PET TRACKER
Chapter 9, Part 2: Chased by 30 Rookies
NOTE FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED: This story is also available as an audio recording, read by Kat, the author.
You are about to read a section from the middle of my memoir PET TRACKER. To read the FULL Substack (free!) version from the very start, go to this link, scroll down until you see the Scroll Down > icon-thingy and click on it. Then, scroll all of the way to the very bottom and you can start reading the beginning of the book with the “Dedication & Introduction.”
My bloodhound A.J.’s scent discrimination abilities continued to blow me away. Although he was fully trained, I set up complicated and sometimes fun training scenarios for him on my days off. In one case, I had a friend leave her house, walk four blocks (making a few turns), enter a large, crowded hardware store that allowed dogs, and wait at the customer service counter. Forty minutes later, my panting, slobbering bloodhound wearing a tracking harness with POLICE patches dragged me through the door, checked out several customers but did not ID them, and led me right up to my friend. A.J. began his signature “but t wag,” which he only did when he was in an area concentrated with a large amount of scent from the person he was tracking. A.J. made direct eye contact with my friend, sat down, and placed his right paw on her leg, practically begging for his cheese treat.
It filled me with pride and joy whenever my search dogs proved their sniffer skills, both on actual cases and in training. One of the most remarkable and memorable demonstrations of A.J.’s ability to pick a “suspect” out of a crowd of people was when I worked a “double-blind” trail as part of a demonstration to a class of police cadets at the Monterey Peninsula College’s police academy. Double-blind trails are where neither the dog nor the handler knows which direction the trail layer went or where they hid. Double blinds are as close to a real search as you can get in a training session.
After meeting the academy instructor, I started my demo to the classroom of future police officers with a brief presentation on scent discrimination and how the training of man-trailing bloodhounds differs from how patrol dogs are trained. I then explained that in the demonstration I was about to conduct, I would be using A.J. to track a burglary suspect after a car was found burglarized out in their parking lot. In reality, the “suspect” was one of the police cadets whom the academy instructor had recruited in the parking lot to leave his car and go for a walk.
It was A.J.’s job to follow that cadet’s cloud of scent, ignore all other scents, and take me up to him, sit down, and “push” on the cadet’s leg with his paw. I explained that to prove A.J.’s tracking abilities, I would be working A.J. “in the blind,” meaning that I had absolutely no idea who the suspect was, what he or she looked like, which direction they had gone, or where they were hiding. Only the academy instructor knew who the “suspect” was and where they would be hiding.
Fifteen minutes after my presentation, we were all in the parking lot, standing by the supposed victim’s vehicle. All of the cadets were dressed in their P.T. (physical training) uniforms—sweaty, somewhat smelly t-shirts, shorts, and running shoes. I recruited one of the best-looking cadets (because I could) and told him that I needed him to be my backup. I instructed him to run about ten yards behind me at all times and that whenever A.J. stopped jogging and slowed down or whenever he turned in a new direction, the cadet needed to give us even more space. I explained that his primary job was to protect me because my focus would always be to watch my dog. I needed him to watch out for the suspect ahead of us while also protecting us from an ambush from behind. When he agreed to this, I handed him A.J.’s lead and said, “Hang onto him, please.”
With a group of about thirty (mostly male) police cadets standing around and watching, I put on a pair of latex gloves, pulled out a sterile gauze pad, and rubbed it on the inside of the baseball hat that was on the ground and reportedly belonged to the suspect. Convinced I had collected enough scent for my hound, I placed the gauze pad into a quart-sized Ziploc bag and replaced the latex gloves with my leather tracking gloves. I walked back to my backup officer, took A.J.’s lead from him, switched the lead snap from A.J.’s collar to his harness, straddled my dog as was my custom before I worked him, and turned and asked my backup if he was ready. He was, and so was A.J.!
“Take scent. Search!” I said as A.J. snuffled and slobbered on the gauze pad and then took off like a bullet. We jogged through the parking lot and then along the sidewalk of a road called Light Fighter Drive. It was a surreal feeling to glance back and see that I had about 30 people running behind us! We approached the signal light at an intersection of the somewhat busy Pacific Coast Highway. I slowed A.J. to a stop, and we all caught our breath as we waited for the highway traffic to stop for a red light.
Once we had the green light, we all sprinted across with A.J. in the lead. I’m sure it was entertaining for the stopped traffic! Once we reached the other side, we intersected the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail, a wide wooden boardwalk that ran parallel to the Pacific Coast Highway and was a short distance from the shores of the Pacific Ocean. We turned left, heading south toward a large outdoor event in the distance. As I jogged behind my bloodhound, the cool coastal fog dampened my hair while enhancing the pungent scent cloud that A.J. was following. The salty-fishy-ocean smell reminded me that we were right next to the ocean. With my cadet acting as my backup and an entire classroom jogging behind us, I realized just how much I loved my job as a police bloodhound handler. I couldn’t believe that I was actually paid for my dream job!
We drew close to the festival where there was a good 50 pop-up tents and a couple hundred people going from vendor booth to vendor booth, a country band playing on a stage a short distance away, and the heavy scents of barbecue and sweet baked goods. I wasn’t concerned that the tantalizing food scents would distract him. I wasn’t worried that the vast number of different human scents in that crowd would hinder A.J.’s ability to find his quarry. I wasn’t worried that the loud music would bother him. By this time in his working career, I had such rock-solid faith in A.J.’s ability to find the exact person whose scent I had asked him to track that I did not question where he was taking us. The only thing that had ever stopped him in training was loud gunshots, thunder, and prickly blackberry vines. None of those showed up on this track.
We approached the vendor tents and I slowed A.J. down to a walk as he led us into the mass of people. Right as we walked into the crowd, A.J. began to butt wag and was looking at people but not stopping at anyone. It was as if he were trying to get close enough to smell the source of the scent he’d been tracking. I was expecting this “suspect” to be dressed like the other cadets—in gym clothes and tennis shoes. However, I did not see anyone dressed like the cadets behind me.
A.J. was telling me that the suspect was close as he ambled around in large circles, trying to pinpoint and ID the suspect. Some people in the crowd gasped with astonishment at the happy, goofy-looking dog with giant banana leaf ears who’d built up a substantial amount of slobber on his jowls. Others were perhaps concerned that this police dog was detecting drugs and zeroing in on them. After what seemed like forever but was likely just two minutes, A.J. butt-wagged his way to a young man in his twenties wearing blue jeans, made eye contact with him, sat down in front of him, and pushed his leg.
The crowd of cadets, the academy instructor, and my bodyguard broke out in applause! I was more than proud of my buddy. I rubbed the insides of A.J.’s long, pendulous ears, causing him to lean into me and moan with pleasure. I lavished him with praise and gave him his cheddar cheese reward. We returned to the academy parking lot, and several of the cadets came over to pet A.J. It was as if his ears were magnets that pulled in all of the cadet dog lovers. A.J.’s ears were a beautiful chocolate color, ridiculously long, and the fur on them was velvety soft to the touch. A.J. just loved the attention and I enjoyed answering questions from the cadets about bloodhounds while learning about their own family dogs.
It felt great that so many had been there to witness the amazing capabilities of a seasoned police bloodhound trained to pick one particular person out of a crowd. I had only wished that the K9 officers from Reedley P.D., Santa Cruz P.D., and Watsonville P.D., who previously harassed me and who all said that it was impossible for any dog to work a scent like that, could have been there to see it.
It felt good knowing that the cadets who witnessed this exercise were impressed with A.J. I hoped that one day, one of these future police officers would become interested in training a bloodhound for their own department.
