What the Dog Knows

by Cat Warren

  The courts have consistently found that patrol dogs used for apprehension do not constitute the use of deadly force. Robinette v. Barnes, 854 F.2d 909 (6th Cir. 1988), is one of the earliest opinions. During a search of a car dealership because an alarm had gone off, a handler sent his dog into a darkened area after giving the K9 warning. The suspect was lying under a car, and the dog bit him in the neck, killing him. This is the only major legal case at this point involving a dog fatality. There are, however, numerous lawsuits contending “excessive force” in using dogs for suspect apprehension. Sometimes entire departments come under justified scrutiny, such as Prince George’s County police K9 unit in the 1990s. The Washington Post, especially reporter Ruben Castaneda, did numerous stories on the Prince George K9 unit, including, for example, “FBI Probing Canine Unit; Lawsuits Recount Attacks by Pr. George’s Police Dogs” (April 4, 1999), A1. By 2007, the K9 unit, which had operated under a consent decree, improved to the extent that a federal judge ruled the unit no longer needed oversight.

  The section on Steve Sprouse being shot depended on a number of sources, including Steve himself, but also newspaper articles at the time of the shooting, as well as a court case filed by the arrested and charged defendant. That case was dismissed.

  9: Into the Swamp

  Interviews and correspondence include those with Mike Baker; Deborah Palman; Milo Pyne, NatureServe’s senior regional ecologist for the southeastern United States; and North Carolina State University botany doctoral student Wade Wall. Ellerbee Creek Watershed Association’s naturalist tours of the Durham area also helped me re-create the flora of this search area. Though I did not use names in this account, no facts were changed.

  Two books were helpful, especially Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont, by Timothy P. Spira (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); and Field Guide to the Piedmont, by Michael A. Godfrey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

  Deborah Palman’s account of distance alerts comes partly from a lecture she gave at the National Search Dog Alliance February 2011 conference, in Eatonton, Georgia, and from her article, “ ‘Distant Alerts’—Long Distance Scent Transport in Searches for Missing Persons,” USPCA Canine Courier 22, no. 1, March 2011: 47–51. It can be downloaded from emainehosting.com/mesard/pdf_documents/Distant%20Alerts.pdf.

  10: Cleverness and Credulity

  Interviews and correspondence for this chapter include those with Mike Baker, Terry Fleck, Texas Tribune managing editor Brandi Grissom, Lisa Lit, Larry Myers, Andy Rebmann, and Roger Titus, as well as numerous personal communications with handlers and trainers, and my own training experience and observation.

  Books important to this chapter include Harry G. Frankfurt’s punchy On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), originally published as an article in Raritan Quarterly Review 6, no. 2, Fall 1986; Oskar Pfungst’s Clever Hans (The Horse of Mr. Von Osten): A Contribution to Experimental Animal and Human Psychology (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911), available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33936/33936-h/33936-h.htm; Bowling’s Police K9 Tracking; Ensminger’s Police and Military Dogs, as well as Ensminger’s blog: http://doglawreporter.blogspot.com/. The two New York Times stories about bed bugs were “A New Breed of Guard Dog Attacks Bedbugs,” by Penelope Green (March 10, 2010), Home and Garden section; and “Doubts Rise on Bedbug-Sniffing Dogs,” by Cara Buckley (November 11, 2010), New York Region News section.

  The piece on dog alerts, “Handler Beliefs Affect Scent Detection Dog Outcomes,” by Lisa Lit, Julie B. Schweitzer, and Anita M. Oberbauer, was published in Animal Cognition 14, no. 3, 2011: 387–394; Lit has also written on search-dog and handler performance: “Effects of Training Paradigms on Search Dog Performance,” Lisa Lit and Cynthia A. Crawford, Applied Animal Behaviour Science 98, 2006: 277–292.

  The sections on John Preston and Keith Pikett depended on lengthy investigative journalist reports, especially from Florida Today and the Texas Monthly. The New York Times also covered the Pikett trials. The Innocence Project of Texas report, “Dog Scent Lineups: A Junk Science Injustice” (September 21, 2009), can be accessed at http://www.ipoftexas.org/documents; the CNN videos of Keith Pikett with his dogs can be accessed at http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/05/texas.sniffer.dogs.controversy/#cnnSTCVideo.

