by Susannah
"Did you..." Jerry asked the officers carefully, "check the girlfriend's house?"
Head shakes all around, and while the rest of us were en route, an officer found the boy at his girlfriend's house, where he'd been all night. The remaining dogs arrived just as the team was being stood down, a dogless search with a happy ending.
Another search for an Alzheimer's patient who'd been missing more than half a day had an ugly prospect. Fleta, Jerry, and Shadow arrived at the facility where the elderly woman had gone missing. After the initial interview, they went upstairs to scent Shadow on the woman's bed and clothes, hoping to determine the woman's direction of travel. Jerry and Shadow went ahead, and Fleta remained behind to get a more portable scent article for the other coming dogs. While in the elevator returning to the ground floor, she heard Jerry say over the radio that they had the victim. Shadow had gone from the room, down the hall, out the front door and had found the woman less than thirty feet away from the facility entrance, lying wedged beneath a stiff row of bushes. Alive, just stuck. No broken twigs or disturbed leaves marked her presence, and the calling officer said he'd personally passed the hedge where she lay a number of times. Total time on the search from start to finish: less than ten minutes.
Some searches are just weird. An urgent out-of-state call to a remote location was the proposed scene of a homicide. The bones of what appeared to be a human foot had been found by hikers, and local authorities called in dog teams to find the disarticulated bones of the rest of the body. After a long journey to the location, the team arrived at a small area cordoned off with crime-scene tape. But on-site, none of the dogs indicated any interest in the foot, and none of the dogs seemed to find anything amiss in the deeper wood.
"Something wrong with your dogs?" drawled an officer testily, to which a handler responded, "I think something may be wrong with that foot." It was a potentially tense oh-yeah-sez-who? moment, but not long afterward, a forensic team arrived and quickly assessed the bones as bear, not human. A small bear, an adolescent bear, perhaps, with bones remarkably similar in construction to a human foot. Understandable, they assured the law enforcement agency that had called for search dogs. These things happen all the time.
A few officers graciously hid for the dogs, giving them a motivational find as a reward at the end of their long journey. Afterward, as the team loaded into cars for the long drive home, the calling agency deconstructed the cordoned area and opened it back up to hikers, a quiet aftermath save for the pup-pup-pup of the crime-scene tape as they tore it free.
People sometimes ask what kind of search we do most frequently. It's a question I've asked other teams myself—curious about the intersection of geography, calling authorities, population, and need. Some of their responses are what you'd expect. Teams located near the edges of national parks or major ski areas may do a lot of searches for lost hikers or strayed children in the woods, while those serving areas popular for water recreation—boating, fishing, swimming—may have a high percentage of drowning calls. Some responses were harder to predict. Two Californians from the San Francisco area once told me the majority of their recent winter calls had been for Alzheimer's walk-aways, while another handler from a picturesque town on the East Coast said he and his dog were most often called to suspected crime scenes in the thirty-mile stretch of woodland that separated his little town from the next.
Because our team is based in an urban area surrounded by wide stretches of ranchland and prairie and peppered with popular lakes, our calls come in for any number of reasons. Though there are exceptions, we typically work more drownings in late spring and summer, walk aways in the autumn and winter, despondent potential suicides after the turn of the New Year—and of course sit standby or deploy during tornado season and during the hurricane months summer through autumn. Weather causes many of our searches, and every changing season reminds us of the coming needs of the next one.
And still we get surprises.
Years ago, Max and Fleta deployed with Hunter and Saber to south Texas after a long period of hard rain and extensive flooding. Damage was widespread, and lives were known lost. Many residents were still missing. Served by the SAR dogs of a state task force, the search area seemed unending nonetheless. Max, Fleta, Hunter, and Saber worked for days across flattened, mud-bound farms and small towns.
One day's search required a helicopter transport. The waterline had risen far upland and roads were so completely impassable that the only way to get to the search site was by air. Handlers, dogs, and support personnel deployed to the top of a rise, their search sector an extensive area of flood debris field below.
