Crime Scene Investigators

Originally published in TC Dog in 2005.

It's late afternoon on a late summer day when a dedicated core group of people gather in a parking lot at Rum River Park in Anoka County. Some come alone, but most have brought their pet dogs. The owners know that there's serious work ahead, but the dogs are exuberant, ready to play their favorite game. The dogs don't know it, but this game is training them for a serious job-canine search and rescue.

The trainer for tonight is Kathy Newman, a friendly, focused middle-aged woman, clearly at home as a teacher. Considered one of the top search and rescue trainers in Minnesota, she has a national reputation for dog and dog-handler training. Half a dozen times a year, she is invited to teach police departments and other first responders around the country to learn how to use dogs for rescue work. She has been a member of MinnSARDA, the Minnesota Search and Rescue Dog Association, since 1981, the organization's first year. Local handlers know they are lucky to learn from one of the best.

Tonight, Newman has brought Bandit, her new dog, a Belgian Malinois whom she clearly loves. Bought from a breeder in Florida, Newman searched for a dog she could train to work with her in the field. This is the first time in a long time that she doesn't own a dog already trained and certified in search and rescue. Boe and Cody, two dogs she'd had for years died after long and distinguished careers, one last winter and the other in August. Bandit may not be able to replace Cody, who, with more than 150 searches was called the Grande Dame of Search and Rescue Dogs, but he's got promise.

At home with Newman, Bandit is a dog in motion, a grown dog with the hyperactivity of a puppy. Her farm home, on an unpaved road near the city of Ramsey, is decorated with photos of her dogs and ribbons from her years spent showing horses. Bandit has a large outdoor kennel with his own dog house for daytime, but at night he comes inside to be with her. He jumps into our laps, licks our faces, nibbles on shoelaces, and plays with his toys, never tiring of games. He doesn't seem to know the word "no."

"He doesn't seem very obedient," Newman admits, "but that's the very trait that makes him a good search dog. Many of these search and rescue dogs would fail in obedience competition. They may not always be obedient, but in the field, they know what they are doing. We call it intelligent disobedience. The dogs and handlers are a team-they're partners. When it comes to finding people, the handler has to learn that the dog is always right."

The best dogs for this job, Newman says, come from the herding, sporting, and working groups. Most popular are dogs such as border collies, German shepherds, Labs, golden retrievers, and Malinois. Mixed breeds and purebreds alike can make great search and rescue dogs, but all should have a high play drive that can be channeled into the game of search.

"Dogs involved in search and rescue need to be completely non-aggressive and extensively socialized," she says. "They must like babies and old people. You want active, confident, curious dogs. Medium-sided dogs are the most popular because they're easier to lift. We look for a dog with a high play drive, and we increase that drive. We want a dog who won't give up."

When most people think of search and rescue dogs, they think of a bloodhound with its nose to the ground, following a scent trail to find missing people, or perhaps, a criminal. Trailing is only one of the types of training dogs can take. Dogs can be certified in air scent, land and water cadaver searches, disaster training, and evidence searches, in addition to the bloodhound's trailing techniques.

Tonight's focus area is air scent. Air scent-trained dogs sniff the air, not the ground. They follow a chemical scent cone that emanates off all human beings, the smell of fear or excitement. These dogs work off-leash, learning to run ahead, find someone, then return to the handler and bring him or her to the found person.

The plan for tonight is to send volunteers to hide in the woods so the dogs can locate them. The volunteer "lost persons" choose the trail, marking it so the handler can follow, placing themselves downwind so the dogs in training can more easily pick up the scent. There are several teams, some beginners and some more experienced. Each team has a dog to train as well as a handler and their own lost person for a dog to find.

I am teamed with Darlene Warnhoff, who has driven in from Virginia, Minn. and Jackie Pospisil, a homemaker from Lakeville, Minn. Jackie is our team's lost person. We're along to learn and to leave our own scent trail which the dog is supposed to ignore.

