Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
cadaver dogs. We were in the parking lot of the police K9 unit's headquarters, cutting up ma-
terial for training aids: an old sheet that had lain for days underneath an undiscovered body
in an apartment. It was malodorous but not nauseating, and we didn't need the whole thing:
just six-inch-by-six-inch patches that we could pop into Mason jars. The scissors would be
bagged and tossed. We knelt in front of our bounty to make careful cuts, then rocked back
on our heels. We had to make sure our double-nitrile-gloved hands didn't touch anything ex-
cept the material. We were smiling. Solo was whining in the car, waiting for training. It was
a beautiful evening.
I permanently borrowed a wide variety of kitchen storage containers from David, whose
home-chef habits benefited me on several fronts: Mason jars, honey and jam jars, bigger Rub-
bermaid and Cambro and gallon glass jars for holding the smaller jars, all storage for Solo's
training materials. I bought others new. Using an assortment would prevent Solo from associ-
ating the smell of any one container with the scent of the dead. If I were ever called to testify,
I wasn't going to be trapped by a good attorney into admitting it was possible that my dog
was trained to smell and alert on plastic storage containers, or Ziploc bags, or cotton sheets,
instead of the human remains I was trying to train him on.
There's great debate about whether dogs get rewarded accidentally for finding whatever
storage material you are using instead of the training material you want him to find. Or for
alerting on the smell of the gloves you use to place the samples, for that matter. Some trainers
and handlers contend that material should be stored only in glass jars with metal lids, or it
will be contaminated, and you will inadvertently cross-train your dog on plastic bags. Others
insist that material needs to be stored in everything and everywhere: teeth in the freezer in a
freezer bag, dried blood in the fridge in a jar, bone in the pantry.
Almost everyone believes that if your state laws allow it, it's ideal to train your dog on the
wide range of stages humans go through before they disappear entirely—from fresh tissue
and blood, to what's called greasy or wet bone, to adipocere, to the dry bones of the desert,
and even the ashes of the crematorium.
Everyone agrees that exposing dogs to whole bodies, in their various stages of decomposi-
tion, is great training. A cadaver-dog handler's version of paradise is tucked into the western
corner of North Carolina. Western Carolina University calls it the FOREST, an acronym for
Forensic Osteology Research Station. Do not, even lovingly, call it a body farm in front of its
founders. The site is up a gravel road and a wooded hill, surrounded by a huge cyclone fence
with razor wire.
Paul Martin recently graduated from Western Carolina with an anthropology degree.
Paul's research work kept creeping closer to his dog work. He was a former sheriff K9
handler, then a cadaver-dog handler. As an undergraduate student, Paul realized that the new
FOREST could help not only forensic anthropologists and their students with training and