  The section on Sandra M. Anderson utilized numerous news sources. The fulsome language of the Archaeology magazine article entitled “Hounding the Dead: A Remarkable Michigan Mutt Sniffs out Ancient Human Remains,” by Brenda Smiley, Archaeology 53, no. 5, 2000, was followed several years later by an online feature written by an intern: “Canine Case Closed?” about Sandra Anderson’s conviction, http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/dogs/index.html, accessed November 2011. Two research papers on the web were especially helpful: “No, Your Friend Cannot Do Magic: United States v. Sandra Marie Anderson and Cadaver Dogs on Trial,” by Liz Burne, http://www.searchdogsne.org/reference.html, accessed December 2011; and “Fraudulent Use of Canines in Police Work,” by Daniel A. Smith, Lincoln Park Police Department, http://ebookbrowse.com/fraudulent-use-of-canines-in-police-work-pdf-d18075497, accessed December 2011.

  11: All the World’s a Scenario

  Interviews and correspondence for this chapter include those with Brad Dennis, search director for KlaasKids Foundation; Roy and Suzie Ferguson; Lisa Higgins and her granddaughter Haylee; Nancy Hook; Benjamen Ortiz; Andy Rebmann; Arpad Vass; and Roane County Sheriff Detective Art Wolff, founder of Tennessee Special Response Team-A. Seminars where scenarios were used included a February 2011 National Search Dog Alliance seminar in Eatonton, Georgia; a September 2011 Washington Explorer Search and Rescue (WESAR) DogMeet in Bremerton, Washington; an October 2011 Network of Canine Detection Services Working Dog Seminar in Holly Springs, Mississippi; a November 2011 Cadaver Dog Workshop at Western Carolina University; and an August 2011 training with Tennessee Special Response Team-A in Sevierville, Tennessee.

  The scenarios that Art Wolff and his team develop are sophisticated and invaluable, and I am appreciative of their generosity in letting me write about them.

  The Winthrop Point isn’t a widely advertised phenomenon; indeed, it doesn’t exist on the web.

  The scenario that Brad Dennis used to help educate handlers was based on the rape and murder of Chelsea King in San Diego in 2010: see http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/17/chelsea.king.gardner.plea/index.html and “Creation of a Monster, John Gardner,” by Don Bauder, San Diego Reader, http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/jun/27/citylights1-creation-monster-john-gardner/, accessed June 2012. The Washington State study cited by Brad Dennis is Case Management for Missing Children Homicide Investigation, Report II, by Katherine M. Brown, Robert D. Keppel, Joseph G. Weis, and Marvin Skeen (published by cooperative agreement between Rob McKenna, attorney general of Washington, and the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2006), http://www.atg.wa.gov/ChildAbductionResearch.aspx#_jmp0_, accessed December 2011.

  12: The Grief of Others

  This chapter is based on my own search experience, my academic and professional knowledge of the media, personal conversations with numerous other cadaver-dog handlers and trainers, and correspondence and interviews with Brad Dennis, Nancy Hook, Lisa Mayhew, Andy Rebmann, and Arpad Vass, as well as visits and training at Western North Carolina’s FOREST facility.

  Books and articles, in addition to the always helpful Cadaver Dog Handbook, include Analysis of Lost Person Behavior, by William Syrotuck and Jean Anne Syrotuck (Mechanicsburg, PA: Barkleigh Productions Inc., 2000); “The Lost Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Subject: New Research and Perspectives,” by Robert J. Koester, Response 98 NASAR Proceedings, 1998: 165–181; “Behavioral Profile of Possible Alzheimer’s Disease Subjects in Search and Rescue Incidents in Virginia,” by Robert J. Koester and David E. Stooksbury, Wilderness and Environmental Medicine 6, 1995: 34–43; and “The Search for Human Rema
ins in the Search and Rescue Environment,” by Mark Gleason, Search and Rescue Tracking Institute, Virginia, February 2008.

  The National Crime Information Center’s list of “endangered” missing people for 2012 can be found at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ncic/ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics-for-2012. Crime rates in North Carolina can be tracked at http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nccrimn.htm.

