Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
them over with their noses, ignoring their handlers, to get their toys. They were no longer
marks. Kevin had gotten the handlers to convince their dogs to commit more and more in-
terest to the hunt.
It's critical that a working dog be able to lead, to independently decide where and how to
search, instead of timidly looking to the handler for cues. It is the inverse of the relationship
that most trainers suggest we have with our household pets.
I watched about twenty dogs work that day—all shapes, sizes, and personalities. They were
hooked; they all wanted the same thing. The big dog-aggressive chocolate Lab who had been
getting up in the muzzles of other dogs realized better stuff could be found in the boxes.
Dogs? What dogs? Where's my toy?
“The dog itself always has a high degree of interest,” Kevin pointed out. “They're very
aware of what's going on around them. The simplest thing will draw them in if it's intriguing
enough.”
As more and more boxes were added, “It should look like fanning cards,” said Kevin,
spreading his fingers open from a fist, one by one in a fluid movement. his was the cascade
of understanding that the dogs experienced as they flowed among the boxes, sorting scent
like pros. Kevin's easy hand motion showed the importance of learning things in sequence.
And the importance of remembering to keep things magical.
• • •
I didn't know how to keep things magical in my early days with Solo. I was trying to follow
basic directions. Just as I started to get my timing down on the buckets—swoop and present,
swoop and present—Solo was starting to get bored. Soon he ignored the liver treats. he
same thing gets old quickly. Essentially, Solo was learning the parts of speech when he wanted
to parse paragraphs. So, of course, did I. But I had read far enough ahead in
Cadaver Dog
Handbook
to know that our own desires—to leap ahead of mechanical scent imprinting be-
fore Solo had it down solid—were not always desirable.
Nancy had anticipated our boredom. We wouldn't leave the buckets, but she added anoth-
er layer. She pulled something that was more interesting than liver treats out of her capacious
canvas pants pocket. I took it gingerly. It was a PVC pipe, about two inches in diameter and
nine inches long, drilled full of small holes, the ends capped tight with purple plumber's glue.
A little bit of death was trapped within on a piece of cloth, its odor gently seeping through
the holes. I sniffed, partly to reassure myself that I could do what Nancy had done: stick it in
my pocket without having to think twice about it. An old, independent Appalachian woman,
increasingly vague with dementia, had wandered away from her cabin. She had been dead
twelve days before her family found her. I thought I knew the smell of human decay, hav-
ing worked in nursing homes throughout my teenage years. But this pipe's smell wasn't the
