Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ploring the site. While June Bug had correctly indicated by not indicating, she was a slightly
bad dog for grazing on the clippings. Still, she was better than most. Other dogs snagged the
horse hooves, but their handlers got increasingly stuck in the narrative tar, committing them-
selves more and more to a false story as their dogs hesitated and sniffed around the tempting
piles of dirt. Several of the dogs alerted on one of the two fake graves. The one that had a
generous shot of dead-mouse juice poured across the top.
Mouse juice was Roy and Suzie's serendipitous discovery on a cross-country drive with
some bagged and frozen mice in an ice chest that they were planning to use as a training dis-
traction. It got hot. The ice melted, the bag broke, the mice swam. “Holy cats!” Suzie said,
her eyes wide with the memory of opening the chest. That's the strongest language I heard
her use. The smell must have been staggering.
Roy said, “Cool!” he liquid was even better than the original. He poured it on a mound
of dirt. Dozens of blowflies arrived immediately. Mouse juice became another essential ele-
ment for the elaborate set. Later, Roy and Suzie shared their recipe. I didn't need to write it
down. I would remember. Put dead mice in a Mason jar. Add water. Wait a couple of weeks.
Liberally pour the libation wherever you want a dog distracted.
It's a sting operation. Done right, as it was in Georgia, it should be reasonably humiliating.
As Roy explained to chagrined handlers in their debriefing, slightly buried animal carcass is
even better. “Roadkill is phenomenal!” Roy declared. He was beaming. This is a man who,
with his wife and partner, experiments on how many hours it takes before dogs alert on fresh
blood, or whether incinerated placenta attracts cadaver dogs as much as wet placenta does.
During the debriefing, a couple of handlers tried to make excuses. Roy and Suzie nodded
sympathetically, listened carefully, then gently dissuaded them. Even if the dogs were getting
chewy treats at bedtime, they shouldn't snack on the job. That's one reason many working-
dog handlers wean their dogs off food rewards, although some breeds and some dogs will still
work harder for food than toys. Toys can be just as distracting. I've been at patrol dog train-
ings that included rooms filled with tennis balls in one corner and illegal drugs in another,
driving the toy-crazy dogs nuts.
Food, though, unlike purposefully placed dog toys, tends to be almost everywhere on
searches, especially at disaster scenes. If a dog is too drawn to food, that can divert precious
resources and time. Art Wolff was searching overseas after an earthquake, and one of the dogs
on the scene alerted on a spot in a collapsed building. Rescue teams brought in the heavy
equipment and started moving the collapsed material. After several hours, they uncovered the
refrigerator with rotting food the dog was alerting on. The dog was sent home.
The hoof-and-mouse humiliation was only the beginning that day. Before the sun set in
Georgia, Roy and Suzie had played with the minds of a number of handlers in a number of
different ways—telling them to stay within a crime-taped area when the wind was bringing
