Scent of the Missing

by Susannah

  We look at one another. The boat work on this search should be relatively straightforward. The shoreline work will probably be more difficult. There's no scramble among us for the easier search, and I'm proud of that. Most of us stand with gaiters in one hand and a PFD in the other, ready to go whichever way the Incident Commander directs.

  Meanwhile, the dogs are schooling among us. Two yellow Labs, a Husky, a Collie, and a German Shepherd. Their heads bob slightly as they ferret the thousands of scents drifting around us from the water, the shore, and the Dumpster behind the convenience store nearby. I watch their noses work and their ears prick to passing sounds, and I wish, as I always do, that I could experience the sensory world they interpret with calm curiosity.

  We do not have a picture of our missing man, but his half-brother in another state has sent a photo. Apparently the two men are so similar they were mistaken for each other as children, and they are still much alike. We look at the image of this virtual twin. It is a birthday shot over a small cake ablaze with black candles. The twin's eyes squint shut with laughter. His moving hand is fuzzy where he tries to shield himself from the camera. From him we get an idea of size, muscle mass, and hair color. The first two are relevant to the victim's refloat projections; the third may be significant when we begin to work along the shore, where birds and other creatures sometimes furnish their nests with hair.

  We're told the man we're looking for had come out here several days earlier to fish off the side of his boat. He was last seen arguing with a stranger outside a local fast-food restaurant, where he clutched a fresh six-pack to his chest, pointing first to himself and then toward the lake in an exchange no eyewitness can clarify. This account provokes ongoing speculation, raising the question of possible foul play—if not on his boat, then on another one, or somewhere else in the immediate area.

  A couple of conflicting stories suggest the missing man may have been seen later on his boat, still docked, a little while before a late-evening thunderstorm hit. One version describes a man in the shadows sitting on the side of a boat that may have been his. Whoever he was, he ignored a friendly warning about the approaching storm; without reply, he stared across the inlet to a midpoint on the water where nothing moved.

  Though officers shrug over the latter account, saying everyone wants to get in on the story and small towns make new ghosts fast, one of the search dogs shows interest around the victim's boat. Hunter paces restlessly along the dock, straining to cross onto the boat, but aboard it, he appears frustrated, as though the space has convoluted the scent. His handler remarks that this is interest, strong interest from his dog, but he is cautious. Hunter may be indicating human scent from what remained of the owner's personal belongings still aboard. His early interest is noted, and we all head to our separate sectors to confirm or deny the presence of the missing man there.

  An hour later as Johnny, yellow Lab Buster, and I press forward through unforgiving brush, Buster works as quickly as the thick scrub and debris will allow. Thorny vines snag our clothing and our bootlaces. One particularly stubborn branch catches both my boots and penetrates my leather gloves, then flips the radio out of its holster when I cut myself free. Johnny says, "They'll all be on their second sectors by the time we get halfway through the first." I don't know whether to pity or envy naked Buster, who is scratched liberally but able to move much faster than we are.

  And he is moving fast.

  There is any amount of human scent here, but it is old, old scent that Buster wisely disregards. Decaying car seats, beer cans and Styrofoam cups, disposable diapers a decade old, shredded by a thousand field mice in nesting season. The promised snakes are here too. Most of them whip quickly away from our approach, but in the deepest part of the shoreline thatch, one young fellow, perhaps two feet long, slips over a low branch toward us, then pauses and coils with a neat little snap, his head flattish and his mouth gaping wide. Steady Buster gives him a peripheral glance and changes direction. Johnny and I do not stay long enough to differentiate the snake from his nonpoisonous imitators, though Johnny knows I am interested in snakes. Sidestepping, he grins and asks if I happened to notice whether there was a single or double row of scales on the underside of that tail. I did not, and I don't go back to look. It is enough that the snake was there, brilliantly patterned and smiling widely upward, the tip of his tail a shivering yellowish-green.

  The dead thing I could smell across the water turns out to be the remains of a cow, in so strange and awkward a position that she appears to have been dumped there a while ago. The local wildlife has worked her over, and at this point she is mostly hair and hooves and curves of whitish bone already braided with vine. Buster acknowledges the cow but is not fooled by her scent. He continues forward through our sector, a strong and sensible dog who communicates clearly that while there are many interesting things where we are, not one of them is the reason we are here.

