Fish & Wildlife Announces Public Hearings on Taking Gray Wolves off the Endangered List

September 5, 2013, 5:34 am

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The U.S. Fish and Wildife Service has extended the comment period on its proposals to remove the gray wolf from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife but to keep the Mexican wolf listed as endangered. The comment period was due to end on September 11, but is now being extended to October 28. Three public hearings have been announced on these proposals:

September 30, 2013, from 6 pm to 8:30 pm in Washington, DC, at the Department of the Interior Auditorium, 1849 C Street, NW. For building information call: (202) 208-3100.
October 2, 2013, from 6 pm to 8:30 pm in Sacramento, California, at the Clarion Inn, Martinique Ball Room, 1401 Arden Way, Sacramento, California 95815. For location information call: (916) 922-8041.
October 4, 2013, from 6 pm to 9 pm in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the Embassy Suites, Sandia Room, 1000 Woodward Place NE. For location information, call (505) 245-7100.

Apparently only the third hearing will consider the remaining protection on the Mexican wolf. The extension of the comment periods and the public hearings were announced in the Federal Register on September 5.

Proposed Revision to the Nonessential Experimental Population of the Mexican Wolf, 78 Fed. Reg. 54613 (September 5, 2013).
Removing the Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) From the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Maintaining Protections for the Mexican Wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) by Listing It as Endangered, 78 Fed. Reg. 54614 (September 5, 2013).

For anyone who has not commented yet, written comments will be accepted by Fish and Wildlife Service personnel at the meetings. If you want to speak at one of these hearings, the Service states the following:

“We are holding the public hearings to provide interested parties an opportunity to present verbal testimony (formal, oral comments) or written comments regarding the June 13, 2013 (78 FR 35664), proposal to remove the gray wolf from the List and maintain protections for the Mexican wolf by listing it as endangered. A public hearing is not, however, an opportunity for dialogue with the Service or its contractors; it is a forum for accepting formal verbal testimony. Anyone wishing to make an oral statement at the public hearings for the record is encouraged to provide a written copy of their statement to us at the hearings. In the event there is a large attendance, the time allotted for oral statements may be limited. Speakers can sign up at the hearings if they desire to make an oral statement. Oral and written statements receive equal consideration. There are no limits on the length of written comments submitted to us.”

So don’t expect the Fish and Wildlife officials on hand to do anything more than listen (particularly if it gets heated).

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Pointing Gestures and False Alerts: Recent Research Suggests How Dogs May Turn into Walking Search Warrants

September 9, 2013, 3:07 am

≫ Next: Cocaine on Currency: The Innocent Contamination Defense and Recent Forensics Research

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Eighteen police dog teams entered a church where there were no drugs, and where residual odors were unlikely, yet 17 of the 18 teams alerted to the presence of target odors, most multiple times. In a paperthat caused a good deal of consternation in the police dog world, three scientists at the University of California at Davis argued that the false alerts arose from the fact that the police dog handlers had been led to believe that there were drugs inside the church. The handlers had cued their dogs. The results were not videotaped and the authors of the paper did not state exactly how the dogs had been induced to alert when their training should have prevented this. Recent research on human pointing gestures and dog responses goes some way towards explaining how this may have happened.

In order that drug dogs not become walking search warrants—as an Ohio deputy sheriff described his dog in a recent newspaper article—it is important that supervisors, handlers, and lawyers understand this research and consider its implications.

Detailed Sweeps

Handlers of drug dogs take them into areas where drugs may be present and often want to focus the attention of a dog on a particular place where drugs may be hidden by using a “detailed sweep.” The dogs are trained to alert to the odor of specific drugs and that behavior involves the dog exhibiting a trained final response, such as sitting and staring, which the dog was initially trained to do in order to receive a reward if a target odor is in fact present. A problem arises if the dog anticipates the reward or interprets the handler’s behavior, either by subtle suggestion or overt command, and demonstrates the trained final response regardless of the presence of any target odor. (For a general discussion of cueing, seeCueing and Probable Cause, a periodically updated electronic article on the website of the Animal Legal and Historical Center of the Michigan State University College of Law.)

If the handler uses pointing gestures to direct the dog’s attention to a particular location, which is routinely done in detailed sweeps, the question then becomes whether the dog uses that information solely as a direction to smell in an area, or if the gesture itself is being interpreted in part as a command to alert. In the latter event, the dog has been cued, and the alert should not provide probable cause for any subsequent investigation by the police who are present. A recent study published in Animal Cognition tells us something about this complex issue, and it is worth the attention of both police dog handlers and lawyers involved in drug cases where dogs were part of the process by which the drugs were found.

Dogs React to Pointing Gestures

A person hides a reward in one of two identical cups. A dog enters the room where the food has been hidden and the person points at one of the cups. Dogs, more often than any other species that has been tested, will go towards the cup which the person is pointing at, more than chimpanzees, our closest living relative, and more than wolves, of which dogs are a subspecies. By six weeks of age, puppies can follow a human pointing gesture even if this means moving away from the human’s hand. Four scientists at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany, describe this skill as special and evidence that “selection pressures during domestication may have affected dogs’ ability to use human communication.”

But do dogs see a human pointing gesture as “an informative communicative act” or as a command? The four scientists, Linda Scheider, Juliane Kaminski, Josep Call, and Michael Tomasello, in a paper published in the scientific journal, Animal Cognition, designed an experiment to try to answer this question. They did not reach a definitive conclusion, but their findings advance the debate and are worth careful consideration.

Earlier Study Where Dogs Ignored Their Noses

In 2003, another team of scientists from the Department of Ethology of Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest, had found that when confronted with a choice of two bowls, dogs could ignore their own better knowledge and follow the pointing gesture of a human. One bowl contained strong-smelling food, potent enough for the dog to be able to smell it from its starting position. The other bowl was empty. In 79% of cases dogs followed the pointing gesture, suggesting to that team that they were interpreting the pointing as a command. The Hungarian team concluded:

“In the case of contradictory cues, dogs prefer to rely on the human communicative signaling (pointing) when they have only olfactory information about the hiding place. Their willingness to do this decreases, however, if they themselves are in the position to obtain visual information about the ‘state of the world’. This means that if a dog sees where the food is placed, it is more reluctant to go in the opposite direction pointed at by the human, even if they had some ever-day experience (with their owner for example) that pointing strongly correlates with the presence of food. This suggests that dogs do not follow human pointing blindly; they seem to have some control over their response to the pointing gesture. However, it is interesting to note that in both studies about half of dogs in these experimental groups seem to fall in either the two following categories. Some dogs mostly ‘believed’ their own eyes, whilst others would go to the empty bowl indicated by the pointing. This also suggests that, possibly due to social experience for some dogs, human pointing becomes one of the most reliable sources of information in the environment.”

This suggests that in choosing dogs to train for detection work, an effort should be made to find dogs that “believe their own eyes.” This earlier research, it is worth noting, included Ádam Miklósi, perhaps the most important animal behaviorist currently working on canine cognition.

Experiment 1

The team from the Max-Planck Institute devised two experiments. In the first, 96, 50 females and 46 males, of various breeds were used. Dogs were pets and ranged from 1 to 13 years. To ensure that dogs could make only one choice, even when a human was not present, cups were placed in a long Plexiglas box with an opening to a compartment at each end. There was a distance of 1.2 meters between openings. A sliding cover had to be moved to reach the cup inside the compartment, and once moved the other opening was closed, confining the dog to one choice per trial.

The experimenter, a 27-year-old woman, caught a dog’s attention by clicking her tongue, then baited one of the cups in full view of the dog so that the dog would get used to the idea that there would be food during subsequent trials. If the dog chose the correct cup, it was allowed to eat the food. If it chose the wrong cup, it got no reward. Food was hidden on both sides so that the dog would know that there were two possible locations for food.

Dogs were divided into groups where the experimenter made the pointing gesture but added no ostensive cues, and those for whom the experimenter would say things like “Luna, pass’ mal auf; pass’ auf, Luna!” =, in English: “Luna, pay attention; pay attention, Luna!”The procedure that followed this action depended on four conditions:

Authority leaves: dog knowledgeable. After baiting a cup but pointing to the empty cup, the experimenter left the room and the helper let the dog go. The dog had one minute to choose.
Authority leaves: dog ignorant. The experimenter showed the dog a piece of food but the helper closed a curtain so that the dog could not see the experimenter putting the food in one of the cups. The experimenter pretended to bait the second cup to eliminate the chance that the dog would receive audible information. The helper opened the curtain and the experimenter pointed. Again the dog had a minute to choose.
Authority stays: dog knowledgeable. This was the same as the first trial, but the experimenter remained in the room after pointing, standing motionless with arms hanging down, head bowed, eyes open.
Authority stays: dog ignorant. This was the same as the second trial except the experimenter remained.

Dogs followed the pointing gesture to the empty cup significantly more if they did not know the real location of the food. When they had seen the cup being baited, they generally relied on their visual experience and chose the baited cup, ignoring the pointing gesture. Whether or not the experimenter—the pointer—remained present when the choice was made had no effect on the dogs. Nevertheless, if the experimenter pointed, they made the wrong choice significantly more often (about 30% of the time) than in the control condition, where the experimenter did not point. The use of the additional verbal cues, such as the words of encouragement, did not significantly alter the results. The fact dogs followed the pointing gesture 30% of the time, when they should have known where the food was, indicated to the researchers that dogs may indeed “interpret pointing to some extent as a command.” This, it should be noted, is a reason for using more than a few blank trials in training regimens, as a dog's taking of pointing as a command to alert will not be apparent without a sufficient amount of testing.

Experiment 2

In the second experiment of the Max-Planck team, the authority of the human pointing was varied. “Authority,” according to the team’s definition, was “a person who is able to control the behavior of dogs in a directive way.” Thus, sometimes the pointer was an adult, sometimes a child. If pointing is a command, adults should be obeyed more often. If pointing is informative, it should not matter who is doing it.

Here, the person pointing could be an adult female or a boy or girl between 4½ and 5½ years old. Some of the pointing was “honest,” meaning that the experimenter pointed to the cup with food, and sometimes “deceptive,” with the experimenter pointing to the cup without food. In honest trials, the dog did not witness the cup being bated. In deceptive trials, dogs witnessed the baiting and knew where the food was.

Forty-six dogs participated in these trials. The researchers recruited 26 mother-child pairs as experimenters, none of which had major contact with the dogs before. Of the children, 15 were girls and 11 boys. For safety reasons, both children and adults were separated from the dogs by a Plexiglas wall. Two opaque plastic cups were placed on a wooden board with a distance of 1.3 meters between them. Most mother-child pairs tested two dogs.

The researchers found that the dogs “did not differentiate between children’s and adults’ pointing gestures. The dogs followed the pointing gesture and found the food irrespective of the authority level of the person pointing.” Nevertheless, when given explicit commands by adults and children to sit, the dogs largely ignored commands by children. This suggests, according to the researchers “that dogs do not interpret pointing as a strong command comparable to a command like, e.g., ‘sit’.” This means that anyone analyzing whether a narcotics detection dog is being cued by a handler’s pointing gestures should not expect results as automatic as when a dog sits, stands, or lies down on command. This also argues that, in establishing testing regimens (whether during training or for certification), there should be a significant number of blank trials in which no target odor is present, as a small number of trials may not reveal a tendency on the part of a dog to alert as a result of pointing gestures.

Significance of the Research for Cueing Issues in Criminal Trials

The Max-Planck research team concludes that “pointing is a gesture that dogs mainly choose to ignore in situations in which they have better knowledge.” Not all their results indicated that dogs ignore their own senses when a human’s pointing gesture would lead them to an empty cup. Thus, their results were not as stark in finding that pointing overcomes knowledge as were the 2003 results of Szetei et al., which the current researchers say might be due to the fact that the earlier research involved both olfactory and visual modalities, while their research “exclusively addressed the visual modality. Seeing food and then following another visual stimulus (the gesture) to an alternative location may be more difficult than smelling the food and then following a cue based in another modality, i.e., visual.” This observation is important for cueing arguments regarding narcotics detection dogs in that it suggests that pointing may overcome a dog’s reliance on its sense of smell even more than its sense of sight. Ideally, a narcotics detection dog should not allow a pointing gesture to induce a trained response that is supposed to be solely to a smell—the dog’s alert, yet with a dog that has begun to rely too much on a handler’s pointing gestures, this may be exactly what is happening.