  The section on New Bedford, Massachusetts, was greatly aided by Carlton Smith’s book The Killing Season: The Unsolved Case of New England’s Deadliest Serial Killer (New York: Onyx, 1994) and Rosenthal’s K-9 Cops. Archived newspaper clippings from the Hartford Courant and other local papers from the period were helpful, as well as Denise Dowling’s article “Speaking for the Dead,” Rhode Island Monthly, May 2009, http://www.rimonthly.com/Rhode-Island-Monthly/May-2009/Speaking-for-the-Dead/#_jmp0_, accessed December 2011; and Curt Brown’s series for the North Kingstown, Rhode Island, newspaper, the Standard-Times, “Dark Days Revisited: Bristol County Highway Killings, 20 Years Later,” July 7, 2008, http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080707/NEWS/807070337, accessed December 2011.

  13: All the Soldiers Gone

  Interviews and correspondence for this chapter included Kathy Holbert; University of Rhode Island associate professor and documentary filmmaker Mary Healy Jamiel; Andy Rebmann; Greg Sanson, personnel recovery advisor to the U.S. military in Iraq; freelance writer and journalist Michael Sledge; Rhode Island State Trooper Matt Zarrella; and a number of personal communications with handlers, trainers, and military working-dog personnel.

  The epigraph by the World War I hero Siegfried Sassoon reflects his increasing disillusionment with the war. The Oxford University Press biography for its collection of his works notes: “[D]uring his recovery period, discouraged by the politics of war at home and the deaths of numerous friends at the front, he made contact with the group of pacifists led by Bertrand Russell and Lady Ottoline Morrell. He returned to France in January 1917, was wounded by a sniper during a raid near Fontaine-les-Croisilles in April, and was sent back to England. Encouraged by Russell and the journalists John Middleton Murry and H. W. Massingham, he wrote his soldier’s statement, dated 15th June 1917, calling for a negotiated peace, and acted to resign his commission. Robert Graves intervened, fearing that his friend would be court-martialed. His commanding officers were sympathetic, and sent Siegfried to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh to be treated for neurasthenia.”

  Books that were important to this chapter include Michael Sledge’s Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) and Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008).

  Ellwood Hendrick’s “Merciful Dogs of War” ran in the February 1917 issue of Red Cross Magazine. Although I could not access the original magazine article, it is cited and reproduced in several newspapers and magazines from the early months of 1917, including the Oakland Tribune, February 20, 1917: 10, under the heading “Tale of the Red Cross Dog.” Theo. F. Jager’s eighty-three-page book, Scout, Red Cross and Army Dogs: A Historical Sketch of Dogs in the Great War and a Training Guide for the Rank and File of the United States Army (New York: Arrow Printing Co., 1917) can be accessed via googleplay: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=hCUwJ8dyzcYC.

  Historian J. David Hacker’s work has been seminal—and is thought to be considerably more accurate—on revised counts of deaths in the Civil War. Civil War History journal editors, in awarding his piece “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57, no. 4, 2011: 307–348, the best of 2011, wrote: “These results have far-reaching consequences, encouraging historians to rethink assumptions not only about the war’s human cost, but the ways in which we try to measure and comprehend the size of that cost.”

  Ernie Pyle’s draft column can be read at the Indiana University School of Journalism’s website dedicated to Ernie Pyle: http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/. Pyle is one of my heroes, and I still get emotional reading his work. In his photographs, he resembled my grandfather as a young man.

  The section on Matt Zarrella depended on numerous sources, including the following: “Soldier Gets Proper Burial After 39 years,” by David A. Markiweicz, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 3, 2005: 2D; “Dogs to Aid in Search for Vietnam MIAs,” by Matt Sedensky, Associated Press, February 11, 2003, http://www.armytimes.com/legacy/new/1-292925-1582144.php, accessed July 2012; and “Is Time Running Out to Find Soldiers’ Remains in Vietnam?” by Geoffrey Cain, Time, May 13, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071021,00.html, accessed January 2012. Mary Healey Jamiel’s documentary on Zarrella’s work, Reliance, is forthcoming. You can access trailers, photographs, and more information on the website: http://www.reliancethemovie.com/index.html.