As they prepared to begin their formal search, Fleta's Saber pulled away from the group and bounded uphill to a scruffy area of low mesquite trees. He pushed his way through the surrounding brush to a spot just beneath one young tree and began worrying at the dirt, pawing at it urgently. Though this was not the direction of the sector and she had never seen Saber behave this way on previous searches, Fleta knew from his intensity that something was up. She crawled awkwardly into the thicket after him, talking to the dog, looking for recognizable signals from him as he pawed the thick, heavy ground beneath the tree. The accompanying officer asked what was going on; Fleta could only answer that she wasn't sure, but that Saber was on to something he couldn't seem to get to. She gave Saber a few minutes working at the dirt, and when nothing quickly surfaced, she pulled him from the thicket and tied him to the base of a tree, where he sat and howled with frustration.
Max and Hunter went in for verification purposes. They approached the scene from a different angle, and like Saber, Hunter immediately pressed for the area beneath young mesquite. He too began to work the dirt in the spot where Saber had pawed his shallow hole. Seeing his dog's similar intensity, Max crawled into the area beside him as Hunter deepened the hole and Saber continued to protest yards away. Soon the shallow dip was deeper, and after a particularly furious spate of Hunter's digging, Max caught the first scent of cadaver: faint at first and then stronger as the dog worked.
A body in the brush, buried beneath a young tree that had partially grown over it, high above the flood's debris field. The disaster response crew with them offered to begin to dig, but Max shook his head. This, he said, was likely a crime scene. Better not touch. The group called the local sheriff's department, who asked if the handlers were sure the dogs hadn't caught the scent of dead animal.
They've been ignoring dead animals in the debris field for days, Max and Fleta responded. The scent was undoubtedly cadaver, and they believed the scent was undoubtedly human as well.
Overextended or skeptical, the sheriff's department didn't pursue the matter for a couple of days, long after the dogs and handlers had cleared the area and had been deployed to search another one. When law enforcement did dig beneath the tree, they found the decomposing remains of a man who'd been shot between the eyes. Dead and buried long enough for a young tree to grow over him, his death unrelated to the flood that brought the dogs there in the first place.
There's a saying in the SAR community: the search you're called out to may not be the one you end up on. Being prepared means being ready for anything.
14. HOME AND HEARTH
I'VE GOT TWO PUZZLES: the emerging search canine, confident and capable, and the adolescent family dog at home, beautifully housebroken, but in other behaviors unpredictable. I've read five training manuals, and the dogs have a trainer we all value, yet in the private hours, I'm clearly floundering—without guidebooks for steering a young dog along the fuzzy line that separates a well-behaved family pet and an independent leader in the search field. Puzzle must learn to be both. I need her obedient to me but not overly dependent, disinclined to jump on people who walk through the door, but stubborn enough to insist when I have made a wrong choice on a search and the scent we need is in another direction. She should be assured enough to search ahead of me, and I should have trust enough to let her work apart from my micromanagement.
Collaborative is the word I think of when I watch the other handlers with their dogs, the relationships long-defined and trust between them evident. I know things didn't start out that way. I've heard the puppy backstories and the way this handler or that one had to mediate between the new dog and the older ones in the family. I've heard about the wrecked landscaping at home and the dog-to-dog posturing and the squabbles over favorite toys. I know there are occasionally days when one of the senior search canines has an issue at home, then shows a little attitude at training—shooting the paw, we call it—and dog and handler have a stern exchange. I have even seen a mature search dog take it into his head to vanish in the middle of a training search—off on his own yabba-yabba-woo-hoo! —abandoning his handler for the first time in his dog life to go walkabout. I take a little comfort that I'm not the first handler to struggle with dog dynamics at work and at home, but right here, right now, the job sometimes seems a lot bigger than I am. And behind my frustration is the loom of coming failure, that somehow despite all the reading and note taking, despite wanting this as much as I do for both of us, I do not have it in me to effectively partner this dog.