These behavioral studies used pet dogs that had not been subjected to rigorous scent specific training. They had not been required to undergo repetitive activities involving pointing, particularly frequent in the early stages of drug dog training. Such instructional pointing is used in part as a command for the dog to smell in a certain area, but it is important that it not become a command to exhibit the behavior that indicates the presence of drugs. (For a series of still photographs showing how a pointing gesture can be easily turned into a command, see Ensminger and Papet (2011). How to Prevent Cueing Arguments from Getting Canine Evidence Thrown Out in Court. Deputy and Court Officer, 3(2), 36-39. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the photographs associated with our article are available online so a library copy will have to be obtained, or it may be available from personnel in some courthouses.)

If a drug dog goes where directed, but does not alert without smelling the odor of drugs, then there is no harm. The question then becomes, for an officer trying to assure the reliability of his dog, or a defense counsel trying to attack the alert of a drug dog, whether the dog tends to alert more often when there is a pointing gesture than when there is not, and to have false positives that cannot be so easily explained away by residual odors. This requires that there be accurate training records, and that those records involve a significant number of blank trials. (Field records may also be helpful, such as when compiling overall statistics and in comparing teams over significant periods of time.)

Cueing and the U.S. Supreme Court

The concept of cueing is mentioned in the Supreme Court’s decision in Harris, where Justice Kagan states that “even assuming a dog is generally reliable, circumstances surrounding a particular alert may undermine the case for probable cause—if, say the officer cued the dog (consciously or not), or if the team was working under unfamiliar conditions.” Among things that defense counsel should look for are indications that pointing has, for a dog, become more than informative, that it has become a command that the dog alert.

Justice Kagan said that a defendant “must have an opportunity to challenge such evidence of a dog’s reliability [from certification or training programs], whether by cross-examining the testifying officer or by introducing his own fact or expert witnesses.” Professor Andrew Taslitz recently argued—correctly in our opinion—that the Court’s reference to expert testimony can “be read to include expert scientific testimony, and the risk of cuing is indeed one about which the science of dog detection warns.” Such studies as the ones described here are therefore important for counsel to consider in developing defense arguments. (Professor Taslitz’s recent article appears in the American Bar Association’s publication, Criminal Justice, and may be downloaded from the magazine’s website.)

Conclusion

Fortunately for those who wish to determine a possible propensity for alerting because of a handler’s conscious or unconscious signals, more is now being learned about canine responses to human behavior patterns. We will be adding a number of important behavioral studies to our running article on Cueing and Probable Cause that are significant in this connection. We are also writing an analysis of Harris and Jardines where we will discuss the impact the Supreme Court’s decisions are likely to have on police practices and culture. Meanwhile, research such as that discussed here provides important guidance for supervisors concerned with handlers whose dogs’ alerts are too often leading to pointless investigations, and defense counsel who want to question whether a dog was reliable enough to base probable cause on its alert.

Sources:

Lit, L., Schweitzer, J.B., and Oberbauer, A.M. (2011). Handler Beliefs Affect Scent Detection Dog Outcomes. Animal Cognition, 14(3), 387-394.
Scheider, L., Kaminski, J., Call, J., and Tomasello, M. (2013). Do Domestic Dogs Interpret Pointing as a Command? Animal Cognition, 16(3), 361-372.
Szetei, V., Miklósi, A., Topal, J., and Csanyi, V. (2003). When Dogs Seem to Lose Their Nose: An Investigation on the Use of Visual and Olfactory Cues in Communicative Context Between Dog and Owner. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 83(2), 141-152.
Taslitz, A.E. (Summer 2013). The Cold Nose Might Actually Know? Science and Scent Lineups. Criminal Justice, 28(2), 4-8, 55-7.

This blog was written by John Ensminger and L.E. Papet.

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Cocaine on Currency: The Innocent Contamination Defense and Recent Forensics Research

September 27, 2013, 3:34 am

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An influential 2005 case of the Seventh Circuit, U.S. v. $30,670, 403 F.3d 448 (8th Cir. 2005), determined that a drug dog’s alert to currency could help establish a connection between the currency and illicit drug activity based on the scientific conclusion that the substance that dogs were detecting on the currency was methyl benzoate, a byproduct of cocaine undergoing hydrolysis due to moisture, and that methyl benzoate is only detectible for a short time after the currency contacts cocaine. Thus, innocently contaminated currency should not trigger a dog’s alert unless the innocent holder received the currency shortly after it was in contact with cocaine. Since this was generally a factual issue, a defendant who had held the cash for more than a few days was in trouble. (For a discussion of the history of currency sniffs, see Police and Military Dogs, Chapter 15, 207-214.)

Now the Seventh Circuit has issued a decision, which may not be the last one in a case that has been going on for 11 years, allowing for the possibility that the science that it previously accepted as definitive might actually be undermined by other research. U.S. v. Funds in the amount of $100,120, No. 11-3706 (7th Cir. 2013)

Briefcase at Chicago Train Station

On December 4, 2002, Vincent Fallon purchased a one-way ticket for a train scheduled to travel from Chicago to Seattle on December 6. Drug Enforcement Administration agents see one-way tickets as a possible indication that a passenger is a drug courier. Two agents approached Fallon after he boarded the train and began to question him. Fallon, according to one agent, was sweating and trembling, but denied that he was carrying weapons, drugs, or more than $10,000 in currency. Fallon allowed agents to search his duffle bag but declined to permit them to open his briefcase, which was locked. Fallon claimed to not have a key to open the briefcase, but admitted that it contained about $50,000, which he said was to purchase a house in Seattle. Agent Eric Romano said he was going to hold the briefcase for further investigation and directed Fallon to come with him off the train.

At the Amtrak police office, Romano called the Chicago Police Department and requested a drug-detection dog. In Fallon’s presence, Romano used a pocketknife to pry open the briefcase, and saw the bundles of currency. Fallon now said that the currency actually belonged to a third person with whom Fallon said he was going to invest in glass blowing and glass art.

Richard King, a canine officer with the Chicago Police Department arrived, and the DEA agents present told him they suspected the currency of being “narcotics transaction money.” Officer King was thus being advised that the drugs would quite likely result in an alert by his dog, precisely the situation that resulted in so many false alerts in the 2011 Davis study. Romano placed the briefcase in the roll-call room of the Amtrak police office, after which Officer King brought his drug detection dog, Deny, into the room and ordered him to search for drugs. Not surprisingly, Deny alerted to the briefcase and the DEA agents confiscated it. Deny had previously conducted drug sniffs in the roll-call room, though no illegal drugs or suspected currency had been in that room the day of this sniff.

Procedural History

The government initiated a civil forfeiture proceeding against the funds, and Fallon and another man, Nicholas Marrocco, filed a joint claim. Marrocco was the actual owner of the funds. Marrocco was not charged with any crimes and argued that the funds were the fruit of an illegal search and should be suppressed. The district court granted Marrocco’s motion, holding that the agents had had reasonable suspicion to hold the briefcase temporarily but lacked probable cause to open it prior to Deny’s alert. In 2009, the Seventh Circuit reversed, based on the inevitable discovery doctrine. U.S. v. Marrocco, 578 F.3d 627 (7th Cir. 2009).

On remand, the government filed a motion for summary judgment and Marrocco filed a motion to exclude any evidence concerning Deny’s alert to the briefcase. Marocco also requested a hearing to challenge evidence offered by the government purporting to establish that drug-dog alerts to currency demonstrate that the currency has recently been in contact with illegal drugs. The motion for a hearing was denied, and the government withdrew its motion for summary judgment but then filed another, to which Marrocco responded by arguing that drug-dog alerts to currency are generally unreliable, Deny’s training was inadequate, and the sniff was conducted in an unsound manner. Marrocco produced expert affidavits, which the government moved to strike. The district court denied the motion to strike but said that the government could challenge the expert evidence. The district court denied the government’s motion for summary judgment.

The government filed a third motion for summary judgment, arguing that the evidence established that the funds were either the proceeds of an illegal drug transaction or were intended to facilitate such a transaction, and listed four reasons that this was the case.

Fallon fit a drug courier profile, apparently because he bought a one-way ticket and was nervous.
Marrocco’s tax returns, W-2s, and deposition testimony revealed that his expenses exceeded his income for the previous four years, and that thus his legitimate sources of income were insufficient to explain the funds. It was not considered that many people have savings, and many borrow cash from relatives and friends.
Records and affidavit testimony from King regarding Deny’s training, certification, and past field performance proved that Deny was a reliable drug dog.
The methodology used in the drug sniff was sound.

In response, Marrocco argued that there were genuine issues of material fact regarding whether Marrocco had a legitimate source for the funds and the significance of Deny’s alert. The district court, however, granted the motion for summary judgment and Marrocco appealed.

Seventh Circuit Analysis

On the second appeal in the matter, the Seventh Circuit said that the government bore, under 18 U.S.C. 983(c)(1), a burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the funds were either the proceeds of an illegal drug transaction or were intended to facilitate such a transaction. Under 18 U.S.C. 983(c)(3), the government had to established a substantial connection between the property to be forfeited and the criminal offense.

Marrocco argued again that there were genuine issues of material fact as to whether he had legitimately acquired the funds and whether Deny’s alert demonstrated that the currency had recently been in contact with illegal drugs. As to the first issue, the circuit court determined that the district court erred in finding as a matter of law that Marrocco could not have acquired the funds legally.

The Seventh Circuit then considered Marrocco’s argument that Deny’s alert did not establish that the funds had been in contact with illegal drugs because drug dog alerts to currency are generally unreliable, Deny’s training was inadequate, and the sniff was unsound.

Currency Contamination

Marrocco argued that significant amounts of U.S. currency are innocently contaminated with trace quantities of drugs, usually cocaine (chemically, benzoyl-methyl-ecgonine). The Seventh Circuit had accepted this argument in U.S. v $506,231 in U.S. Currency, 125 F.3d 442 (7th Cir. 1997), but had changed its position in 2005 in U.S. v. $30,670, relying largely on the research of Dr. Kenneth Furton. Dr. Furton had determined that, in the words of the current case, “drug dogs do not sniff cocaine per se, but rather methyl benzoate, which dissipates quickly.” The circuit court had thus ruled that drug dog alerts to currency are probative of illegal drug activity.

Marrocco offered the testimony of Dr. Sanford A. Angelos, a forensic chemist, who, in an affidavit, challenged the conclusions of Dr. Furton. Dr. Angelos (who died in 2011), cited a paper by Paul Waggoner, Canine Olfactory Sensitivity to Cocaine Hydrochloride and Methyl Benzoate, SPIE, 2937, 216-226, which found that drug dogs can alert to illicit cocaine samples with concentrations of methyl benzoate below their detection thresholds. Dr. Angelos also stated, according to the circuit court, “that, so long as cocaine is present on the currency, the cocaine will continue to generate methyl benzoate and thereby replenish the methyl benzoate lost to evaporation.” Dr. Angelos argued that cocaine residue can become trapped in currency and that the amounts of cocaine residue on currency assumed by Dr. Furton’s study might be incorrect. According to the court:

“The 1997 Furton study relied upon a study finding that circulated Canadian currency contained no more than 10 nanograms of cocaine. See J.C. Hudson, Analysis of Currency for Cocaine Contamination, 22 Can. Soc. Forensic Sci. J. 203–18 (1989). However, Angelos avers that other studies have found that significant amounts of circulated United States currency contain from 1 microgram (100 times as much cocaine as the Hudson study found) to over 1000 micrograms (100,000 times as much cocaine as the Hudson study found).”

