same one she gave me the last time she was pregnant. It said, I am done, my body is too big to this anymore and I just want to go home to the couch. So that’s what she did. Just about the same time, though, my search team started getting call after call after call for searches. I went on 4 cadaver searches with Finn in 4 weeks. And one of my other team mates made her first live find, of a little girl that went missing overnight down in Bedford, VA.

One week prior to her scheduled due date this what she looked like:

And the waiting continued. On March 26^th, I took a radiograph her to do a puppy count. I counted 7 pups, but others counted as many as 10 puppies.

The weekend of March 27^th, I had a friend help me move the behemoth of a whelping box into my laundry room, having been turned into the puppy room for the duration. I moved everything out of the laundry room and scrubbed everything down. Cleaned the stall mats that I put down to cushion the box away from the floor, dragged them in and then the box was placed on top.Nearly put my back out doing all that. I wanted to cut a piece of linoleum to put on the bottom of the box, and I thought I had a couple of days to complete that task. Oops, though, that was not to be.

I went on my morning rounds, seeing several sick animals. All the while just wanting to get home to check on her. I wasn’t really expecting anything, but she was so close and she had acted a little off first thing in the morning. Her main oddity was the fact that she ate breakfast a little more slowly than what was normal for her. She wasn’t nesting, because nesting for her means ripping things to shreds. None of that happened. So I left feeling pretty secure that it wasn’t going to happen today.

When I got home, I was greeted at the door by a very worried Finn and a couch that was doubling as a whelping box! Two pups already born, a mess on the couch and a very distressed and upset Cora. I picked up both pups, one still attached to the placenta and the other not breathing. I wasn’t able to save the pup that wasn’t breathing, so I concentrated on the one that was still with us. Over the next 3 hours I helped her have another five pups, one of which didn’t make it either. He got his head stuck in the way of another pup that was trying to get out and had his oxygen cut off. The rest of the whelping was uneventful and Cora and I ended up with five beautiful pups, all yellow.

Six days later everyone is doing well and all have more than doubled their birth weight. Even my runt.

Ramblings....

There is an easy way to kill old 4wheel drive trucks. And I found out today. Fortunately, it wasn’t my truck.

Today was the first day in about a week that I felt it was safe enough to try and get Big Brown Betsy, my ’96 Ford pickup truck, down off of my hill. She’s a wonderful truck and I love her dearly, but at her age her 4WD is a bit iffy. There is a small stretch on my driveway that it has to work or I could end turtling (upside down and can’t get back up). Today was also the day that I decided to get out of my mid winter funk and go do something, torn hamstrings be damned.

I have three places that I like to hike when I get tired of walking around my place. The problem is we still have 3 feet of snow on the ground and the going into the National Forest is hit or miss.I tried Slate Lick Lake first. The two track was not barricaded but there were no tire tracks, which proves that not everyone with 4WD vehicles are crazy enough to tempt fate on an unplowed National Forest road that leads to nowhere. And I wasn’t about to try and break a trail through the snow drifts. I wouldn’t have made it more than 100 yards before turning around, which would have made for some grumpy dogs that were excited about hiking more than the driveway at home. A quick turn around and we head to Paul State Park. Too many people there already. Since I had four dogs along with me, I didn’t think that would work out too well.

Famous last words: watch this!

There is an old quarry near my place, back in the National Forest that I love to hike around, but I didn’t think that would be open either. I am glad I went as it was open, barely. The road hadn’t been plowed, but there were many sets of tire tracks of some of the red necks trying out their 4WD, or stupid college students with Jeeps. So the crazy ones ended up at the quarry rather than the lake. This is where I learned how to kill a truck.

I parked at the last clear area, got the dogs out, locked up and headed out. I don’t think I’d gotten more than 100 feet before the first evidence of trouble. Someone had gotten stuck and spun their wheels so much the holes were at least 8-10 inches deep. Since the truck wasn’t there, I figured the tree bark that was plastered in the bottom of those holes had given them enough traction to get out.

A little further on was when I saw the first drops of transmission fluid. The mistake of many people when they are stuck is to gun the engine, sending the wheels flying and the transmission whining.

It looks like something had been shot

Which is the exact wrong thing to do, because slow and easy gets the job done when slipping and sliding. And it keeps the transmission from imploding. Then there was an even bigger blob. Poor thing is hemmoraging like it had been shot through an artery.

From the amount of transmission fluid I saw, I was amazed that the truck wasn’t abandoned where it got stuck. But I guess they got lucky and got out. I don’t think they are going to get much farther than home, if they get that far.

The rest of the hike was a pleasant end to a nice day. Although why the dogs thought it was good idea to go swimming the snow melt run off is a mystery to me.

Alpha Dog

I woke up this morning with my main man, Finn, not moving so well. I figured that he wrenched a lot of muscles trying to keep up with the young ones in the snow, then the irrational part of my brain kicked in, and I knew he'd actually ruptured a cervical (neck) disc and that he was about to become completely paralyzed. So he came with me to work for a full work up.

He ended up with a raging urinary tract infection with some struvite crystals thrown in for good measure. The good thing was, I was so busy at work, I didn't have time to brood on it and let my irrational side of the brain take over. I could easily have worked this into cancer of the spinal cord.

Anyway, I got home after dark and still had to go to feed the horses. Since Finn still wasn't moving very well and there is two feet of snow on the ground, I decided to leave him back at the house. The other dogs had a great walk in the snow (Deacon was able to get into the neighbors trash- had a little come to Jesus meeting over that), the horses were happy to get their hay and I was ready to go back to the house.