  14: Running on Water

  Interviews and correspondence for this chapter include those with Mike Baker; Roy and Suzie Ferguson; Kevin George; Lisa Higgins and her granddaughter Haylee; Kathy Holbert; Nancy Hook; Marcia Koenig; Roxye Marshall; Paul Martin; Joe Mayers of the Louisiana Search and Rescue Dog Team; Lisa Mayhew; and Andy Rebmann. I was also able to observe handlers and trainers at several seminars and sheriff K9 trainings.

  Books and articles important to this chapter include Cadaver Dog Handbook, especially pages 151–162, on water recovery, as well as Marcia Koenig’s piece, “Water Search on the Iowa River,” NASAR Newsletter 5, no. 5, 1988: 11–15.

  A podcast of Lisa Higgins talking to cadaver-dog handlers, “EPISODE19—NSDA-POD Cast Water Human Remains Recovery” (January 23, 2011), is available at http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-21763/TS-438866.mp3.

  In addition to interviews, I used press accounts for the drowning cases in this chapter. Although many news accounts used victims’ names, I chose not to identify them for privacy reasons and lack of relevance to this project. Material for the section on Afghanistan, along with interviews, included a PowerPoint presentation about the recovery that included photographs of Strega working the river; the written report on the recovery; and news articles from the Associated Press and the BBC, among others.

  15: The Perfect Tool

  Interviews and correspondence for this chapter include those with Joan Andreasen-Webb, Ken Furton, Paul Martin, Nick Montanarelli, and Arpad Vass.

  This chapter depended greatly on news accounts, scientific articles, and technical reports, patent applications, and grants on animals and machines, including “The Use of Arthropods as Personnel Detectors,” by Clyde S. Barnhart Sr., Defense Technical Information Center, U.S. Army Land Warfare Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland (August 1968); “Mimicking the Human Smell Sensing Mechanism with an Artificial Nose Platform,” by Sang Hun Lee, Oh Seok Kwon, Hyun Seok Song, Seon Joo Park, Jong Hwan Sung, Jyongsik Jangb, and Tai Hyun Parka, Biomaterials 33, 2012: 1,722–1,729; “JIEDDO: The Manhattan Project That Bombed,” by Peter Cary and Nancy Youssef, Center for Public Integrity Report (March 27, 2011; updated August 10, 2011), http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/03/27/3799/jieddo-manhattan-project-bombed; “Technology Falls Short in the War Against IEDs,” by Sandra Erwin, National Defense Magazine blog post (October 20, 2010), http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=221, accessed February 2012.

  The section on the disastrous “search vultures” of Germany depended on reporting from Der Spiegel, ABC News, the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, and Popular Science, among other news media. The peer-reviewed research on avian olfaction is somewhat limited. UCLA professor emeritus of physiology Bernice Wenzel noted with pluck that avian olfaction “has been a small but persistent research topic for the last half century” in her piece “Avian Olfaction: Then and Now,” Journal of Ornithology 148, 2007: 191–194. David Malakoff provided an overview of the topic in Science magazine: “Following the Scent of Avian Olfaction,” Science 286, no. 5440, October 22, 1999: 704–705, http://www
.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/286/5440/704, accessed May 2012. Famous ornithologist Kenneth Stager reported the role of turkey vultures in the natural gas industry in the 1930s in his publication The Role of Olfaction in Food Location by the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes Aura) (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum, 1964). The article from German scientists using rabbit corpses for their study was titled “An Electronic Body-tracking Dog?” by C. Hädrich, C. Ortmann, R. Reisch, G. Liebing, H. Ahlers, and G. Mall, International Journal of Legal Medicine 124, 2010: 43–47. The FBI study on clandestine graves is “Advanced Scientific Methods and Procedures in the Forensic Investigation of Clandestine Graves,” by Daniel O. Larson, Arpad A. Vass, and Marc Wise, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 27, no. 2, 2011: 149–182.

  The section on Vass’s sniffer machine, the LABRADOR, used the following: “LABRADOR: New Alpha Dog in Human Remains Detection?” by Douglas Page, Forensic Magazine (June 10, 2010), http://www.forensicmag.com/article/labrador-new-alpha-dog-human-remains-detection, accessed January 2012; and “A New Forensics Tool: Development of an Advanced Sensor for Detecting Clandestine Graves,” by Arpad Vass, Cyril V. Thompson, and Marc Wise, U.S. Department of Justice Grant Final Report no. 231197, July 2010, www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231197.pdf, accessed January 2012.