Dr. Angelos noted that another of Dr. Furton’s studies dating from 1999 had posited a lower threshold at which dogs could detect methyl benzoate than had been stated in the 1997 research on which the Seventh Circuit had relied in U.S. v. $30,670 (1 to 10 micrograms in the later research, as against at least 10 micrograms in the earlier research). The circuit court noted that one study cited by Dr. Angelos might actually contradict his arguments:

“One of the studies upon which Angelos relies indicates that the amount of methyl benzoate produced will decrease over time. See Lindy E. Dejarme, et al., Formation of methyl benzoate from cocaine hydrochloride under different temperatures and humidities, 2937 Proceedings of SPIE 19, 21 (February 1997). Although we lack the advantage of expert testimony explaining this part of the study, it appears that the study found that ‘pure’ cocaine only continues to produce methyl benzoate for about 2880 minutes (that is, 48 hours) depending on the temperature and humidity conditions. If so, it is difficult to see how the Funds, which Marrocco claims to have saved from years earlier, could still be producing methyl benzoate based on cocaine that allegedly tainted the Funds before Marrocco acquired them. Further, this seems to conflict with Angelos's claim that cocaine remaining on currency for extended periods of time ‘will slowly break down and release methyl benzoate.’ Regardless, the proper interpretation of this study and the import of its findings can best be developed through expert testimony—perhaps at a Daubert hearing.”

The court did not discuss other possible sources of methyl benzoate that could have contaminated the currency Fallon was carrying, but this might be appropriate to consider in a Daubert hearing. This substance is used in many products including solvents, dye carriers, flavorings, and cosmetics, and can come from numerous sources. If Fallon had stored certain items, such as lip balm, some sunscreen and hand creams, or enough of over 2,000 other substances in the briefcase with the cash, a possible source of transfer could be indicated.

As to whether the Deny’s alert was probative of a substantial connection between the currency and illegal drug activity, the circuit court said that a genuine issue of material fact existed.

Currency No Long Available for Testing

The court noted that the funds were no longer available for testing because “[p]resumably the government deposited the Funds into a bank account.” The court noted that “Deny’s alert would be unnecessary if the government had used laboratory testing to determine whether the Funds contained amounts of cocaine in excess of the amounts reported in general-circulation currency. By failing to perform such testing (and failing to preserve the Funds until the conclusion of this proceeding), the government eliminated laboratory testing as a source of evidence.” Recent research, which will be mentioned below, may add to the significance of the failure to retain the actual currency for forensic purposes.

Deny’s Training and Performance

Officer King stated that Deny had received 500 hours of pre-certification training and was certified by the Chicago Police Department Training Division as a Police Utility Dog in July 1998. Most of Deny’s alerts in training were to actual drugs, not tainted currency. Dr. Lawrence J. Myers, a defense expert, “avers that there is no scientific evidence demonstrating that a drug dog’s ability to detect cocaine translates into the ability to detect cocaine residue on currency.”

Another defense expert, a dog trainer and behavior consultant, David Kroyer, according to the court:

“… states that the government's evidence regarding Deny's training indicates that Deny was not trained to distinguish between the odor of illicit cocaine and odors such as baking soda, vitamin B-12, and other agents used in creating or "cutting" the cocaine. Consequently, according to Kroyer, Deny's training likely (if mistakenly) instilled in him the tendency to alert not only to the odor of cocaine but also to odors of agents which are used in creating illegal cocaine (but which are not necessarily connected to illegal drugs).”

Dr. Myers and Kroyer stated that “it is industry standard to ‘proof’ a drug dog off of uncontaminated currency—that is, to ensure that the drug dog does not alert to uncontaminated currency.” Kroyer interpreted Deny’s records as indicating that the dog had once alerted to uncontaminated currency. These two witnesses said that it was industry standard to use an outside agency to certify a dog, but that Deny was only certified by the Chicago Police Department Training Division. Dr. Myers emphasized:

“[T]here was no evidence that Deny's training was performed under double-blind testing conditions. Dr. Myers explains that failing to use blind testing can result in ‘cueing’—that is, unconsciously signaling the drug dog to alert or not alert based on the handler's knowledge that the target of the sniff contains or does not contain drugs.”

The district court had held as a matter of law that Deny’s training and field performance established by a preponderance of the evidence that he was a reliable drug dog. That court had relied on U.S. v. Limares, 269 F.3d 794 (7th Cir. 2001), which had focused on the field statistics of the dog in question (Police and Military Dogs, 141, n. 38, 166, n. 6). The district court had determined that the evidence concerning deficiencies in Deny’s training was irrelevant because it suggested “that proof of Deny’s reliability requires something more than evidence of his performance in the field.” The Seventh Circuit, however, said that Limares was procedurally very different from the case at hand because Limares concerned whether there was sufficient evidence to issue a warrant based on probable cause in an ex parte proceeding, not on whether a dog is reliable in a civil forfeiture proceeding (which involves a higher burden of proof).

Florida v. Harris

This brought the Seventh Circuit to the point where it had to take the Supreme Court’s decision in Florida v. Harris into account. That decision had determined that courts should not treat “a dog’s field performance as the gold standard of evidence.” Instead, “evidence of a dog’s satisfactory performance in a certification or training program” is more probative. The circuit court said that the “Supreme Court specifically envisioned attacks on the drug dog’s training.” The court also stated that “[i]f Deny did alert to untainted currency during one of the three times he was tested, then that fact ... could cause a trier of fact to doubt Deny’s reliability.”

“Similarly, Kroyer avers that a drug dog trained on illicit street cocaine rather than pure pseudo-cocaine must be proofed off of the odors of the agents used in creating or ‘cutting’ cocaine (for example, baking soda or vitamin B-12) to ensure that the dog can distinguish cocaine from these other odors. King states that Deny was trained with currency tainted by illegal drugs. And the training log indicates that Deny was not proofed off of the odors of the agents commonly used in ‘cutting’ cocaine (but which are common household products) because the log contains all of Deny's pre-certification training searches and none of the entries involve testing Deny against any of the agents used in ‘cutting’ the cocaine. Thus, Kroyer's averments on this issue provide an additional reason to think that Deny's training was inadequate.”

The circuit court concluded that the fact Deny was certified in-house by the Chicago Police Department might not be sufficient by itself to dispute reliability, it had some significance when combined with the other reliability issues raised.

Cueing and False Alerts

Dr. Angelos, in his affidavit, stated that Deny may have been cued or the briefcase may have become contaminated at the train station. The circuit court said that Marrocco had produced no evidence that the roll-call room was contaminated with enough cocaine to trigger a drug-dog alert. The court cited McCoy v. Harrison, 341 F.3d 600 (7th Cir. 2003), as well as U.S. v. $30,670, as establishing that the mere possibility of cross-contamination does not deprive a dog’s alert of probative weight. The circuit court noted conflicting evidence with regard to where the briefcase was during the sniff in the roll-call room, but said that this issue “can be explored more thoroughly on remand,” presumably in the Daubert hearing already suggested as appropriate for the district court to hold.

Recent Forensics Research

Four scientists at the University of Central Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University quantified cocaine contamination on bills of different denominations using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry or liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. They looked at bills from three sources:

questioned bills in criminal cases
control bills
uncirculated bills received directly from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP).

Uncirculated bills received from BEP produced readings lower than the administrative limit of detection. Approximately 97% of bills in general circulation in the U.S. “demonstrated quantifiable levels of cocaine residue,” probably due to mechanical currency counters. Bills were obtained from 66 cities in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The national average was determined to be 2.34 ± 0.08 nanograms (ng) per bill. Distribution across denominations was “reasonably uniform,” which the researchers found consistent with currency counters being a mechanism of spreading cocaine residue.

The researchers noted that it “is unlikely that members of the illicit drug trade have actually physically handled the number of bills that are currently circulating with cocaine contamination.” One means of contamination comes from the use of mechanical currency counters employed in retail and financial institutions which have a “homogenizing” effect on the trace contaminants in the money supply. This was first noticed in 1993 when uncirculated bills from a teller’s drawer at a bank in West Columbia, Texas, were found to have high contamination levels. After it was determined that the bills had been counted by the bank’s mechanical currency counter, the interior of the counter was swiped, and the swipe generated “a massive cocaine peak” in a plasmagram. The researchers found that “a single exposure to a contaminated currency counter will contaminate the bills to the ambient level.”

Variations were detectible between nearby locations. Manhattan had levels more than twice as high as New Hyde Park, New York (0.812 ng/bill vs. 0.334 ng/bill); Miami had levels more than twice as high as Fort Lauderdale (2.83 ng/bill vs. 0.102 ng/bill); El Segundo, California had levels almost 15 times as high as Downey, California (11.5 ng/bill vs. 0.784 ng/bill). Bill specimens coming to the FBI Laboratory’s Chemistry and Toxicology Unit from 1993 to 2001, by comparison, assayed in the area of 80 ng/bill. A bill that shows a sufficiently high degree of contamination may possibly be associated with illicit drug trafficking.

This means that in addition to using a drug dog to assess whether cocaine may have been associated with the drug trade, prosecutors will want to assay the level of cocaine on bills before deciding whether to begin a forfeiture proceeding. The chemical technology used in this study will be combined with research on canine forensics in various ways to establish optimal procedures for forfeitures and prosecutions. The chemical research also creates possible defense strategies. If the defense can establish that the bills were obtained recently from a bank, the defense may want to have any currency counter that may have been used tested for cocaine contamination.

Thomas H. Jourdan, Allison M. Veitenheimer, Cynthia K. Murray, and Jarrad R. Wagner (2013). The Quantification of Cocaine on U.S. Currency: Survey and Significance of the Levels of Contamination. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 58(3), 616-624.

Another interesting research article that also appeared in the Journal of Forensic Sciences found that residues of amphetamine derivatives, opiates, and benzodiazapines could be detected on Euro banknotes. A Spanish research team found that a “procedure based upon extraction with organic solvent, liquid chromatography separation, and mass spectrometric detection allowed the identification of 21 drugs and metabolites in 120 used Euro banknotes collected in the Canary Islands.” This also will necessarily become an area of further research to determine whether amounts of other drugs detected can indicate anything more about the source of the contamination.

Octavio P. Luzardo, Maira Almeida, Manuel Zumbado, and Luis D. Boada (2011). Occurrence of Contamination by Controlled Substances in Euro Banknotes from the Spanish Archipelago of the Canary Islands. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 56(6), 1588-1593.

Other research described at a meeting of the American Chemical Society found that contamination levels of banknotes are increasing, so what is considered background will have to be adjusted depending on when a sample is collected. For a summary of numerous studies concerning cocaine concentrations on currency up to 2002, see Charles Mesloh, Mark Henych, and Ross Wolf (2002). Utilization of the Law Enforcement Canine in the Seizure of Paper Currency. Journal of Forensic Identification, 56(6), 704-724.

Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit is probably correct that attacking a detection dog's reliability after U.S. v. Harris will require looking closely at training and certification, with less emphasis on field performance. In-house certifications of the sort provided by the Chicago Police Department will be suspect, as those providing the certification may have reasons to assure that an adequate number of dogs are in the field. Training that does not assure that a dog can distinguish contaminated currency from uncontaminated currency, and distinguish currency from various items that can produce methyl benzoate residues, will raise significant questions about deploying a dog in situations such as Deny faced at the train station. This also will likely be a significant issue in further proceedings in this case.

On the other hand, if a dog's performance in the field can be correlated with specific amounts of drug residue on an item, such as currency, then this is no longer, for purposes of a U.S. v. Harris analysis, identical to the situation where a dog's alert may be to residual odor, minute amounts of a drug, or just a false or cued alert. If the amount of drugs on currency can be measured and compared with the threshold of the dog's capacity to recognize the drug, then surely this becomes the sort of situation where, in the words of Justice Kagan, "the dog's (or handler's) history in the field ... may sometimes be relevant...." This remains true even if the instability of methyl benzoate must be taken into account in analyzing the dog's performance.

If the dog alerts, but the cocaine residue on the bills is average for the area in which the currency was found, then the defense has an argument that methyl benzoate may have come from another source than as a byproduct from cocaine. If the dog alerts and the bills have significantly more cocaine than most bills in circulation in the area, then the prosecution has reinforced its case that the currency had a connection to the drug trade. If the dog does not alert, but the currency has high levels of cocaine residue, then the holder of the currency can still be connected to the drug trade if he or she held the currency long enough and other sources of contamination are ruled out.