Walked through the door to the scene of dog food EVERYWHERE. And Finn sitting on the couch looking as innocent as a baby, with the only problem that he was the only one left in the house and had no one else to blame it on.

The moral of the story is don't leave the Alpha Dog behind even if it is for his own good. Or at least make sure the dog food is safely secured.

How to play in Snowmaggedon

Over the weekend my little hamlet was slammed with snow storm of almost biblical proportions. It wasn't as big as the blizzard of 95, where some areas of the mountains got almost 4 feet of snow, but this was close. I was trying to finish my morning appointments and get the ubiquitous milk and bread for the big snow in, and headed to WalMart for supplies. It turns out that the morning rush is when all the AARP members were out and I was able to move about three shuffling steps an hour. I eventually got home in time to avoid the worst it.

During the snow, the dogs, at least the younger ones, had it right. Run until you drop, sleep in front of the fire and repeat.

I have two young Labradors whose favorite game to play in the world when I am down feeding the horses is "stick". Basically you find a stick, poke the other in the side, take off at the speed of light and wait for the other to catch up and grab it. Then the two of them run around, grunting and coughing, twisting and tripping until the stick breaks. I think the goal is to see how long the stick holds up. I never really understand the whole reason for it, although, Deacon and Darcy will play until they both drop. However, two feet of snow can really put a damper on how much running a dog can do. Deacon makes up for the lack horizontal motion by trying to leap in the air.

If you are a horse, like my Lady, you don't play in the snow. You just endure.

And my neighbor just finished plowing me out. Right in time for the next storm!

Cora

Cora came into heat last Saturday and hopefully in 12-14 days she’ll be ready to be bred. In the mean time though this is where I’ll find Deacon and Finn.

Cora in the crate and Deacon and Finn circling her like a shark in a feeding frenzy. Fortunately, Finn and Deacon get along really well, so all they do is moan their lust to Cora. She’s quite funny in that even when she is standing heat, she won’t let them touch her.

Cora's baby daddy is a stunning dog at Belquest Kennel in Mount Airy, MD. He's BISS Gateway's Nothing But Trouble. He's got several dogs in his pedigree that have given the breed a number beautiful working dogs. Not only is he gorgeous, but he's a sweetheart and loves to play ball! Here is a link to his webpage:

http://www.belquest.com/trouble.html

What I am going to have to do over the next week or so, is figure out when it is going to be the best time to take Cora up for a visit with Trouble. I do this by measuring her progesterone levels. When it gets above 5.0 she should be ready. On her first day she was only 0.2. On her 8^th day, she was still only 0.4. By her 10^th day, she’d jumped to 2.1. Which means that a hormone called LH has started to rise and she will probably ovulate in the next couple of days. It takes a couple of days after ovulation for the eggs to mature and be ready to be fertilized.

The boys started getting really interested in her on Sunday, so I knew things were starting to progress! I drew more blood yesterday to measure her progesterone, and her level was 5.7, which means she's just ovulated. The best time to breed is about 48 hours after she ovulates. Of course, there is a massive snow storm scheduled for this weekend, so I hope to get things done before it hits.

Here's hoping for a beautiful healthy litter in 9 weeks.

Old Dogs....

This year my beautiful, smart and fearless Finn turns 10 in May. And on January 1^st he passed what is quite possibly his last recertification for wilderness search and rescue. Even at 10 years of age he can still search circles around the younger dogs on my team, and he proved it with this recert. He was required to search 40 acres in less than an hour, and find any and all subjects in that task area. It took him 10 minutes. He’s been everywhere and done everything, so that you can’t trick him. We try to do that with the older more experienced dogs when we are setting up training exercises so they don’t blow through things and actually get a decent work out, but the Finn man can’t be tricked. He worked so fast that I didn’t have time to take any pictures while he was working. All I got was him at the end with my team mate that was the subject for the test.

Finn was given to me almost 10 years ago, even before I knew that I needed a new search dog. A friend of mine realized that my first search dog was not going to be able to recover from a blown tendon that I was trying to rehabilitate him from. So she gave me the last pup in a litter of Labradors she’d just had. At nine weeks this yellow ball of fur ended up in my life. As he grew up and learned about the job of a search and rescue dog, the I never would have guessed the places his ability would take me. We were in New Orleans after Katrina and Rita to assist with body recovery. And just this past summer we were in the jungles of Guyana, South America looking for a flight crew that went down in a small airplane in November of 2008. He was the oldest dog on the mission and did better than some of the younger dogs.

I am also a state evaluator for dog teams and on the same day that I was recertifying with Finn another team mate of mine had to recertify with his dog, Jarod. Jarod is another old timer at 8 years old. He’s a Border Collie that probably has more years in front of him than Finn does. It’s fun to watch these older guys do their job. They adore being able to get out and show off their stuff. The only way that I can tell that Jarod isn’t the youngster I remember him as, is the more noticeable gray mustache on his muzzle. I don’t even think that he’s lost a step from what he was as a 3 year old.

January 1^st was what I called the geriatric day. Finn is 10, Jarod is 8. His handler, Brian Rock has been recovering from a horrible rotator cuff surgery he had way back in May, and I’ve been recovering from multiple orthopedic injuries. All I can say is, I am glad they were older and were able to get through their 40 acre recerts in record time!