Doggie Do-Right
Search-and-Rescue Mutts Teach Their Trainers That the Trick Is to Go Where the Nose Goes

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 26, 2008

"Whoza good boy? Who iz? Iz you? Oh it iz. Oh it iz. Who luvz-a Morgan? Everybody-luvz-a Morgan. Yayyyyyy!"

A damp, schpitzy Saturday morning. Four humans of Takoma Park's Metrodogs are loving on Morgan, a border collie-ish mutt, for completing his longest track ever. It began behind Oakland Terrace Elementary School and ended in the back yard where Kelly Gray sat on a stump and waited to be rescued.

Iz Morgan the best boy ever? Oh he iz. Oh he iz. Who gets some cheese now? Whogetssumcheez?

He does.

Metrodogs is the kind of story that DreamWorks will one day make into a family flick: Group of mutt owners turns their pound pups into crackerjack search-and-rescue squad. They'll find a lost Scout troop. Cuba Gooding Jr. will star.

That's a ways off. The Metrodogs haven't actually rescued anyone yet.

For now Metrodogs is about the practice -- and the secret life of your dog.

* * *

"Now she's popped her head up. She's distracted."

Karen Favret translates the movements of her yellow lab, Gracie, as the pair move through a residential neighborhood. They are following the scent of Francis Gilbert, a volunteer who hid 20 minutes ago.

"She's crittering -- getting distracted by other animal smells." Favret, wearing a vest emblazoned with a picture of a German shepherd, switches to the all-business chirpy voice she uses to get Gracie back on a scent: "Where'd it go?! Where'd it go?! Check check! Check check!"

Favret is an oceanographer who founded Metrodogs last fall after moving to Washington; now she leads four other human/dog teams in biweekly practices. In Los Alamos, N.M., she'd volunteered with a wilderness search-and-rescue team. Metrodogs trains for urban and suburban search issues -- lawns and parking lots, wandered-off toddlers and Alzheimer's patients. They start with simple exercises and work their way with lots of Pavlovian practice and treats to finding strangers by scent.

Search-and-rescue work requires skills and temperament not possessed by every dog, though perhaps by more than you'd expect. Around 85 percent of FEMA's urban search-and-rescue dogs are civilian volunteers. The Takoma Park Police Department hasn't before paired with a community-run team, but Police Chief Ronald Ricucci is open to the idea: "Every resource can help" in an emergency situation, he says. He'd want to make sure they were properly trained, but "we'd be foolish not to use them."

Back on the trail, Gracie has found a scent. "Now she's back to parallel dog," says Favret. "See, her head is down and her tail is almost parallel to the ground." What are you trying to tell me, Lassie?

The pace Gracie has set is natural for dogs, uncomfortable for humans, halfway between a walk and a jog. The humans awkwardly wog in their performance apparel, periodically leaping out of the dog's way as she zigzags through Gilbert's "scent cone." (People shed 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells every day, creating olfactory Hansel-and-Gretel crumbs.)

She turns into a parking lot and breaks into a run, finding Gilbert standing behind a trailer. Favret gives her some cheese.

Yayyy!

How much do you think about what your dog wants?

In an "Animal Planet" world, it seems a preposterous question. What do we do besides anticipate our dogs' every desire, buy them canine fleeces and organic peanut-butter treats shaped like lamb chops? How many episodes of "The Dog Whisperer" can we TiVo to prove our devotion?

But how much do you really think about who your dog is?

Most of our canine interactions are about anthropomorphization, about getting them to behave as much like humans as possible. Sit. Shake hands. Play dead. Love me. Wear this cowboy Halloween costume and look eerily like a child. Really love me.

Humans are egocentric. We do things in ways that make sense to us, like using the sidewalk instead of a stranger's yard, like assuming that a lick means love because that is an emotion that we know.

Tracking, on the other hand, is about accepting the dogness of a dog -- getting it back in touch with the animal behavior you've discouraged, and accepting your own uselessness. It's about moving at dog pace, stopping for dog smells, standing quietly in a thicket of muck while your dog does something with his nose that you do not understand. "If you look back at tracks that went really well and try to find a common thread," says Favret, "you'll realize it's usually that you did absolutely nothing."

Learning to do absolutely nothing is one of the hardest human tricks, and one Metrodogs' members are trying to master by this fall. Then, they hope to certify several dogs through a multi-day search-and-rescue exam, administered by an independent organization.

At another practice session on a Tuesday evening, Michelle Ranger, a grant writer for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, attempts to do nothing. Her chocolate lab, Charley, is trying his very first track; until now he's only done "runaways," where a volunteer dashes 50 yards or so and hides behind a tree.

"Good, Charley!" she says when he starts off in the right direction. Charley's ears perk at his name. He stops sniffing and looks back at her, tail wagging. "No!" she says, flustered. "Follow the scent!" But the more she points at the ground, the more Charley wants to look at his owner, making those wacky, distracting gestures.

Eventually, Charley will find the volunteer, hidden behind a stairwell. "But chances are, if Michelle had said nothing," says Favret later, "Charley would have gone straight there."

"There's just so much that he sees and smells that I'm oblivious to," says Ranger. "It's really, well, difficult."

Because we don't like to be oblivious to our dogs' experiences. We do not want them to have secret lives. If we wanted that, we would have cats.

"Last week, oh, I was very bad," says Gilbert, who owns Morgan. "In my mind, see, I had created a scenario of where the people were hiding, which was not at all where they were hiding. So Morgan, he got within five yards of the person and I drove him back. Morgan looked at me, like, 'Look, I'm doing my job, but if you're not doing your job then forget it.' "

Hanging out with a dog you have just seen track a person for half a mile based on a second-long whiff of a glove is unnerving, like learning that your spouse of 20 years speaks Ukrainian.

It's unease that dissipates quickly with the celebration of the find, where you get to interpret your dog's jumping and barking as complex emotions.

You again have the authority, your dog is again human. He has favorite foods. He likes dressing up for Halloween.

Whoza smart dog? Oh you iz. Oh you iz. There you go. You get some cheese.