As noted above, testing the currency in $100,120 is no longer possible because it was deposited into an account and entered general circulation. Any law enforcement official who does this in the future ought to have his head examined as defense counsel will be quick to point out that this is effectively destroying evidence. A dog’s alert can be reinforced by the chemical analysis, or undermined, but both approaches should be considered in the future.

This blog was written by John Ensminger and L.E. Papet.

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More on the Cancer Sniffers: Dogs vs. Electronic Noses

October 10, 2013, 1:06 pm

≫ Next: Sniffing Car Trunks and Tennis Shoes: How an Arson Dog Helped Catch a Serial Arsonist

≪ Previous: Cocaine on Currency: The Innocent Contamination Defense and Recent Forensics Research

Dogs have been taught to screen for cancer, alerting to individuals who may have a cancer but whose diagnosis will have to be verified by biopsy and histopathology. A review article recently appearing in The Netherlands Journal of Medicine (Bijland et al., 2013) finds that electronic noses, at least as to the detection of some cancers, may be better than dogs. Nevertheless, recent studies on lung and ovarian cancer found dogs uniquely effective, and able to detect smaller concentrations of cancer odors than any other technique. While most studies continue to suggest that clinical deployment of cancer-smelling canines remains a possibility, researchers continue to emphasize that only more research can make dogs a clinical diagnostic tool. Also, deploying dogs in medical environments faces hurdles that will not be presented to electronic noses.

How Cancers Produce Unique Odors

An editorial by three scientists (Leja et al. 2013) regarding using scent as a diagnostic tool explains that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released from cancer cells or metabolic processes associated with cancer growth. “These VOCs are transported with the blood to the alveoli of the lung from where they are exhaled in measurable odorants.” Thus, cancer has a smell, and “at least in theory, different cancers have different smells.” The editorial describes an electronic nose as follows:

“The olfactory receptors of the mammalian nose are mimicked by an array of highly sensitive gas sensors. Like biological receptors, these sensors can each absorb a wide variety of VOCs from the gas phase. The collective sensing signals are statistically analyzed, using pattern recognition algorithms that have previously been trained how to identify a particular smell by controlled exposures in the laboratory. Once established, the electronic patterns of disease allow classifying unknown breath samples from patients or healthy subjects. However, the development of suitable gas sensors for breath testing is technically challenging, because the sensors should be able to detect the delicate smell of diseases such as cancer in the humid atmosphere of exhaled breath albeit strong individual variations of the breath-humidity levels between persons.” (Leja et al.)

Comparing E-Noses and Animals in Disease Identification

Bijland et al. searched various databases for “key studies in scent detection” and found 168 papers, some of which involved electronic noses (e-noses) and other non-canine detection approaches for diseases. They reviewed studies where scent was used in the detection of lung, ovarian, breast, bladder, colorectal, and melanoma cancers. This review article compared e-nose studies with studies involving animals, particularly dogs. As shown in the following table, adapted from the study, in some cancers, such as bladder cancer, e-noses outperformed dogs, but in others, such as breast cancer, dogs were more successful.

Cancer	Type of Nose	Type of Sample	Sensitivity/Specificity
Lung	Dog	Breath	71%/93%
	E-nose	Breath	71%/100%
	E-nose	Breath	85%/100%
	E-nose	Breath	94% success rate
	E-nose	Breath	71%/92%
Ovarian	Dog	Tissue and blood	Tissue: 99%/97% Blood: 100%/98%
Ovarian	E-nose	Tissue	84%/87%
Breast	Dog	Breath	88%/98%
	E-nose	Breath	94%/74%
	E-nose	Breath	75%/85%
Bladder	Dog	Urine	41% success rate
Bladder	E-nose	Urine	100%/100%
Colorectal	Dog	Breath and feces	Breath: 91%/96% Feces: 97%/99%
Melanoma	Dog	Tissue	75-86% success rate
Melanoma	E-nose	Tissue	70%/90%
Tuberculosis	Rats	Sputum	74% accuracy
	Rats		68%/87%
	E-nose	Sputum	85% accuracy

The tuberculosis study with rats determined that these animals were able to process over 40 times as many sputum samples a day than a lab technician. Such an ergonomic advantage has not been found in other studies with animals as cancer sniffers, however.

The review paper noted that dogs have been able to detect certain kinds of intestinal infections. E-noses have been used to detect diabetes, liver cirrhosis, asthma alone, asthma and COPD, and COPD alone. E-noses can distinguish different stages of COPD. This study noted that humans have been able to detect certain diseases with their own noses, though this skill has seldom been the subjected to quantitative study. Tuberculosis was detected by the ancient Greeks and Chinese by heating the patient’s sputum and smelling the fumes. As compared to e-noses, the researchers noted the following concerning dogs:

“Dogs … require an average VOC concentration of less than 0.001 part per million. Enoses on the other hand have a detection threshold of 5 to 0.1 parts per million (ppm), although like animals different types of Enoses have different affinity for different volatiles. In comparison, humans have a detection threshold, on average, ranging from 0 to 80 ppm, again depending on of the type of substance. For example, ammonia cannot be perceived by humans until it reaches 50 ppm. Taken together, many animals smell up to 100 times better than humans and Enoses, and it may well be worth making appropriate use of this superior technology.”

Thus, dogs may be able to detect smaller amounts of cancer-produced chemicals than current e-noses. The researchers suggested that dogs might be particularly useful for colorectal cancer where other methods, where blood work is uncertain and colonoscopies are much more invasive. They conclude that “scent detection holds promise for the future and should receive higher priority in terms of research effort and funding.”

Chemical Means of Analyzing VOCs

The VOCs in the breath can also be analyzed by chemical techniques, but since they appear in the breath in such low concentrations, they must be enriched before analysis. Buszewski et al. (2012a) note that the “most common method of enrichment of VOCs is solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and sorption on solid sorbents followed by thermal desorption (TD),” after which the enriched VOCs can be subsequently analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) or GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). There are variations on these techniques and other chemical procedures under development.

This research team from Poland and Austria described the connections between the dog’s nose and its brain, beginning with the mucus lining of the nasal cavity where molecules are bound to odorant-binding proteins. The axons of olfactory cells reach the olfactory bulb and converge in structures called glomeruli. In the inner layer of the olfactory bulb, mitral cells form glomeruli with axons of olfactory receptor cells and send signals to the olfactory cortex. Each individual odor produces a specific spatial map of excitation and, through spatial encoding, the brain distinguishes specific odors. German shepherds have more than 200 million olfactory cells on an area of about 170 square centimeters, whereas humans have about 5 million cells on about 5 square centimeters of olfactory epithelium. The proportion of active to inactive genes of the olfactory receptor proteins also enters into the calculation of how much more powerful a dog’s sense of smell is than that of a human. The team summarizes prior research on canine cancer detection as follows:

“The papers published so far demonstrate that dogs, after appropriate training, are able to discriminate breath, urine, feces or tumor-tissue samples of patients with lung, breast, prostate and ovarian cancers from respective samples taken from healthy humans with sensitivity (the true positive) and specificity (the true negativity) exceeding 80%. The canine indications are easily interpretable in terms of calculating the detection sensitivity and specificity, but no information can be obtained on what chemical compounds dogs are responding to or the quantity of those compounds.”

They also argue that analysis “of odor samples by GC-MS carried out simultaneously with tests using trained dogs” may detect which VOCs are the markers of cancer that dogs respond to. The team has, in fact, begun to work on this idea (Buszewski et al. 2012b).

Recent Lung and Ovarian Cancer Studies

A recent study (Amundsen et al. 2013) using dogs to detect lung cancer in patients who were suspected of having that cancer, but who had not yet undergone bronchoscopy, found that with “99% sensitivity, the dogs were able to distinguish cancer patients from healthy individuals.” The authors concluded that “the main challenge is to determine whether the test can sufficiently discriminate between patients at risk, patients with benign disease, and patients with malignant disease.”

Another research group (Horvath et al. 2013) has been studying the ability of dogs to recognize ovarian cancer in the blood of patients with the disease. Their research has indicated that dogs trained to recognize the odor of ovarian cancer did not recognize odors from other gynecological malignancies. They argue:

“The fact that the dogs could not recognize cancers other than ovarian cancer strongly suggests that different cancers have different characteristic smells, thus enabling both diagnosis and differential diagnosis. Moreover, the characteristic odor of ovarian carcinoma is likely organ-specific.”

This conclusion appears at odds with research involving a cancer sniffing dog in Japan discussed in a blog here several years ago. In a paper just published in BMC Cancer, this team sought to analyze how surgery and chemotherapy affected the ability of dogs to detect ovarian cancer in the blood of patients. They found that dogs were almost flawless when it came to recognizing patients with full-blown ovarian cancer, but also made very few mistakes when asked to detect samples of patients that had received five or six chemotherapy treatments and who had significantly lower cancer antigen levels. They found that one dog, named Hanna, “was repeatedly able to identify with certainty a piece of fatty abdominal wall containing about 20 microscopically-verified ovarian cancer cells. It is impressive how this very low limit of detection allows dogs to signal probable future recurrences that would not be diagnosed by other methods for another 2–3 years. This is the most important result of the present study.” They conclude that:

“Detection of odor in the blood, currently only possible with trained dogs, can allow for early and long-term prediction of survival. An early diagnosis of primary or recurrent disease may also significantly improve the patient’s survival.”

Conclusion

The recent research and analysis indicates that e-noses may become a valid methodology for detecting some cancers, where samples can be sufficiently large.It is difficult to imagine dogs wandering the corridors of hospitals smelling the rear ends of patients even if this were proven to be a useful diagnostic tool, so clinical deployment would likely involve the creation of separate testing facilities. Samples would have to be carried to the such facilities, and specialized dog handlers and technicians would have to be employed. This might be practical for a large centralized medical provider treating a great number of patients, or for a specialized facility serving an array of hospitals and medical centers in a large, perhaps multistate area. Still, this might for a time remain cheaper than buying electronic noses or developing laboratories with sophisticated extraction equipment. Almost all papers published in this area emphasize the need for further research along all these lines, but the number of scientists focusing on these approaches is increasing, and we can expect advances to continue.

Thanks to Tadeusz Jezierski for directing me to some of the research discussed here. Thanks to Kingsbury Parker, particularly for noting that "the dog's ability to detect .001 ppm is truly amazing. Since I have done similar quantitative analysis in the lab at the accuracy of 1 ppm I know what sort of effort is required." Thanks to L.E. Papet for additional sources and, as he often does, restraining my more fanciful arguments. Thanks to Richard Hawkins, also as usual, for catching mistakes.

Sources:

Altomore, D.F., Di Lena, M., Porcelli, F., Trizio, L., Travaglio, E., Tutino, M. Dragonieri, S., Memeo, V., and d Gennaro, G. (2013). Exhaled Volatile Organic Compounds Identify Patients with Colorectal Cancer. British Journal of Surgery, 100(1), 144-150.

Amundsen, T., Sundstrom, S., Buvik, T., Gederaas, O.A., and Haaverrstad, R. (2013). Can Dogs Smell Lung Cancer? First Study Using Exhaled Breath and Urine Screening in Unselected Patients with Suspected Lung Cancer. Acta Oncologica (posted online ahead of publication August 19, 2013).

Bijland, L.R., Bomers, M.K., and Smulders, Y.M. (July/August 2013). Smelling the Diagnosis: A Review on the Use of Scent in Diagnosing Disease. The Netherlands Journal of Medicine, 71(6), 300-307.

Buszewski, B., Rudnicka, J., Ligor, T., Walczak, M., Jezierski, T., and Amann, A. (2012a). Analytical and Unconvential Methods of Cancer Detection Using Odor. Trends in Analytical Chemistry, 38, 1-12.

Buszewski, B., Ligor, T., Jezierski, T., Wenda-Piesik, A., Walczak, M., and Rudnicka, J. (2012b). Identification of Volatile Lung Cancer Markers by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry: Comparison with Discrimination by Canines. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, 404(1),141-146.

Horvath, G., Andersson, H., and Nemes, S.(2013) Cancer Odor in the Blood of Ovarian Cancer Patients: A Retrospective Study of Detection by Dogs During Treatment, 3 and 6 Months Afterward. BMC Cancer, 13, 396.

