Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Solo also needed to learn to modulate, so that if we were on an actual search, the buoys
that searchers threw down each time he alerted would define a small area for dive teams, not
an entire lake of dog screams. Sending a diver into murky water with snags or dangerous
current, based only on an insufficiently trained dog's alert, isn't just a waste of time. It's en-
dangering living people to recover a dead one. The first three times we went out to train on
water, Solo screamed incoherently, even when we were a hundred yards or farther away from
the scent source, lunging in frustration for the reward toy, which I had stupidly placed in the
breast pocket of my life preserver.
Solo was in scent, just not the strongest scent. I threw up my hands, Nancy laughed and
shook her head, explained the principles again, and around the lake we went once more.
Nancy wanted him quieter, and she wanted him closer to the source. I agreed.
Dogs who have worked on land have to learn a whole range of new behaviors in a boat,
where a dog needs to give increasingly strong cues to the handler as the scent gets stronger.
Solo needed to learn to use what little physical freedom he had to tell me and the boat driver
to follow his lead, by turning this way and that, or by going from the front of the boat to the
back. He needed to communicate with the captain that the boat was moving into or away
from the perfume rising from a body far beneath the water's surface. Solo, working on land,
is usually able to run where the scent is strongest and lie there. He can work out problems
on his own timetable, not that of a moving boat. If I know he is honing in on something, I
can slow down a bit and let him work. Water is a different gig. Instead of just moving himself
closer and closer to the strongest emanation of scent, he needed to tell the boat driver exactly
what he wanted. His bossy attitude would come in handy—if he could learn to give clear
directions.
Andy Rebmann wrote much of the topic on cadaver dogs, but Marcia Koenig wrote the
chapter on water cadaver. It was only after studying the illustrations in that chapter, watching
Solo on water, and watching a bunch of experienced water cadaver dogs that I started to fully
understand the fundamental differences that dogs—and their handlers—face in water work.
And how dangerous a “three-dimensional problem” can be for everyone when flood stages,
boiling currents, and logjams are in the mix.
Marcia researched and re-created an extraordinary search and recovery using dogs on a
flooded Ohio River. Her hypothesis is that dogs alert where water breaks around an object,
where scent gets strongest, and then suddenly disappears. The handlers on the Ohio River
search all noted the same phenomena. Nikki, a German shepherd, had an entirely new re-
action: Her bottom jaw vibrated as she worked scent. She was still nearly a mile and a half
downstream from the victim. As the boat got closer and closer to the body, Nikki gulped wa-
ter, spat it back out, clawed, tried to jump into the water. When the boat crossed the invisible
scent line, just upstream of where the body was located, she visibly relaxed. She smelled noth-