  The dogs on the water have something else to say. I can see the last dog unit returning to the dock. In a series of blind searches where handlers did not know the response of previous dog units, three dogs have confirmed one another, indicating strong human scent from the water in a chain of points leading back to the docked boat. Two dogs have returned to the spot where Hunter strained to get at the water to chew it, his best method for discerning submerged human scent. One dog shows intense interest; one of them fully alerts a few feet over.

  Two officers look down to the murky water surrounding the dock. A crappie hole encouraged by debris is not the safest place to send down divers, but that will be the next step in the search and recovery of the missing man, whose untouched six-pack still sits on the boat.

  Having completed the search, Johnny, Buster, and I return. The team stands down. We write our sector reports—this is what we searched and how we searched it; this is how the dog responded. We notate wind, terrain, direction of travel, and percent of coverage. We debrief in the parking lot, reviewing the environment, the weather, the known, and the unknown about the victim. The dogs could not have been more unanimous in their signals to us. They are relaxed now, praised and satisfied, lying in confident postures. I make a map for my own notes, drawing Buster moving with long speed streaks behind him, with wheels instead of paws. I add little sketches for both the snake and the cow.

  The divers say they'll let us know what they find after their own difficult searches, but they expect to find the missing man there, caught in debris or fishing line. Crime or misadventure? Those are the conclusions, long coming, that we rarely get. But I stroke Saber's cheek and think of a local family needing some kind of word, of the half-brother waving away his birthday photograph, and of the man caught beneath his boat waiting to be found. "Good dog," I say to Hunter, as Saber leans into my scratching hand and groans. We drive home beneath a sky that cannot commit to sun.

  9. HOUSEBREAKING

  GOOGLE "GOLDEN RETRIEVER" and "temperament," and you'll likely come up with happy paragraphs describing the Golden's sweet nature, companionability, and eager desire to please. These are famous qualities, and it's no wonder that the Golden is one of the world's most popular dogs, the figural presence in TV commercials and greeting cards. Oh, those cute puppies, knocking over a houseplant, tumbling down a hallway with a roll of toilet paper! Theirs is a moment's mischief. Puzzle's shenanigans work overtime.

  The Pomeranians are a little stunned at puppy behaviors from a dog that rapidly triples their weight. When she dances and boxes and bows in petition for play, they scatter for the first few weeks. Puzzle gets more action out of Maddy the cat, who after the first startled introduction seems to quite enjoy the puppy. In fact, the cat is the first four-footed member of the household who keeps Puzzle in line. Maddy stalks Puzzle when she is sleeping, creeping up behind her, circling, staring at her with a calculated, misleading benevolence, then popping her nose with a paw, causing the puppy to wake from her deep sleep dazed and scrambling for a cat that has long since skittered across the room and out the door.<
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  Puzzle's not the only one who wakes stupid. Insomnia leaves me fuzzy-minded in the early morning, and I'm not yet used to the new dog rhythms. Puzzle, however, is housebroken. One early morning when she grumbles and I don't take the hint that she needs to go out, Puzzle pops me in the face with my house shoe. I open my eyes and watch her eyebrows knit and her expression change. She looks dubious and vaguely disappointed. Clearly she hopes I'm a little smarter after the slap.

  Unfortunately, she has to do this the next day also. She wants to go out. I don't wake up. She wants to go out a little harder. I can be slow. And in time Puzzle figures out that if she slaps me, runs away with the house shoe, and drops it at the door, I've not only made the connection, but the one-shoe-on/one-shoe-off stumping to the door has thumped me awake enough to be able to unlock it.

  Certainly there are softer ways to wake, but Puzzle's insistence interests me. Eventually she'll need to tell me other things, and there will be complicated, difficult moments when she has to figure out how to communicate what she knows. I imagine a few dog trainers would have something to say about this whole process with the shoe, about the metamessage of the slap to the head, about my slow responsiveness, about who's really in charge in these early days. But I can't argue with her success. I learn to wake at the first mutter of her grumble, and once I've demonstrated this for a week or so, she never slaps me with the house shoe again.