Leja, M., Liu, H., and Haick, H. (2013). Breath Testing: The Future for Digestive Cancer Detection. Expert Review of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 7(5), 389-391.

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Sniffing Car Trunks and Tennis Shoes: How an Arson Dog Helped Catch a Serial Arsonist

October 16, 2013, 3:03 am

≫ Next: Qualifying for Disability Benefits: Applicant's Need for a Service Dog Must Be Taken into Account

≪ Previous: More on the Cancer Sniffers: Dogs vs. Electronic Noses

Accelerant detection dogs are usually used at fire scenes to make an initial—sometimes the only—determination that gasoline or another accelerant was used to start a fire. In a case coming out of Maryland in September, however, the dog was used to identify accelerants on and inside a car belonging to a suspect, in his bedroom, and on shoes he wore when attempting to set fire to a car in the driveway of the house where a former girlfriend lived. Although a Maryland appellate court determined that the testimony of the handler of the arson dog was improperly admitted—because he had given expert opinions without being qualified as an expert under Maryland evidentiary procedures—the court excused this as harmless error.

Fires in the Night

At about 1 a.m. on the morning on November 15, 2009, Jeffrey Byers saw fire coming through the front of his detached, two-car garage and its three-bedroom loft. He alerted his wife and daughter and called the fire department. The garage was engulfed by the blaze but the firemen who arrived kept the fire from spreading to the main house. The police were informed because the fire was deemed suspicious. A fire official concluded that the fire was probably set by human hand and the fire department installed surveillance cameras around the home, but subsequently removed them on April 3, 2010.

On April 4, 2010, Byers awoke around 3 a.m. and found his house full of smoke. He saw the roof above the dining room on fire in two places and his wife called 911. Byers got a water hose and attempted to extinguish the flames. A fireman who arrived detected a strong smell of accelerant. Law enforcement officials collected samples of burned wood, tar paper, pieces of roofing, soil, and debris for testing. Unburned roofing was taken as a control. Everything but the unburned roofing contained gasoline.

A scriptwriter turning this case into a segment of, say, Rizzoli and Isles, would make much of the fact that the cameras came down on April 3 and the horror resumed on April 4, but the court does not. Presumably the perpetrator was watching the house, though for plot structure I suspect that he would be found to have a friend in the fire department, or even be in the fire department himself.

What the family did next is described by the court as follows:

“Following the fire of April 4, 2010, the Byers family replaced the two-camera surveillance system they originally used at their residence with an eight-camera system and a built-in DVR. Mr. Byers purchased an additional four cameras, resulting in a twelve-camera surveillance system that monitored the entire perimeter of the Byers' residence. The system was equipped with infrared motion detection and recording capabilities that enabled the Byers to remotely survey the home. Additionally, Mr. and Ms. Byers began sleeping in shifts to monitor the security of their home.”

On May 16, at approximately 1 a.m., Yolanda Byers, Jeffrey’s wife, was watching the surveillance camera when she saw someone walking go from the street into the driveway. The individual was wearing a hood and a mask and carrying a container. He began dousing the vehicle with liquid. The family gathered at the living room window and began shouting at the man to leave, but he gave them the finger. He initially dropped a bag and the container but then picked them up and began running away. Jasmine, the Byers’ daughter, based on the man’s posture, walk, and body frame, thought that he was a former boyfriend from high school. When the police arrived, they saw the family’s car had been doused with gasoline. The family gave the police the name and address of the person they suspected.

Police Pursue Lead with Arson Dog

Investigator Robert Kaleda and another officer drove to the suspect’s house and performed “an exterior canine scan” of the suspect’s vehicle. The dog, Joy, “had two positive alerts to the presence of accelerants: (1) at the driver’s door handle, and (2) at the trunk’s keyhole.”

The officers could have applied for a warrant because of the dog’s alerts to the car, but decided to knock on the door of the house. The suspect answered the door. When the officers entered the house, they smelled a strong odor of gasoline and placed William Simpson III under arrest. The suspect consented to a canine search of his person and a canine and physical search of his vehicle. The dog alerted to the presence of accelerants in the trunk and underneath the driver’s seat.

The suspect and his father also consented to a canine search of the suspect’s bedroom and the laundry room. The dog alerted to a pair of athletic shoes in the suspect’s closet. An analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry indicated the presence of gasoline on the shoes. (It would seem that gasoline might also have been detected on the suspect’s mask and other clothing but the opinion makes no further mention of these items.)

After being read his Miranda rights, the suspect admitted he had poured gasoline on the Byers’ vehicle and was going to ignite it with a lighter in his front pocket. He also admitted setting the prior fires. In addition he wrote a statement about the crimes. At trial he was convicted of attempted second degree arson and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Various issues were raised on appeal, and the Maryland Special Court of Appeals reviewed trial evidence.

Canine Training

Investigator Kaleda testified regarding the training he received with Joy, his canine partner. Their initial training was at the BATF Canine Academy in Front Royal, Virginia. He testified:

“The initial training is pretty much cans, similar to these, and there is substances put in the cans. Some have odor on them and some do not. And when I say ‘odor,’ of hydrocarbon-based fuel. The dog repetitively goes over them hundreds of times a day to distinguish between the products and the products with fuel.”

Officer Kaleda explained that Joy had completed BATF training before she was assigned to him.

“[W]hen we receive the dogs, they are already imprinted, which is the process of where they are trained to the odors. They know that before we get there. They, indeed, have -- and the ATF training staff does that for about 8 weeks, I believe, before we get there. So our six-week program is just pretty much acclimating, and being able to learn how to distinguish what the dog is doing.”

He also explained what Joy does when she detects a target odor:

“[H]er behavior will change when she gets in the area of an odor, and she will sniff more rapidly, she'll move around a little more quickly. When she finds the highest concentration of odor, she will sit and she'll put her nose on it, and then she'll be fed. I will ask her to show me the location and she'll put her nose on the highest concentration of odor.”

Was the Handler an Expert?

When Officer Kaleda began to testify regarding use of the dog in the case at trial, the defense objected that he had not been qualified as an expert. Although overruled, the trial court allowed a standing objection to be recorded. The appellate court concluded that it was, in fact, error to admit the officer’s testimony without qualifying him as an expert, but determined that the error was “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” The appellate court stated that “an officer’s observations of his/her detection canine qualifies as expert testimony.” A significant part of the court’s analysis concerned a previous Maryland case, Terrell v. Maryland, 3 Md. App.340, 239 A.2s 128 (1968), an important tracking case because of its extensive discussion of the history of tracking law (referred to numerous times in Police and Military Dogs).

Conclusion

The failure to qualify the arson canine’s handler as an expert was an oversight that should not be waived in subsequent trials of this sort in Maryland, but is the correct decision here. The appellate court included long excerpts from the trial transcript, probably to demonstrate that if the prosecutor had made the effort, Officer Kaleda could have been qualified as an expert by the trial judge.

The case is important for showing that arson dogs may provide valuable evidence when deployed at locations other than the location of a fire. Whether the canine evidence would have held up without laboratory confirmation of the presence of gasoline on the defendant’s car and his shoes is a separate issue, but fortunately for the prosecution was not in question here.

Simpson III v. State of Maryland, 2013 Md. App. LEXIS 134 (Ct. of Special Appeals, 2013)

This blog was written by John Ensminger and L.E. Papet.

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Qualifying for Disability Benefits: Applicant's Need for a Service Dog Must Be Taken into Account

October 21, 2013, 2:54 am

≫ Next: Hearings on Taking Gray Wolves off Endangered List Rescheduled

≪ Previous: Sniffing Car Trunks and Tennis Shoes: How an Arson Dog Helped Catch a Serial Arsonist

In Service and Therapy Dogs in American Society, I describe (pp. 235-6) how expenses for a service dog are taken into account in determining whether an applicant is below the income threshold for certain types of benefits, including disability insurance benefits. The expenses for the service dog are deducted from the applicant's income in determining whether he or she has too much income to qualify.

Another aspect of qualifying for disability concerns the applicant’s capacity to work. Generally, applicants must establish that it would be very difficult to perform or find a job.A recent federal district court refined this issue by holding that, when determining whether there are jobs available for an applicant, the fact that he will be bringing a service dog with him to the job must be considered. Thus, an applicant with the mental and physical capacity to work in a laundry may not be able to take such a job if the environment would not be a safe place for his service dog. On the other hand, working as a filing clerk in an office, where the dog could lie under a desk most of the time and keep the applicant from having panic attacks, might be just fine.

Determination of Administrative Law Judge in Washington State Case

Alexis Santos applied for disability insurance benefits in May 2012, citing major depression, hypertension, anxiety, panic attacks, and carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands. The application was denied in August 2010 and on reconsideration in January 2011. A hearing was held before an administrative law judge in October 2011, who determined in a decision issued in January 2012 that Santos was not disabled. Santos filed a complaint in the federal district court for the Western District of Washington in September 2012. That court has now reversed the ALJ’s decision and remanded the matter for further administrative proceedings.

The administrative law judge (ALJ) determined that Santos could perform “medium work,” which might include occasionally climbing ladders, ropes, and scaffolds, and could “perform frequent handling and fingering with both hands and should avoid concentrated exposure to vibrations and hazards.” Further, he could “perform simple, repetitive tasks with no public interaction and without a requirement to perform teamwork with co-workers.”

The ALJ based these conclusions on the testimony of psychologists employed by or consulting with the Washington State Social Security office, but Santos argued to the federal district court that the ALJ had failed to include mental functional limitations mentioned by the psychologists. The federal district court agreed and said that if a claimant such as Santos cannot perform work of a sort that he had previously done, the ALJ “must show that there are a significant number of jobs in the national economy the claimant can do. One vocational expert had indicated that given his “residual functional capacity,” Santos could be a laundry worker, warehouse laborer, mailroom clerk, or office helper.

Federal District Court Analysis

Santos argued that the ALJ had also failed to take into account his use of a service dog. The state Social Security administration responded that the record did not indicate that Santos’s use of a service dog had been of significant benefit to him in terms of his mental health symptoms. (As Dr. Thomas and I have pointed out, there is almost no evidence that service animals have curative powers, but some evidence that they make having a disease or condition more tolerable.)

The federal district court noted that the record indicated that Santos’s panic attacks appeared to be controlled with the help of his service dog, and there was evidence that there had been no panic attacks or agoraphobia since Santos got the dog. A service dog was not originally prescribed for him, but Douglas Green, MD., subsequently did provide a letter for one. (A search of the PACER system database indicated that most documents in the federal district court record were sealed for privacy reasons and the letter was not available.) The court noted:

“[T]he vocational expert testified that in regard to the warehouse laborer and laundry worker jobs, having a service dog in the workplace ‘would probably be an accommodation,’ and that it would ‘[n]ot likely [be allowed] in a warehouse or a laundry.’ … Thus, to the extent that plaintiff would be required to have a service dog at work both of those jobs likely would be eliminated. The vocational expert went on to testify that it was ‘not impossible to consider the mailroom clerk [job] as a possibility for’ use of a service dog, and that ‘[o]ther work’ in that respect ‘would be something like an office helper’ … but clearly this testimony is less than conclusive in that regard. Nor did the vocational expert, as plaintiff also points out, testify as to how many of the mailroom clerk and office helper jobs she identified would accommodate use of a service dog.”

The court noted that a mailroom clerk would not be appropriate for another reason, namely that Santos did not have the needed reasoning level. The court concluded:

“[T]here is at least some evidence in the record that plaintiff’s use of a service dog is medically necessary. There also is evidence in the record that failure to accommodate the use thereof may have a significant adverse impact on the ability of plaintiff to function mentally, including in the workplace. Such evidence constitutes significant probative evidence that the ALJ should have discussed in her decision, but failed to do so…. This failure on the part of the ALJ thus constitutes reversible error.”

Conclusion

Because of the remand, Santos could still lose the case if the Washington Social Security agency determines that, even taking the service dog and other factors into account, he could still find work. More and more work environments are getting used to the idea of having employees who come with service dogs, so it is not impossible that Santos will still be denied disability benefits.

