PET TRACKER
Chapter 9, Part 3: Priorities: Poodles...or Perpetrators?
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.”
Usually, requests to utilize my search dogs, both from law enforcement agencies and from pet owners, floated in weeks, sometimes months, apart. But there was one day at the office when my two jobs collided!
I had just worked a 10-hour graveyard shift patrolling the university, and I was exhausted. As I fed my dogs their breakfast, I noticed that during the night someone had left a message on my answering machine. A woman who had lost her toy poodle wanted me to come out and search for her lost dog ASAP.
I crawled into bed thinking that after I’d had a couple hours of sleep, I’d call her back and search that afternoon.
About an hour later, my pager went off.
“Santa Cruz PD has a man armed with a gun who ran into the woods,” the dispatcher told me. “They want you to respond with your bloodhound.”
As I slipped on my clothes, I couldn’t help but smile at my dilemma. Should I search for the poodle first, or the man with the gun?
“Man with a gun…toy poodle…man with a gun…toy poodle,” I asked A.J. and Rachel, who were both curled (along with Chase) in a nest on my bed. “What do you think we should track first?”
Most people would agree that the man with a gun case was more urgent than the search for a lost dog, but try telling that to an elderly woman who just lost her toy poodle!
I searched for the man with the gun first, and the poodle about four hours later and found neither of them. But, as I crawled into bed for the second time that day, knowing I would have to be at work in less than three hours, I realized that I would need to decide pretty soon what I wanted to be when I grew up!
A law enforcement search where A.J. proved his amazing scent discrimination abilities took place in March 1997. I was called out to track a missing at-risk (brain-damaged) young man who vanished in downtown San Jose, California, after attending a Warriors basketball game at the San Jose Arena (now called the SAP Center). The 20-year-old, whose mental capacity was that of an adolescent, became separated from his father in a crowd of thousands of people. The police department had conducted a large-scale search of the area with over 30 police officers for three hours before they called me to come out. I arrived around 3:00 a.m. and met with officers and the distraught father of the missing man. The parking lot was nearly empty, and the streets were deserted, making it easier for me to work my dog without dealing with people and traffic. There were multiple streets and so many options for turns and potential directions that the missing man could’ve gone. I’m pretty sure that the Sergeant and police officers who accompanied me on this case were skeptical that a dog could successfully follow a single scent trail leaving a location where somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 people had just walked around the parking lot. I hate to admit this, but I was skeptical myself!
Using a sterile gauze pad, I collected the missing man’s scent from the passenger seatbelt in the area where it would’ve touched his neck. When I presented A.J. with the scent, he immediately picked up a trail and headed out of the parking lot and east along a sidewalk. One (maybe more) of the SJPD patrol officers followed in his patrol car with his overheads (the red and blue twirly lights) on to keep traffic out of the first lane in case A.J. tried to cross the road. This was not the safest area of town, so I appreciated the protection since it was so late at night. We approached the signal light at a major intersection, and I slowed A.J. so he could make a decision. He trotted left across the street but then indicated no scent. I brought him back and had him check south on Almaden Avenue, and he indicated he was on the scent trail. As we jogged south, one of the officers who’d been a part of the search heard on the radio that “the bloodhound is heading south on Almaden.” That officer then drove ahead of me, south along Almaden, and lo and behold, a few miles ahead of us, he found the missing man!
Although we did not have a “walk-up find” on the missing man, it was an impressive showing of A.J.’s capabilities. And in many searches, this is exactly the type of service that bloodhounds (and other breeds of dogs, even mixed breeds trained in this discipline) provide on searches—they establish the “direction of travel” so that other searchers can go ahead of them, saturate those areas, and in many cases make the find.
I was pleased that the officers and Sergeant involved in this case were impressed with A.J. We even received a nice letter of thanks from the San Jose PD Chief of Police for our work on this case.
Best of all, a Sergeant on this case was impressed enough with bloodhounds that he researched how the San Jose P.D. could start their own bloodhound unit. With training provided by Jeff Schettler, his department launched their bloodhound unit in 1999 with a couple of bloodhound handlers, including Kevin Baughn and his bloodhound Zack. This team successfully tracked criminals and missing persons in the San Francisco Bay area and beyond.
I would like to believe that Kevin (and others) at San Jose P.D. were able to carve careers as police bloodhound handlers because of A.J.’s work, but I don’t really know that for sure if that is the case. Today, Kevin lives in Idaho and works at GAK9 for Jeff Schettler where he trains bloodhounds and their handlers worldwide.
I had really hoped for more law enforcement cases for my bloodhounds, but that never happened. Not long after the San Jose search, fate stepped in and rather violently shoved me in the new direction that I was destined to take.
