Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
state of mind would be essential to the work ahead. I saw it as “bad dog” mode; it wasn't what
I was used to. Zev had walked quietly and steadily at my side in a perfect heel. He got de-
pressed and shut down if I scowled at him. Even Megan, though she cared not a whit whether
I approved of what she did, was obedience-trained. Their good behavior was a reflection on
me. I had tenure. I was a teacher of dogs and humans.
Solo was brutally rebooting my canine worldview. According to Nancy, I had my first
working dog. As far as she was concerned, any male dog who was interesting or worthwhile
was a “macho jackass.” Any good female was a “bitch from hell.” These were compliments.
Sweet, compliant dogs were boring, and Nancy wanted nothing to do with them. Solo was
making me miserable while achieving comparative perfection in Nancy's eyes. I could feel her
already skeptical assessment of my potential nosedive. I was not a bitch from hell. I was try-
ing my best to be compliant, but I couldn't even coordinate my limbs.
“That's it,” Nancy instructed when she heard Solo yodeling at me for about the third time
because he wasn't getting rewarded. “There's his alert!”
If I hadn't been so frustrated, I would have marked this as a special moment in a working
dog's life, like Solo getting his tribal name—“Whines with Brio.” The behavior of an alert, or
what some in the sniffer-dog business call a “final indication,” is supposed to be something
that comes naturally to the dog yet is distinctive. For most narcotics dogs, the alert means
sitting with a focused stare at the spot where the drug smell is coming from. A few drug dogs
still dig and scratch, though that “aggressive alert” is disappearing, seen as old-school. Bomb
dogs never used it, for obvious reasons. Nancy and I talked: Solo's distinctive whine com-
bined with a sit might become his trained alert to tell me he had not only found the material
we were looking for, he was committing himself to that spot. More important, I could say on
a search, “This is what Solo does when he detects the odor of human remains. He sits and
sings a cappella.”
That moment wasn't in our immediate future. If it ever came. This laying of the scent
foundation and formulating an alert were the first baby steps on the long road to mastery.
It wasn't just the scent that Solo needed to recognize. He needed to be willing to go any-
where to find it. That meant turning his natural drive into environmental toughness. I was
slowly starting to understand why working-dog trainers liked dogs who were pains in the rear,
who destroyed crates, who tore up the insides of cars, who challenged everything, who tried
to jam three toys in their mouths at once. The first time I met West Virginia working-dog
breeder and trainer Kathy Holbert, she was in the yard offhandedly throwing a dog's rubber
Kong. It landed repeatedly in the middle of a heavy brush pile that looked like a funeral pyre,
the kind of awkward toss that makes most people curse. Only Kathy was doing it on purpose,
and the young shepherd was diving into the rough limbs, making them part like water. Kathy
was developing the dog's nose and drive.
