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comparison with the hundreds of mentions of Thomasville's glories: its magnificent vacation
homes and its huge oak tree.
Lessel Long, a Union soldier from Indiana imprisoned there, wrote at length about the
Thomasville citizens, who he believed “manifested much sympathy for us.” He also wrote of
the terror sowed by the bloodhounds of the South at Andersonville Prison. These were, he
said, the dogs brought from Cuba used to track slaves and to track Union prisoners trying to
escape. “There is no doubt but what thousands of our men would have made their escape if
it had not been for the dogs . . . They deterred many from making the effort to escape.”
A century and a half later, a different kind of southern scent-detection dog would play a
more benevolent role. The idea of bringing in cadaver dogs started when assistant city man-
ager Kha McDonald, born and raised in Thomasville, realized she wanted to know more
about that scrubby site with the small plaque. Thomasville had avoided the worst damage
from the Civil War, but mysteries remained. Hundreds of Union dead were unaccounted for.
Where were the dead who were treated at the Methodist Church buried? Was there a mass
grave near the Wolfe Street site? The legend was that Union soldiers were buried under Broad
Street, some distance away. That uncertain history was part of Kha's own legacy in a town
built on slavery. At one time, the slave population outnumbered the white population in Tho-
masville. The city has a park named after the first black graduate of West Point, Henry O.
Flipper, the son of slaves. “You can't escape that,” Kha said.
A historian by nature, Kha decided this part of Thomasville's Civil War history, as well
as the historic black cemetery, needed sunlight cast on it. She learned about cadaver dogs
through a town librarian who was with a Florida search team just south of Thomasville. Dogs,
Kha learned—including Suzi Goodhope's dogs—were being used in the Mississippi Delta to
find 800- to 1,200-year-old human remains from the mound-building civilizations that lived
there. Kha got in touch with Suzi, who connected her with cadaver-dog trainer Lisa Higgins.
Historic human remains weren't an obvious choice for Lisa. She had plenty of criminal
and missing persons cases to deal with and a grueling seminar schedule. Lisa also admitted
that in the beginning, she was deeply skeptical that the dogs were capable of detecting ancient
remains. She has been converted, partly by watching her own dogs alert on remains going
back more than 800 years, partly from watching other top handlers work their dogs. In sev-
eral instances, she's received clear confirmation from excavations.
So Lisa brought Dixee and Maggie to Thomasville. Suzi brought her two Belgian Malin-
ois, Temple and Shiraz, or, as she calls them, “the guttersnipe and the princess.” Temple was
a shelter rescue with post-traumatic kennel disorder and probably only part Malinois. Non-
etheless, she carried many of those genes: high drive, opinionated, and hardheaded. Shiraz
is like a piece of delicate, expensive china, also opinionated. With a fine nose. Shiraz's father
won best of breed at Westminster.
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