Scary, Scary, Scary

At this point in what would be a twenty-five year career I tasted fear. I was terrified that I would be asked to do a real search during a real bomb threat. I was plagued by the thought that I would do a search, miss something and someone would be hurt or, heaven forfend, killed.  I did not know just how intense this feeling could get at this time in my life or I may not have gone forward.  I was afraid but found that the fear did not stop me from doing my duty.

Over the years, many have commented on the ability to go into a place no sane person wants to go.  Bombs scare people, a lot. Everybody is afraid of a bomb, duh! So, when you arrive with your dog at a bomb threat and you see that everyone with half a brain is 300 feet from the area of threat, and I mean everybody, you begin to know what lonely means.  Those in charge look at you with solemn eyes and wish you good luck.  They often tell you to "let them know what you find"...? I was pretty sure that they would know if I found anything.  I fully intended to tell them what I found, loudly and hopefully without wetting myself.

There were instances where a police officer or other official accompanied me into a high risk search.  I will write about these experiences later.  For now it is sufficient to say that I learned to cope with my feelings.  I also developed a taste for the adrenalin rush that was always a part of a high risk bomb threat.  It was interesting to find out that coming off an adrenalin high isn't nearly as cool as the high itself. Continued training, (and training NEVER stops), provided a sense of confidence that served to mitigate the dread that often accompanied a deployment.

I have used the term "high risk threat".  There are several different kinds of bomb sweeps. High risk threats involve a threat, usually spoken as on a phone, or written, that, when analyzed by professionals, is deemed "viable". To me this was a very scary word.  Some threats are less viable and some bomb sweeps are preventative.  The fact is, most of the thousands of K-9 bomb sweeps I have performed fall in the latter class.  These bring there own anxiety.  They are often mundane, involving the search of the same areas over and over.  My nightmares often involved situations like this where something is missed in a routine search...and people die.

When my daughter was little her teachers often didn't believe her when she said her dad looked for bombs.  That he was a "bomb dog guy".  When they found it was the truth (what five year old is going to make that up?) they would invariably say something like, That is terrifying, Who does that, That would be too scary for me!, and, Is he insane!? The answers to these are: Yep, Me, I'm glad you don't have to,  and Maybe, a little.

Bomb Dog Handler...scary, scary, scary, and fun.

Creating a "Silk Purse" from a "Sow's Ear"

When Bob and I were tasked to produce two "working explosive detection dogs" from the dogs currently available we decided to start with the dogs already assigned to us.  We didn't know any better, at that time, just how important the selection of a working dog was and how it made all the difference, in the end, in what kind of bomb detection ability you had.

Nope, we just jumped in with both feet and hoped we wouldn't die.

Bob had a beautiful young black lab female named Dee and I had a squatty little yellow lab called Katie.  We were assigned to the "graveyard" shift (11:00 p.m. 'til 7:00 a.m.) so that we would have the maximum amount of training time possible as well as access to as many training areas as were available at these hellish hours. Now don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to be training dogs as a professional but anyone who has worked all night, every night, knows that life can get complicated as you try and maneuver each day in a coma. Nevertheless, we swore to each other, Bob and I, that we wouldn't quit. And that we would turn out the best bomb sniffing dogs ever! Man, I look back on that time with a sense of awe at our confidence in the face of staggering ignorance.

At this point you may be wondering just how wise it is to begin training bomb dogs when you really don't know what you are doing.  Yeah, me too.  We used a training program cobbled together from police and military training manuals.  We used odor materials (small amounts of explosives) that were several years old, handling it with exaggerated care as we did not want to experience what a close friend of mine who was a bomb technician called "a rapid going away accompanied by a loud bang" ...you get the idea. We didn't have any formal training at this time in the proper handling and storage of explosives but we did our best. 

Training a bomb sniffing dog is different from training any other detector dog in that they cannot aggressively tell you where the bomb is.  For example, drug sniffing dogs are taught to follow there natural behavior when finding drug odor by scratching, barking and biting at the source of the smell.  Scratching, barking and biting at the source of explosive odor is a good way to have one of those "going away" incidents I mentioned previously. This can result in your day going south.  So, bomb dogs have to indicate with an immediate, silent sit. Seeing as the dog knows that a toy is produced from the source of the odor (this is done by sleight of hand, at least that is the theory) it is a significant challenge to get the dog to sit quietly while the reward is presented. In fact, it can be really, really challenging.

Each new odor is given to the dog to memorize and then a series of increasingly difficult searching scenarios is undertaken until the dog will find and sit at the exact spot where the target odor is strongest. I am being deliberately simplistic here as I have no intention of this story being a chapter in Terrorism 101.  Take it from me, this kind of training, especially when you don't know exactly what you are doing, can cause fits of extreme anxiety denoted by running about pulling frantically at your hair screaming vile names at the universe.

We persevered. We came up with our own training methods. We improvised, adapted, overcame! And, at the end of three months, we held a demonstration for our fearless leaders in which K-9s Dee and Katie searched for, found and indicated correctly on a dummy device that had been hidden previously.  TAH DAH!!!  I was pretty freakin' proud of our accomplishment, with one small hitch...