The case is important in showing that an applicant for disability benefits has the right to have the use of a service dog taken into account in determining the availability of potential jobs. There are a number of situations where the work environment would be fundamentally altered by the presence of a dog, even a service dog, and equipment and other factors might actually be dangerous for the animal, but there are also many office and other jobs where a service dog could and should be easily accommodated.

Santos v. Colvin, 3:12-cv-05827-KLS, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130810 (W.D. Wash. 2013)

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Hearings on Taking Gray Wolves off Endangered List Rescheduled

October 26, 2013, 3:59 am

≫ Next: Law on Facility Dogs as Aids to Vulnerable Witnesses Continues to Develop

≪ Previous: Qualifying for Disability Benefits: Applicant's Need for a Service Dog Must Be Taken into Account

Perhaps gray wolves were the only beneficiaries of the government shutdown because prior announced hearings on taking them off the endangered species list had to be rescheduled. Also, the comment period, previously set to end on October 17, has now been extended to December 17, 2013. A two-month reprieve, for what it's worth. New hearing dates were announced on the website of the Fish and Wildlife on October 23and in the Federal Register on Monday, October 28.

Mexican Wolf Pup in Gila National Forest

The new hearing dates are:

November 19 from 6 pm to 8:30 pm in Denver at the Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm Place: (808) 405-1245.
November 20 from 6 pm to 9 pm in Albuquerque at the Embassy Suites, Sandia Room, 1000 Woodward Place NE: (505) 245-7100.
November 22 from 6 pm to 8:30 pm in Sacramento at the Marriot Courtyard Sacramento Cal Expo, Golden State Ballroom, 1782 Tribute Road: (916) 929-7900.
December 3 from 6 pm to 8:30 pm in Pinetop, Arizona, at the Hon-Dah Conference Center, 777 Highway 260, which is three miles outside of Pinetop at the junction of Highways 260 and 73: (929) 369-7625.

Both the proposal to delist the gray wolf and the proposal to list the Mexican wolf as an endangered subspecies were discussed here in some detail on July 8. Fish and Wildlife has already said that these hearings are for commenters to vent, not for its representatives to subject themselves to explaining their weak-kneed wildlife preservation philosophy. That is, they'll try to look interested even though they've made up their minds.

Curiously the December 3 meeting in Pinetop, Arizona, “will provide the opportunity for interaction with Service staff, who will be available to provide information and address questions on the proposed rule.” Apparently, Fish and Wildlife feels obligated to explain why it is trying to help a remnant of the Mexican wolf population, which, as I noted on July 8, it holds out little hope for in the long run.

Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, RINs 1018-AY00 and 1018, AY46, 78 Fed.Reg. 64192 (October 28, 2013). Photograph taken from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mexican Wolf Recovery Program: Progress Report # 15.

Additional Note. In the Federal Register for Halloween, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requested a five-year renewal of its permit to export and re-export live Mexican or lobo wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) for breeding and reintroduction, as well as the export and re-export of biological samples for genetic studies. The Pinetop hearing might be the place to ask how many wolves the agency plans to bring into the area where the Mexican wolves can still be found. 78 Fed. Reg. 65353 (October 31, 2013)

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Law on Facility Dogs as Aids to Vulnerable Witnesses Continues to Develop

November 1, 2013, 9:00 am

≫ Next: AKC Test Qualifies Emotional Support Animals for VA Study: Is the VA Considering New Policies on Service Dogs and ESAs?

≪ Previous: Hearings on Taking Gray Wolves off Endangered List Rescheduled

An adult man, Douglas, is retarded but able to hold down a job. He meets the girl next door, Alesha Lair, who soon moves in with him, and moves in three members of her family as well. Alesha begins to drain Douglas’s bank accounts and max out his credit cards on presents for her family and friends, including another boyfriend, Timothy Dye. She sets up an apartment using more of Douglas’s money, then moves out. But she hadn’t taken everything, so Timothy comes back to get what’s left from Douglas. He enters the house when Douglas is there and takes things despite Douglas’s protests. The next day, when Douglas is at work, Dye again returns and takes everything left of any value, leaving the door open as he leaves. Finally the law gets involved. Alesha pleads guilty to theft in the first degree with the aggravating circumstance that Douglas is a vulnerable victim. Timothy Dye fights the charge and is prosecuted.

Douglas has trouble facing Timothy in court and asks to be able to come to the witness stand with a “facility dog” named Ellie. The trial court allows it. A Washington State Appellate court affirms. Now the Supreme Court of the State of Washington has also affirmed, making this one of the most important cases in this developing area of the law.

To know more, read the article below on the website of the Animal Legal and Historical Center of Michigan State University. Use of facility dogs is an important trend, but I fear that some courts are not being careful to limit the prejudice that might be involved. I have no sympathy for people like Alesha Lair and Timothy Dye—the facts speak for themselves—but courts should attempt to limit the impact of the presence of the dog as much as possible. The innocence of the dog must not become proof of the victim’s honesty. The dog is a way to let the victim to tell his side of the story in a setting that is, for many victims, terrifying, but the dog should not by its mere presence establish that what the victim says is true. Certain precautions to limit the impact the presence of the animal might have should be considered by courts in these cases.

Recent Cases on the Use of Facility Dogs by Witnesses While Testifying (originally written in 2012 and updated periodically since then).

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AKC Test Qualifies Emotional Support Animals for VA Study: Is the VA Considering New Policies on Service Dogs and ESAs?

November 11, 2013, 3:37 am

≫ Next: Psychiatrist’s Letter Proves Crucial in Patient's Dispute with Landlord over Dog

≪ Previous: Law on Facility Dogs as Aids to Vulnerable Witnesses Continues to Develop

In a "Sources Sought/Request for Information" posted on the federal business opportunities website, FedBizOpps.Gov, where government contracts are announced, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it is looking for suppliers of dogs “to determine the efficacy of service dogs in the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” The study began two years ago, but is now to be revised and expanded to include emotional support dogs as well as service dogs.

The dogs for this study must be provided by nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations, in accordance with Public Law 111-84, the defense appropriations act of 2009. At § 1077, that legislation provided that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs was to begin “a three-year study to assess the benefits, feasibility, and advisability of using service dogs for the treatment or rehabilitation of veterans with physical or mental injuries or disabilities, including post-traumatic stress disorder.” The appropriations act allows the VA to “reimburse partners $10,000 for each dog provided to a veteran who enrolls in the study and successfully completes a training program offered by one of the partners.”

Public Law 111-84 stated that the VA was to partner with 501(c)(3) organizations that “are accredited by, or adhere to standards comparable to those of, an accrediting organization with demonstrated experience, national scope, and recognized leadership and expertise in the training of service dogs and education in the use of service dogs.” As I noted previously, the VA has generally chosen to ignore the “standards comparable to those of” language in the appropriations act and prefers to designate full member organizations of Assistance Dogs International as the sole source of service dogs for veterans. (ADI candidate members are not acceptable to the VA, as stated at 77 Fed. Reg. 54372, middle column.)

Assistance Dogs International Public Access Test

In the Request for Information, the VA indicates that it is now going to be conducting a “revised study” and that for this study service dogs “will be required to meet Assistance Dogs International (ADI) Public Access Testing criteria.” This wording is curious, in that it appears to allow for the possibility that a dog could meet the ADI’s Public Access Test, which is posted online by ADI, without necessarily being administered by anyone affiliated with ADI. That, however, does not square with what ADI indicates on its website (last checked 11/11/2013), where the organization states that the “test was designed to be administered by professional Assistance Dog Trainers,” and cautions:

“Administering this test by non members of Assistance Dogs International is not authorized by Assistance Dogs International nor would completion of this test be considered certification by Assistance Dogs International.”

ADI also places a copyright notice on its Public Access Test, meaning that it might claim a copyright violation against someone printing out and using the test without its permission. I venture to note, in any case, that most therapy dogs, including mine, would have no problem passing the Public Access Test.

American Kennel Club (AKC) Community Canine Standard

The reason for writing this blog are the references in the VA’s Request for Information regarding emotional support dogs. Emotional support dogs are not mentioned in the 2009 defense appropriations act. Neither are they mentioned in 38 U.S.C. 1714, which provides that the VA may provide “service dogs trained for the aid of persons with mental illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder.” Two current House bills deal with veterans' service dog issues but also do not mention emotional support animals (H.R. 183 and 2847, both of which are hold-overs from the 112^th Congress and neither of which has a good shot of passing at the moment).

The VA states that “emotional support dogs will be required to meet the new American Kennel Club (AKC) Community Canine© standard, which is an advanced extension of the AKC Canine Good Citizen© testing.” Many therapy dog handlers in the United States, including me, have dogs that have qualified as Canine Good Citizens.

The AKC announced in the akcgazette of July 2013 (vol. 130, no. 7), that its Board had “VOTED to approve the creation of an advanced CGC testing program called AKC Community Canine.” Dogs that pass the test are awarded the title of “Community Canine (CMC).” The test was officially available on October 1, 2013. That I could find, the AKC website does not seem to indicate that the organization sees this particular test as a means of verifying that a dog qualifies as an emotional support animal. Rather, the organization describes the title as testing a dog’s skills in natural settings, rather than in a ring isolated from real world situations.

So why does the VA see such a function for the test? It may be, that as with choosing ADI to bless service dogs, the VA has chosen the AKC to consecrate emotional support dogs. There are differences here from the service dog situation, however. By saying that only an ADI organization can create a service dog, the VA has allowed that organization and its full members to hold a monopoly on training service dogs for veterans. The AKC tests, on the other hand, are administered by a broad system of evaluators for dogs trained by anyone. In New York State alone there are more than 400 AKC Evaluators according to a search engine provided by the AKC, many within a short drive of where I live in Ulster County. The Evaluators charge a small fee, but are generally only marginally remunerated for performing the tests. Many tests may be parts of other testing programs, such as for therapy dogs. If there is a monopoly, it seems to be a fairly harmless one.

Comparing the ADI Public Access Test, the AKC Tests, and Therapy Dog Qualification

Many animals that qualify under the AKC tests might be trained at levels, at least as to behavior in public settings, not much different from what is expected of service animals. The following table roughly attempts to correlate the testing requirements of ADI’s Public Access Test, the AKC’s CGC and Community Canine tests, and a standard therapy dog test.

ADI Public Access Test	AKC CGC Test	AKC Community Canine Test	Therapy Dog Test
Vehicle requirements: remaining until release, waiting beside, under control while another dog walks past.	Two handlers get within 10 feet, but dogs should show no more than casual interest in each other and neither dog should go to the other or its handler.	Dog walks past distraction dogs within 2 feet while on trail, sidewalk, hallway, etc.	Dog performs group sit-stay and down-stay; dog and handler meet another dog and dog remains in handler’s control.
Dog stays in relative heel position, calm around traffic, stops when individual comes to halt.	Dog remains in control while walking with handler, but need not be perfectly aligned with handler.	Dog remains under control while handler fills out paperwork, visits with another person.	Dog remains under control at entry table for testing.
Dog waits at door until commanded to enter, waits inside until able to return to heel position.	Dog remains with handler while walking.	Dog enters/exits a doorway or narrow passageway in a controlled manner.	Dog walks through hospital environments without being distracted under control of handler; dog remains at sit, stand, or down stay on command before door to facility.
Dog within “prescribed distance” of individual; ignores public, remaining focused on individual; adjusts to speed changes; readily turns corners without being tugged; maneuvers through tight quarters.	Dog walks through pedestrian traffic under control in public places passing close to at least three people; dog stays at heel during right turn, left turn, and about turn.	Dog walks on loose leash in natural situation, does not pull, makes left and right turns, stops, goes at fast and slow paces; dog walks on loose leash through a crowd.	Dog moves through people in hallway; dog remains calm upon approach of several people at once; dog makes left and right turn and about-turn after encountering distractions.
Dog responds to recall command on 6-foot lead, does not stray away or seek attention from others or trudge slowly; remains under control and focused on individual; comes within prescribed distance on recall and comes directly to individual.	Handler walks 10 feet from dog, faces the dog and calls it; handlers may use “stay” or “wait” command or simply walk away to put dog in place.	Dog performs recall on 20 foot lead.	Dog commanded to stay and handler moves to end of 20 foot lead, turns around, and on command recalls the dog.
Dog responds promptly to sit command; remains under control around food, not trying to get it and not needing repeated corrections; dog remains composed while shopping cart passes; dog remains at sit-stay while petted by stranger.	Dog accepts friendly stranger without showing resentment or shyness; dog accepts petting from friendly stranger; dog accepts being groomed by evaluator; dog responds to sit and down commands and remains in place on 20-foot lead.	Dog performs sit-stay in group of 3 other people with dogs; handler leaves dog on 20 foot lead, picks up item, returns to dog.	Dog performs sit-stay in group; handlers leave the dogs and move to end of 6 foot leads and wait for evaluator’s command to return to dogs; also a group down-stay; dog is readily accessible for petting by patient; can approach wheelchair.
Dog responds to down command; remains under control around food; remains in control while child approaches (but child should not taunt dog or be overly dramatic)		Dog obeys “leave it” command around food on floor or ground.	Person with walker offers dog a treat, but handler instructs dog to leave it and dog must do so; dog passes food on floor and must walk a straight line and leave it; dog remains calm around playing children.
Dog should remain composed during noise distractions.	Dog should be confident with distractions such as dropping a chair, rolling a crate dolly, having a jogger run in front of the dog, etc.		Dog keeps on straight line walking past distractions, including person on crutches, person running, bicycling, rollerblading; loud noises from dropping something such as can filled with rocks, vacuum cleaner.
Dog is unobtrusive and out of way of patrons and employees in restaurant; dog ignores food and remains quiet.			Dog remains calm in crowds and obeys command to leave food alone.
Dog remains under control when lead is dropped.
Dog taken by another person and dog’s partner can move away without aggression or undue stress.	Another person takes dog and handler goes out of sight for 3 minutes; dog should not bark, whine, or pace unnecessarily.		Helper takes hold of dog’s leash but handler can put dog at stay before; handler moves out of sight; dog can move within confines of lead.
Dog loads into vehicle on command.
Handler praises dog when dog does well; dog consistently relaxed, confident, friendly; partner consistently has dog under control.			Good presentation of handler and dog.