  The other dogs have not reached a similar accord. Though I make allowances for the clumsiness of a developing puppy and her universal interest in provoking play, Puzzle's sideswipes of gentle eight-pound Jack seem to cross another line. She is testing her place in the pack and challenging any dog she considers a rival. She carefully steps around little Sophie, with her labored breathing and congestive heart failure, and treats five-pound Scuppy kindly, but for reasons I don't understand, Puzzle targets Jack with dedication.

  It is an unfortunate choice. While on a leashed walk with me in 2002, puppy Jack was attacked by two large dogs running free, an attack that nearly killed him before I could kick the big dogs off and fall over him to block them. In the presence of Puzzle's swaggering dominance, her sideswipes and bared teeth, he—at four and a half years old—first stands his ground, then cries out and gives in to the five-month-old pup when she pins him down, his tail in her teeth. The line between play and bullying blurs here. I am inexperienced with it, and I'm never far from that 2002 attack. Apart from whatever it means in dog logic, Puzzle's new behavior worries me.

  She is a dog who's got some lessons coming, I think. She's a dog who needs to learn to respect me and to get some comeuppance from larger playmates, from a pack. My little crew hasn't found their ground with her yet. But on neighborhood walks, we meet other dog owners with mature, puppy-friendly big dogs, and play-date interactions seem to ease some of the tension at home. A tired puppy is a good puppy, says the truism. In our case, a tired puppy seems less interested in collaring a Pomeranian just for the hell of it.

  Weeks pass. At SAR, the team continues to let Puzzle mingle with the grown dogs. We watch carefully and hope they might check her pushiness. Only one of the males has so far given her a growl that means business.

  "Can you hear them counting to ten?" one handler says to another about the dogs, as I rather desperately redirect Puzzle elsewhere, a wiggly and manic process, like juggling six baby sharks and a tuna.

  The universal expectation was that she'd be pliable, friendly, and willing to work. The work part is true enough, but at home she retains a stubborn streak and the occasional tendency to bully. Puzzle on a playful scramble sends three Poms rolling like fuzzy croquet balls, yelping in surprise, but worse, she again corners Jack in the hallway minutes after they all have eaten, and when he backs against the wall and squeaks in fear, she jumps him, taking a mouthful of his ruff as though she were about to shake prey. She already outweighs Jack several times over, and in the tumble of them I cannot tell if this is extreme play or aggression. But it doesn't look good. I am between them and have the dogs apart in only seconds, Puzzle bemused and Jack trembling. This was unexpected and far too close a call, and I realize there are all kinds of problems with my inexperience here. I hire a dog trainer right away.

  There is the old, old joke about the airline pilot so accustomed to a jet's roar that when its engines suddenly go silent, he screams, "What was that?"

  I understand.

  Silence in the household with a new dog can indicate a puppy sleeping or, more insidiously, a puppy occupied somewhere in the nether regions, ripping up carpet, chewing electrical cords, backing Pomeranians into corners and staring, staring, staring. Unless Puzzle's crated, unless I can see Puzzle sleeping, silence usually signals trouble. All those qualities that were a good sign on her aptitude tests—intelligent, curious, assured, resourceful, strategic—can translate differently at home. Intelligence directs her to prize open the latch to her crate, pad silently out, then wiggle through folding closet doors. Curiosity leads her to sample the cats' litter box (robust! salty! with just a hint of salmon back!) to taste-test my shoes (patent leather shares the same bouquet of dead cow but is more delightfully resilient than suede). At one point I walk down a hallway and find a Hansel and Gretel trail of buttons leading out of my bedroom. Resourceful, strategic: Puzzle had woken from a nap at my feet, tiptoed away on soft paws, jimmied into my closet, and de-buttoned five shirts back from the cleaners. Fortunately, she wasn't interested in eating them. The number of buttons dropped equals the number of buttons missing. She just likes the feel of them in her teeth, the little snap of release. Self-confident: when I catch her in misdeeds and scold her, she does not look ashamed.