At the house, we have forged a little order. The universal "Sit" command serves us well. Puzzle seems aware—and happier—that she's not the only one expected to behave. Sometimes the dogs are rewarded with treats for the obedience; sometimes they receive only praise. Though I watch Puzzle carefully for signs of resource guarding against the smaller Poms, when treats are doled out during a community sit, she politely waits her turn and concentrates on her praise, her treat alone. She is aware that I'm watching. Sometimes she looks back at me with a teenager's deadpan expression: What? she postures touchily. What?
Yay! Six dogs, six sits, six treats, no throwdown! But I can't take anything for granted. Puzzle is always ready to engage. Verbal Sprits'l's energy excites her, and Whisky's flash-paper hysteria escalates that excitement. If Whisky and Sprits'l squabble, Puzzle will launch into the thick of it. Worse, if Jack grumbles at Whisky for getting too close to his food bowl, Whisky's returned growl will provoke Puzzle to jump in and settle things, invariably landing on Jack, who squawks with terror, which escalates Puzzle's aggression—a situation I cannot allow.
Peace in our house during Puzzle Year One requires a constant presence of mind on my part. Like flying an airplane: this is where we are, this is what's coming next, and this is what we do ahead to prevent bad things from happening. The dogs all eat at a distance from one another, and Puzzle eats in an area where no presumptuous Pom can challenge her and where she, in turn, cannot stalk a dog with his head in the food bowl and begin the stare-down that precedes a fight over the dish. My job is to get the bowls up before Puzzle has access to the smaller dogs' eating area. After eating, each goes outside for a little constitutional, and Puzzle—a slow, dainty, dispassionate eater—is always the last. They go out separately, they come in on their own timing, and after dinner they all meet up in the kitchen, where a sit is expected on my part and an after-dinner dental treat is expected on theirs.
The routine is consistent, the system works very well, and denied the situations that lead to problems, Puzzle and Jack get along with quiet reasonableness. Jack is cautious and wary around her, but I'm pleased to wake one night to find him huddled against Puzzle for warmth and Puzzle lying belly-up next to him in sleepy companionship.
Puzzle's early aggressiveness toward Jack still concerns me. What was that? Why did it happen? Though I believe the original conflict was about power, I can't be sure if Jack's wariness and fear send off "weakling" signals that arouse the bully in her, or if she reads his sidelong gaze and stiff posture (or his thick, stand-on-end coat, according to one behaviorist) as a direct challenge that she is willing to address. After Puzzle has similar skirmishes with Whisky and with Sprits'l, also relatively young and relatively strong, over high-value items, I hypothesize that my smart but immature Golden is determined to rise in pack status and is willing to take on any dog that she believes stands in her way. Clearly, the senior, special-needs dogs don't stand in her way. Apart from the occasional play bow, Puzzle ignores wobbly Sophie. Scuppy she defers to, following him in the yard, examining what he too pauses over, lying near him when he settles.
***
They do not cuddle together, but the oldest dog of the pack and the youngest one have forged a connection none of the rest of the dogs share. In January 2005, when twenty-three-year-old Scuppy begins having occasional seizures, Puzzle is the dog who first shows me he's in trouble. One cool evening when they have been lying together on the day-warm sidewalk, I hear her thump the back screen door and whine a single urgent note to get my attention. This is not usual behavior from Puzzle, and when I push through the door to her, she immediately jumps away to the center of the yard, looking at me as though waiting. It's the same wait I have seen from her in the search field when she has raced ahead to a space I must catch up to. As I move to her, she jumps away again, heading down the long fence to the base of a pecan tree where Scuppy lies on his side, one leg contorted and trembling. He is conscious but bewildered, the foreleg drawn up awkwardly. His mouth is open, and he is panting rapidly. I touch the leg, which seems intact, and in a few minutes this first focal seizure releases him and he sits up, dazed and withdrawn. I carry him to the house, but once inside he walks gingerly on his own. The paw is down, but he seems dissociated from it, as though he doesn't trust it or isn't sure it's there.