The differences are relatively minor. ADI looks at dogs getting in and out of vehicles. This recognizes that a disabled handler is often going to need to be able to get a dog into and out of a car without any physical effort. People who travel with dogs to any degree will teach them to jump in and out of a vehicle, as I and most people I know have done with our dogs. There is also an emphasis on going through doors in the ADI test. People with disabilities may have trouble going through doors, and will need to be confident that, if they cannot go through a door simultaneously with the dog, the dog will catch up or wait for them.I do not know anyone with a therapy dog who has any difficulty with this.

Potential Significance of the VA’s Approach to Emotional Support Animals

The VA provides a table regarding the distinctions between service dogs and emotional support dogs, indicating that, although emotional support dogs qualify for accommodations in housing and air travel, they do not qualify for entry into places of public accommodation. The table is reproduced below:

	Service Dog	Emotional Support Dog
General Definition	A dog that is individually trained to perform work or tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability.	A dog that provides comfort or support for a person with a disability, but does not have any individualized training to perform work or tasks.
Reasonable Accommodation in Housing?	Yes. Housing provider may ask for documentation that owner has a disability and there is a disability-related need for a service animal.	Yes. Housing provider may ask for documentation that owner has a disability and there is a disability-related need for an emotional support animal.
Reasonable Accommodation in Places of Public Accommodation and Public Entities?	Yes. Public accommodations and public entities may not ask for documentation, but can ask if the animal is a service animal and what it is trained to do.	No.
Reasonable Accommodation for airline travel?	Yes. Airline may ask whether the animal is a service animal and what it is trained to do.	Yes. Airline may ask for a signed note from a licensed mental health professional, not more than 1 year old, that states that owner has a psychiatric disability and a disability-related need for an emotional support animal.

While this may be a serviceable summary of the general requirements of the Departments of Justice, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, it must be noted that the definitions of those agencies make no mention, and would often be inconsistent with the tests that the VA is using to qualify service and emotional support animals. The VA knows this. An article posted on a VA website states that:

"One assistance dog advocacy organization, Assistance Dogs International (ADI), has promoted definitions of assistance dog and service dog that are widely cited and accepted by many service dog trainers, but the definitions are not universally used among laypeople or healthcare personnel nor are they aligned with definitions that appear in Federal or state laws." L. Parenti, A. Foreman, B.J. Meade, and O. Wirth (2013). A Revised Taxonomy of Assistance Animals. Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, 50(6), 745-756.

So why was this table included in a Sources Sought/Request for Information?It may have been a way of indicating to prospective emotional support dog providers that they should not expect that dogs they supply would qualify for the access that service dogs receive. This raises the question, however, of what exactly the VA may be planning for emotional support dogs that are used by veterans with PTSD. A VA webpage on “Dogs and PTSD” also describes the difference between the two types of specialized dogs, but says that generally “a regular pet can be an emotional support dog if a mental health provider writes a letter saying that the owner has a mental health condition or disability and needs the dog’s help for his or her health or treatment.” Certainly this does not suggest the level of training or obedience required for an AKC Community Canine.

Is it possible that the VA is considering a change in policy that would allow emotional support dogs to live with veterans in VA or VA-supported facilities, but only if the dogs have a level of training that will avoid their becoming problems for VA administrators? Could emotional support dogs travel in buses and vans that serve VA hospitals? Would emotional support dogs have access to VA hospitals where therapy dogs are already being used?

An even bigger question involves the U.S. Army. As I have noted before, the Army and the VA have always seemed to be joined at the hip with regard to service dog policies. A major source of pain for enlisted Army personnel with service dogs trained for PTSD has been that the Army has put a ban on dogs for PTSD, stating in Army Directive 2013-01, signed by Secretary of the Army John McHugh, that the “psychological service dogs are not considered service dogs” by the Army. If the VA is considering recognizing emotional support dogs, will the Army also take this step? If so, could soldiers live on base with emotional support dogs, and perhaps fly them on military transports? Presumably they would not be able to take them into base canteens, on the analogy to the ADA requirements with regard to service animals, but even this is not clear.

Conclusion

Is the idea of using an American Kennel Club standard to determine qualification of an emotional support animal a good one? It has the advantage of being readily available, and the AKC websitesays that the cost includes a $20 processing fee. Test-giving organizations may also charge a fee for conducting the test. AKC Approved CGC Evaluators administer the test. When I and Chloe took our therapy dog test, we had such an Evaluator, who was also a therapy dog tester. AKC evaluators will not be hard to come by anywhere in the U.S. In my case, though going back over five years, the Evaluator charged nothing for the CGC aspect of the test beyond what was forwarded to the AKC, which then sent me and Chloe a certificate.

This is a much less radical degree of privatization than has occurred with service dogs under VA and Army rules, and could be justified in contexts where an emotional support animal must be firmly in a handler’s control. There is the additional policy question of whether some greater access to public accommodations and public transportation should be granted a dog with such a high degree of control by a handler, though without specifically individualized training for a disability. This would require a major policy shift by the Department of Justice, however, and seems unlikely. Still, it has to be acknowledged that the VA, whether seeking to or not, has brought forth a new idea that might provide a mechanism for dealing with the problem of bogus service animals in public accommodations and transportation.

There is another policy question that must be asked. If the VA thinks that testing can qualify dogs to be either service or emotional support dogs, why does the agency not insist that ADI open up its Public Access Test to non-members? The test would seem to be sufficiently similar to the AKC tests that it could be administered by AKC Evaluators or other neutral testers. Testing would not need to be restricted to dogs trained by ADI organizations, which would significantly expand the potential sources of service dogs for veterans. Alternatively, the VA and the Army could ask the AKC to develop a public access test for service dogs, taking into account issues appropriate for service animals, such as getting into and out of cars and going through doors separately from handlers. Solutions exist to the current bottleneck created by VA and Army policies. It is only a matter of making the effort to find and implement them.

But I have expressed optimism that the VA and the Army would take intelligent directions in their canine policies before, only to be disappointed, so I advise readers to remain skeptical.

Thanks to Michael Arnold and Leigh Anne Novak for suggestions that vastly improved this piece.

Additional Notes. It has been brought to my attention that, on September 23, 2013, Senator Charles Schumer of New York requested an update on the VA study of service dogs for veterans. He stated: "I feel strongly that the VA should provide service dogs to eligible Veterans with PTSD." This undoubtedly increased the pressure on the VA to do something, but it does not explain why emotional support animals are suddenly in the picture.

Someone suggested to me, I think with some degree of cynicism, that the VA may accept that psychiatric service dogs are really only emotional support animals, i.e., that it is impossible to individually train a dog to do work or tasks for a non-physical disability. While I prefer to believe that this level of ignorance does not control thinking inside of the VA, neither can I rule it out.

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Psychiatrist’s Letter Proves Crucial in Patient's Dispute with Landlord over Dog

November 16, 2013, 3:32 am

≫ Next: When a Therapy Dog Bites

≪ Previous: AKC Test Qualifies Emotional Support Animals for VA Study: Is the VA Considering New Policies on Service Dogs and ESAs?

Dr. J.L. Thomas and I wrote an article for psychological and medical professionals regarding letters that such professionals are asked to write on behalf of patients with service and support animals. In the article, which appeared in the Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, we analyzed letters that were influential in legal cases where patients sued to gain access to public accommodations, transportation, or housing. We also analyzed letters that had the opposite effect, either not helping patients or actually harming their cases. A recent case from a federal district court in California involves a letter from a psychiatrist that was the primary evidence that persuaded the judge to grant summary judgment for the patient who had sued the landlords for failing to grant her a reasonable accommodation to live with a dog that, according to the psychiatrist, was “of much benefit to her mental state and necessary for her continued stabilization.”

Difficulty with a Landlord

Sharon Smith suffers from various mental disabilities, with symptoms that include depression, frequent bouts of crying, and anxiety. Her psychiatrist, Dr. David L. Friedman, concluded that she was “temporarily totally disabled,” and diagnosed her as having adjustment disorder, pain disorder, and insomnia. Smith herself states that her mental disabilities inhibit her ability to take care of herself, get out of bed, interact with others, and remain focused. She also suffers from injuries to both wrists, for which she has received surgery but has not fully recovered.

Smith has lived with a companion dog, Layla, a ten-pound terrier. Smith asserts that the dog helps to alleviate the symptoms of her mental disabilities, and stated in a declaration to the federal district court for the Central District of California that Layla “helps me keep a regular routine of caring for myself, motivates me to get out bed, clean, maintain relationships with friends and family, and to exercise.”

In June 2012, Smith moved into an apartment rented by Harold and Zelma Powdrill before seeing, signing, or reviewing a lease agreement. She informed Philip Powdrill, a son of the owners, that she would be living with a dog, which she told him was a companion animal necessary to address her disabilities. Philip sent a text message to Smith asking her how the dog was doing in its new home.

On June 30, Valerie Powdrill, the daughter of the owners, gave Smith a copy of the rental agreement to review and sign. The agreement included a no-pets clause that stated: “No dog, cat, bird, or other domestic pet or animal of any kind may be kept on or about the premises without LANDLORD’s written consent.” Smith signed the lease but did not initial the page with the no-pet provision.

According to the federal district court for the Central District of California:

“Uncomfortable with representations by Philip Powdrill that she could keep the dog so long as she kept it on the ‘down low,’ … , on or about July 12, 2012 Plaintiff sent a handwritten letter to Defendants requesting an exception to the no-pet policy…. In the letter, Plaintiff introduced herself as a new tenant and stated that she has undergone surgery to both her hands due to workplace injuries, receives disability benefits, and is currently attending physical and mental therapy…. Plaintiff stated that she was unaware of the no-pet policy when she moved in and requested an accommodation to allow her to keep the dog because it had been deemed a necessary form of emotional support by her doctor…. She described the dog as ‘well trained, doesn't bark, [and] completely house broken.’”

The Psychiatrist’s Letter

To her own letter, Smith attached a letter from her psychiatrist, Dr. Friedman, stating:

“Please be advised that I have been treating Ms. Smith since April 2012. As part of her psychiatric difficulty she suffers from a severe Adjustment Disorder, Pain Disorder, and Insomnia. Due to Ms. Smith's psychiatric condition, having a companion animal would be of much benefit to her mental state and necessary for her continued stabilization. I believe, Ms. Smith should be allowed to have such animal at her place of residence. Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact this office.”