It's not just the dogs who are in training. Would-be handlers like Pospisil and Warnhoff have to be certified as well, passing a 160-question written test and proving in the field that they have the real-world skills like base camp operation, crime scene protection, and compass and map reading. The handler must know when to be flexible, learning to trust the dog and follow it. Pospisil is still in training, but she hopes she'll be certified by December. Warnhoff has less experience, but she and her daughter April have been coming to help out and learn what they can about search and rescue since June. 'We love dogs," she says, "and this is something we can do that helps people."

Led by Pospisil, we take a walking path for several hundred yards, tying ribbons to trees limbs, a signal for the handler who will follow with the dog. She is careful to put the markers high above the dog's sight line since some dogs cheat by following the ribbons and not the scent. I follow behind the group, leaving my scent along with the two other women.

We turn off the walking path to head into the woods, wandering back and forth across the same paths several times for about a half-mile before Pospisil picks a location a few feet off the road, out of sight. Warnhoff calls base camp on her walkie-talkie. "This is T2 to base. We're in position. It's 7:30 p.m." Pospisil crouches down, hiding. Warnhoff is in the woods about 10 feet away. I stand by the road in plain sight. We are three scent cones in the fading light, and Bandit has to find only one of us. . At 7:55 p.m., Bandit sniffs an article of Pospisil's clothing and begins the search. Kathy Newman follows her dog, keeping in radio contract with Pospisil as the dog follows our scent. There's nothing for Pospisil, or any of us, to do but wait. It's getting darker and it's starting to get chilly, but it's not too cold for the mosquitoes. Being lost, even if it's pretend, isn't much fun.

Pospisil, however, is in high spirits. She likes the education she's getting. "Every time I've come out, I've learned new things. You learn things like watching for the dogs' tails to go up when they get close," she says. "And, it's amazing to see how much the dogs learn. They get excited, and the handler has to learn how to read what her dog is communicating to her." Training, for handlers and dogs, is as much about understanding how to work together as a team as it is about learning specific skills.

Meanwhile, Newman is confused by the placement of the ribbons in the trees. They're hard to see, even with flashlights, and there are a few stray ribbons left from a previous night's training. The walkie-talkie crackles as she checks with Pospisil about her location. They are close. The dog doesn't need the ribbons, just his nose.

Bandit moves back and forth working the fringes of the narrowing scent cone. In a real-life situation, a team of dogs might work a grid pattern till a scent was found, making it easier for the search and rescue teams to cover more ground in shorter time. Tonight, it's just Bandit.

Newman may be uncertain where we are hidden, but Bandit is sure he is close to finding us. By this time, it's too dark for us to see anything, but we can hear voices, one of them canine, coming toward us. It takes another 10 minutes, but Bandit locates us, flinging himself at my chest and nearly knocking me down. I've been told that if he finds me first, I should ignore him, but I don't have to. Realizing immediately that I'm not the goal, he abandons me for Pospisil. He's beside himself with excitement. The game is over and Bandit has won. "It's an M-22" Newman says into the walkie-talkie to the people waiting at base camp. "A live find."

Bandit is praised all the way to the parking lot. Most real searches aren't glamorous. Sometimes there are lives at stake, but often, the work is not so exciting. Cadaver searches aren't fun, but they're necessary. Dogs are called upon to find drowned fishermen under 30 feet of water, or the bodies of murder victims or suicides. Dogs can find evidence in crimes, as well as finding lost children. They are heroes because they can use their noses to find things people can't find, and they aren't deterred by skepticism or discouraged by preconceived notions of failure. Their partners, the search and rescue dog-handlers, are heroes because they can work for no reward except the knowledge that sometimes, what they do helps repair the world, just a little bit. The training is over for this night. Many trainers have an hour or more to drive home and they're tired. For these folks, however, the long hours and hard work is worth it. They'll be back again for another session very soon. They know that if they and their dogs have the right stuff, someday the searches and rescues will be real.