He is terribly thirsty. Scuppy drinks deeply from the water bowl and removes himself to one of the dog beds by the hearth, where he lies quietly the rest of the night. Puzzle lies next to him on the floor, and a few hours later, Sprits'l joins her there. Neither stretches out. They sleep in cautious poses, on their chests, chins on paws. When I walk in the room, their heads raise. Scuppy is deeply asleep on his side and does not stir.
The seizures continue. Infrequently at first—weeks apart—but they appear to be worsening, as our vet thought they would. Puzzle shows the greatest concern of any of the dogs when Scuppy has a seizure, sometimes waking me in the night when he has begun to go rigid but not yet to howl, a new byproduct of the seizing. We sit together by the old dog on his soft bed next to the fireplace, waiting for the episode to let go and for him to return to us. Each time, he comes out of it a little more slowly.
Across the next few months, Scuppy retains his voracious appetite and his impeccable sense of 7:00 A.M. breakfast and 5:00 dinnertime, but grows weaker. He takes shorter walks in the backyard, where self-involved Puzzle forgets herself and supervises from a distance. She has ceased to play anywhere near him, as though recognizing that he is fragile and will easily topple. In time, the old boy begins to wobble to the back door and mutter—a signal to me that he needs help out to the yard and back in again. He grows content to remain on his cushion beside the fire; Maddy the cat occasionally cuddles him and Puzzle lies not far away. Sprits'l tends to visit and briefly hover, then goes away to return again later. The other dogs watch from a cautious distance. They are uneasy with his frailty. But Scup continues to eat and wags his fuzzy, upturned tail at the first scent of peanut butter, his favorite treat.
Lab tests show no treatable condition for Scup, and our vet advises that the best we can do is keep him comfortable, spoiled, and happy to the end, which the vet believes may be coming soon. The seizures have become more frequent, and Scuppy is losing weight, but he still retains an interest in the household, a pleasure in the outdoors, and a passionate attachment to his dinner.
The old dog brings out a maturity in Puzzle that she has not previously demonstrated at home. She moves slowly and quietly around Scuppy. Beside him she is a different, softer, wiser dog. I do not understand it, but I'm grateful he has her warmth on cold evenings and her canine companionship in addition to human affection. As he grows more introspective and slips farther from us, sometimes Puzzle alone will pe
rk his interest in the goings-on of the house.
In time, he moves beyond even her reach. One Monday afternoon in late March, Scuppy has a seizure that runs abnormally long, recovers, and within hours has two others. I gently bathe the urine from him, and he groans and nuzzles into my hand when I rub his ears, but by evening he has begun refusing food. As does Puzzle. As does Sprits'l. In the night, he has another seizure, and by morning is too weak to even raise his head. Though I had hoped Scuppy might die peacefully in his sleep, he grows feebly nauseated, retching up bile as his kidneys begin to fail.
I cannot allow him to suffer. I wipe his coat clean and comb him lightly, stroking and talking to him very gently before wrapping him in a towel for a last trip to the vet. Puzzle watches us from a slight distance, but when Scuppy makes a little mutter, she gets up to wash his face. She sniffs him thoroughly, curiously; her face is anxious, and I recognize that by the scent of him she may know far more about his condition than I do. I allow them this time together, and then I bundle Scuppy close to my chest and make my way with him out the back of the house to the garage and to the car. In my arms, he feels light as spun glass, his bones hollow as a bird's. At first, Puzzle seems to think I'm just taking the old boy out for his toddle around the garden, but as I turn with him to pull the garage door closed, I see Puz at the door of the screen porch looking out at us. Her tail waves slowly as I look back at her, and then it stops.