  I am, however. I thought I was prepared for the realignment of priorities any puppy brings, but either she is sly or my distraction level has made me oblivious, or a little bit of both.

  The obedience trainer is frank. "You aren't being enough of a leader, here. She's a smart dog, and she's got time to think too much," Susan says. "Smart dogs are tougher than dumb dogs. For a while, you want her thinking what you need her to be thinking. You want her doing what you tell her to. It should be: sit for petting, sit for treats, sit for no reason at all other than I told you to. She should think her middle name is 'Sit.'" Susan's direction: watch her carefully, keep her directed, reward her for good behavior, set some standards, and make her stick by them. In fact, my leadership over all the crew is lacking. Make all the dogs stick to the rules.

  I say "Sit" so much that even one of the cats drops his bottom at the sound of the word. I say "Sit" so much that when a salesperson hovers over my shoulder and interrupts me for the fourth time in a complicated transaction, I hold up my hand and reflexively say "Sit," as I lean over the contract. He blinks. I blink. "New dog," I say in apology. "Ah," he replies and points at the picture of his black Lab, all muscular intensity with a shining head. "How old?" I ask. "Ten months," he says. "Yours?" "Six months," I answer. We have a moment of empathy. He does not, however, interrupt me again.

  Walks are also a challenge. The world is fresh and new to Puzzle, and my neighborhood is in a state of upheaval. Old houses are demolished for new-builds, and the sound of destruction and the smell of overturned earth is everywhere. Puzzle strains at her lead, occasionally porpoising to leap for some provoking scent. Downwind of a dog friend in a backyard two blocks away, Puzzle goes theatrical. It's Roxie! Roxie! Roxie! and she's way up there and I'll DIE if I don't go VISIT. She has a Roxie moan, a Jack-and-Lady grumble, an Annie mutter. The sounds are so separate and singular that at one point a friend on a walk with us recognizes the difference. "Oh," he says when Puzzle lifts her nose and mutters, "Annie must be out." She is.

  I am not opposed to dog friends or playdates, but I'd like a better walk from Puzzle, a loose lead, a heel. "Keep her busy on her walks," says Susan. "Make her go on your walk. Be consistent with your words. Don't give her time to think about what she'd rather do."

  In a few months, I get a casual, acceptable trot ahead from
her, punctuated by only a few spasms of pull. The lead is frequently slack. I feel less like I'm walking a chain saw. But "Heel" Puzzle seems to find insulting. She veers away on her lead like a reluctant teenager in the company of a parent. We are irrevocably bound, but terribly uncool. She seems to be sure I'm unnecessary. She prefers to think I'm invisible too.

  Even the sight of the lead is enough to set her spinning. Puzzle is young and winds up easily. Quick movement from me or a high, bright word, and she starts to ricochet across the house. I begin to approach walks as though I were headed for meditation, winding things down half an hour before we're likely to go out. I try speaking more quietly, moving more calmly and with greater purpose. I turn off the TV and the radio, and I avoid giving all the dogs high-energy treats. I am just one notch away from lighting incense and beating a few low-key brass gongs with cloth mallets before I suggest "walk" in a whisper.

  Like the Poms, Puzzle is also keenly aware of body language, and though I try to disguise my intention to take her out for a walk until the moment I head for the leash, the puppy seems to anticipate me by minutes. I don't know what she senses in me; there is no noticeable routine of timing, clothing, or movement that I can see, but when I have a walk in mind, I notice her sudden omnipresence, and then her escalated breathing, and then a certain oingy-boingy quality that knocks over chairs and thumps pictures a-tilt on the walls. It is as though she can hear the bat's-squeak of the idea across the synapses of my brain. Sprits'l takes a cue from Puzzle and begins to bark, racing in circles in front of the door. Puzzle may be the one going out, but five-pound Sprits'l is just the man to scold her for what she's about to do, what she may do in the future, what she has certainly done in the past. To her credit, Puzzle accepts his noisy chiding with goodwill. She sidesteps Sprits'l and heads for the leash rack. She is all about the walk. I wonder if she can smell me mentally gearing up for the adventure with her that often feels like a cross between street fighting and deep-sea fishing.