Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
is not forever. The nose's abilities diminish with age, with disease, with a series of micro-injur-
ies, Larry Myers noted. People's noses aren't that different. Human scent expert Avery Gilbert
wrote that human olfactory performance starts to deteriorate when people are in their forties.
This nose degradation story comes with caveats: Perfumers, Gilbert said, get better with age.
“A given seventy-five-year-old may outperform a given twenty-five-year-old. . . . Experience
and skill more than compensate for any dimming of acuity that comes with age.”
The same can be true of dogs, according to Deak Helton. Experience, skill, and good phys-
ical condition can help a dog compensate for certain kinds of aging. I've seen it with several
of the Durham Police Department's patrol dogs, since I've watched them now for more than
six years. A couple of them, around Solo's age, simply get the job done. Perhaps not as dra-
matically, at a frenetic run, as they did a few years before, but with such admirable efficiency
and clear knowledge that it's not until they're back in the patrol cars that you realize the older
dogs finished the job in half the time.
Watching those dogs get older made the issue of “retiring” Solo seem overwrought. What
does it mean to retire from part-time volunteer work? All I knew was that I wasn't ready to
quit.
• • •
The small lump on Solo's leg, just above his dewclaw, appeared a few months after I noticed
his occasional limp. I called the vet immediately, but by the time David and I got there, I had
talked myself into the obvious diagnosis—bone cancer. Osteosarcoma in German shepherds,
more frequently seen in males than females, is common. It shows up on those long leg bones
at a median age of seven and a half. By the time a limp appears, the cancer has usually meta-
stasized to the lungs. Cure rates are low.
I assured myself and David, trying to ignore the gaping nausea in my chest, that Solo had
had a good life, an active one, and while it would be truly sad to lose him, it wasn't a tragedy.
We'd had a nice run. I laid out the limited treatment options in my head, to be ready for the
vet's arguments. We'd do surgery, sure, but no amputation, and no radiation or chemo.
David and I had already had this discussion about Solo's shortened life span because of
where we train and search. That nose, those lungs, those feet and legs have been exposed to
all sorts of crap. Swamps and fields filled with runoff, herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals.
Abandoned houses filled with chemicals and lead paint. Wrecking yards with heavy oils and
antifreeze slowly oozing into the ground. One time we worked on fields that had just been
sprayed with sludge—human waste treated with heavy doses of chlorine. After that, I had a
wide-ranging conversation with a friend who is a public health epidemiologist. He knew a
lot about sludge. Sterilized human poop is somehow more disgusting than its original form.
To say nothing of human garbage that has steeped in landfills for decades until it oozes out as