Zelma Powdrill replied to Smith’s letter on July 16, 2012, denying the request for an accommodation. The letter said that Smith had given differing explanations as to who owned the dog and whether it would be living with her, adding: "Your letter dated July 12, 2012, asking us to allow you and the dog to stay, indicates you are in possession of a dog in the apartment…. Our lease clearlystates no pets are allowed, therefore we have enclosed a NOTICE TO PERFORM CONDITIONS AND COVENANTS OR QUIT." The notice was attached, stating that Smith had three days to comply or leave the premises.

On July 24, 2012, a former case analyst at the Housing Rights Center, Gabriela Garcia, called and spoke to Zelma Powdrill, telling her that Smith was a person with mental disabilities and requires the use of a companion animal to alleviate the symptoms of her disabilities. Zelma insisted that she would not allow Smith to keep the companion dog in the unit, saying that it would result in extra costs to renovate the apartment, that dogs are meant to be kept outside, and that she wanted Smith out of the unit. Garcia sent a letter to Zelma concerning their conversation and confirming the Powdrills’ refusal to grant the requested accommodation.

Smith vacated the apartment on March 7, 2013.

Tenant Files Lawsuit

Smith filed suit under the Fair Housing Amendments Act, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, the California Disabled Persons Act, and on other grounds, asserting that the Powdrills’ actions had caused her emotional distress, including stress, heightened depression, increased anxiety, fear of retaliation and eviction, and humiliation. She sought compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorney’s fees. The federal district court granted summary judgment to Smith under the three Acts, meaning that the primary issue left to litigate will be the amount of damages for which the Powdrills will be liable.

Conclusion

As Dr. Thomas and I note in our article, it should not be necessary to give a diagnosis in a letter but, particularly in housing situations, the inclusion of a diagnosis has often been persuasive to courts and appears to have been so here. The letter was obviously written by the doctor himself, as opposed to reading as if downloaded from a website or written by the patient for the doctor to sign. It avoids any overly broad statement about what benefit the dog will provide—that is, no cure is claimed. Rather, it simply states that “a companion animal would be of much benefit to her mental state and necessary for her continued stabilization.” Finally, the psychiatrist indicates his willingness to talk with the landlords if they should wish. It was the refusal of the landlords to engage in any kind of dialogue with the tenant, to find out anything more about what the dog meant to her, to even consider that it might not just be a pet, that doomed their case. If Dr. Thomas and I ever revise our article, this decision will be included.

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When a Therapy Dog Bites

November 25, 2013, 3:16 am

≫ Next: Do Dogs Detect Hypoglycemia? Two Studies Say Yes, but a Third Raises Serious Doubts

≪ Previous: Psychiatrist’s Letter Proves Crucial in Patient's Dispute with Landlord over Dog

A handler who belongs to a national therapy dog organization, as I do, is required to certify annually that the dog has not bitten anyone or shown overt aggression since the previous renewal of membership. This requirement is not limited to incidents that happen during visitations. A recent case from New York involved a therapy dog that bit a guest at a party in the home of his owner. The certifying organization was not informed of the bite (until I sent them an email asking for comment), and the dog's certification continued for two years after the incident. Should the dog have been allowed to continue a visitation schedule? I look at the issues of this case in a commentary posted on the website of the Animal Legal and Historical Center.

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Do Dogs Detect Hypoglycemia? Two Studies Say Yes, but a Third Raises Serious Doubts

November 26, 2013, 2:58 am

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Three UK scientists, one of which is the CEO of a dog training organization that specializes in medical detection dogs, have published a study (Rooney et al. 2013) that “points to the potential value of alert dogs, for increasing glycaemic control, client independence and consequent quality of life and even reducing the costs of long term health care.” Another preliminary study (Gonder-Frederick et al., 2013), also using self-reporting, largely confirmed the results of the first study. A third study (Dehlinger et al., 2013), however, found that trained hypoglycemia alert dogs, when faced with swabs taken from patients during hypoglycemic periods and swabs taken during normal glycemic level periods, could not distinguish them at a level greater than chance. It will be important for future research, and for the credibility of this kind of service dog, to determine how such disparate results can be reconciled.

The UK Study

Summarizing prior research, Rooney et al. noted that “studies relied on owners accurately recalling past events,” meaning that “the frequency with which dogs respond may be over-reported.” They also note that previous studies of dogs have concentrated on hypoglycemic episodes exclusively, whereas their study also examined hyperglycemia. The subjects in this study had Type 1 diabetes.

Medical Detection Dogs, the charity of one of the authors, has trained over 20 dogs in hypoglycemia alerting. This and other charities have used trained alerting behaviors that “include licking, pawing, jumping, staring, vocalizing and even fetching a blood testing kit” when an owner’s blood sugar level falls outside a target range, usually 5-15 nm/l. (Alerting by fetching a blood testing kit is a specific set of actions that is not likely to be accidental, but it must be wondered if owners might sometimes confuse some of the other actions with non-alerting activities of a dog. It is to be hoped that the authors will follow with an article about the training methods used in this study.) This study sought to assess claims that using such dogs facilitates tightened glycemic control, reduces hypoglycemic episodes, nocturnal lows, and calls for paramedic assistance.

The 16 subjects completing the study were clients of Medical Detection Dogs with trained and certified or “advanced trainee dogs,” the latter being deemed to alert sufficiently accurately to participate in the study despite a lack of certification. Subjects had lived with a hypoglycemia alert dog as short as four months and as long as seven years. The subjects provided detailed information about how having an alert dog had changed their lives, including the estimated frequencies of low blood sugar pre-dog and with the dog, of episodes of losing consciousness, and of paramedic calls. All subjects reported a decrease in at least one of these categories after obtaining a trained dog. Eight people who reported having episodes of unconsciousness before getting a dog said they did not have such episodes after getting one. Three people reported having made paramedic calls before getting a dog but not after. Almost all subjects (15) trusted their dogs to alert to low blood sugar levels, while 13 trusted them to alert to high blood sugar levels. The scientists explain this discrepancy from the fact that alerting to high blood sugar “is a secondary task, trained subsequent to a strong alert to low blood sugar.”

In the second phase of the study, subjects were asked to record their dog’s alerting behavior and to provide blood test results. The study found that blood tests for eight of ten subjects showed that a sample taken after a dog’s alert was significantly more likely to be out of target range than was a routine sample. One dog was apparently alerting at random. The study states that for “the best performing dog, the odds of an alert being when bloods were out of range were 10,000 times higher than that of routine tests.” Eight subjects who recorded nocturnal lows pre-dog had fewer nocturnal lows post-dog, though two had an increase post-dog.

The authors of the study state their results with some hedging on the fact that much of their data depends on self-reporting by subjects:

“The population, overall, reported reduced unconscious episodes and paramedic call outs, which if accurate, is of great importance since not only does it represent increase health and safety of the client, but also potentially significant reduced costs in health care.” They also note that “for 80% of the clients providing sufficient data, when their dog was recorded to perform an alerting behaviour their blood was significantly more likely to be out of target range than it was during routine samples. In addition, comparison of owner’s routine test records from before and after obtaining their dog, showed highly significant overall change: all but one client being more likely to be within target range post-dog; five out of nine clients experienced a significantly reduced incidence of low blood sugars, and three of the remaining four showed a significant reduction in high blood sugars, suggesting improved glycaemic control in most clients. The two clients who showed no significant increase in percentage within target (1 and 5), had dogs which were unqualified and the clients reported to be experiencing training problems, which were subsequently resolved.”

As to what the dogs are actually alerting to, these scientists argue that odor cues are the most plausible explanation, particularly given that when this occurs when owners are asleep, behavioral cues would presumably be few, “although changes in breathing rate may occur.” Also, some owners report the dogs alerting when they are in another room. Thus, it “is likely that dogs detect changes in the chemical composition of their owners’ sweat, or breath (including products of ketosis)….”

The Virginia Survey

A short paper appearing in Diabetes Care, Gonder-Frederick et al. also gathered data from persons with Type 1 diabetes. The patients had received diabetic alert dogs from Service Dogs by Warren Retrievers, Inc., located in Culpeper, Virginia. The survey asked how often respondents experienced hypoglycemia with no corresponding alert from their service dog. More than a third (36.1%) reported no such occurrences, 27.8% reported fewer than one event per week, and 36.1% reported more than one per week. Respondents reported significant decreases of sever and moderate hypoglycemia since getting a dog, though detailed statistics were not included in the one-page summary. Subjects reported decreased worry about hypo- and hyperglycemia, and increased participation in physical activities. The authors of the study conclude that their preliminary results justify additional research.

The Oregon Study

In a study that did not use self-reporting, Dehlinger et al., subjects rubbed sterile cotton swab samples by rubbing them on the skin of both arms during hypoglycemic and normal glycemic periods. (The UK study also indicated that the dogs were “increasingly” trained “using remote odour samples collected from clients during times of hypoglycaemia” before the dog and owner were introduced.) The three dogs used in the study had been trained to press a bell after sniffing a container with a hypoglycemic swab. The dogs were trained by Dogs Assisting Diabetics Foundation of Forest Grove, Oregon. The owners of the dogs, and their trainer, believed the dogs were consistently able to detect hypoglycemia. Each dog was tested with 24 samples by being presented with a sample from 30 to 45 seconds. The overall results for each dog, and combined, are contained in the following table.

	Dog 1	Dog 2	Dog 3
Percent correct, each	54.2	58.3	50.0
Percent correct, all	54.2
Sensitivity, each	50.0	58.3	58.3
Sensitivity, all	55.5
Specificity, each	58.3	58.3	41.7
Specificity, all	52.8

The researchers did not provide an explanation as to why dogs trained to alert to hypoglycemic swabs could not do so in their experimental setting. The researchers concluded that “trained dogs were largely unable to identify skin swabs obtained from hypoglycemic T1D subjects.” They indicate that future studies should factor in behavioral effects, and should perhaps look at swabs taken only from the usual human companions of the dogs.

I am particularly concerned about this study because a researcher with whom I occasionally work told me that he met a detection dog trainer at a diabetes conference. Concerned that her description of how the dogs worked allowed for a Clever Hans effect, he asked to use three dogs for a quick double-blind study. The dogs did not perform better than chance.

How Can the Inconsistencies Be Explained?

There are a number of ways that the inconsistencies of the studies might be explained. Chemical changes might be complex, and vary in the sweat of different owners. Dogs trained from sweat swabs from the skin of multiple owners might, once deployed with a single owner, display different levels of recognition of hypoglycemia. If dogs primarily or even partially recognize low or high blood sugar from behavioral changes in their owners, this could also explain some inconsistencies. If it is ultimately verified that dogs recognize changes in blood sugar changes when their owners are asleep, behavioral recognition might be reduced to detection of changes in breathing patterns. It is also possible that if dogs recognize changes in blood sugar from a mixture of chemical and behavioral changes, a study only looking only at chemical changes, as is true of the third paper discussed above, will not produce good results.

There were many more dogs in the first two studies than in the third, which had only three. It could be that a larger number of dogs in the third study would have produced more positive results. As noted above, the researchers did not explain why dogs trained to recognize hypoglycemic swabs did not do so effectively in their study. The research used double-blind investigators. Were the dogs trained in an environment where cueing was possible so that in an experimental environment where it was not the results were not significant? Was there a Clever Hans effect because the dogs were responding to the patients’ behavior? Were other controls missing from the training environment, meaning the dogs were not really trained at the level the researchers supposed? Were the methods of collecting sweat in training and in the experiment really identical?

Self-reporting may be more flawed than is acknowledged in the first two studies. Patients may be seeing what they want to see, or the companionship of the dogs may make patients more attentive to their own care. The blood samples collected by subjects in the first study after their dogs alerted were significantly more likely to be out of the target range than a routine sample. If, however, the owners recognize the change in themselves, could they be unconsciously cueing their dogs to alert, then taking the samples. If this turns out to be the case, are the dogs, presently recognized as service dogs, really emotional support animals? Since they are trained to perform behaviors related to the disability of their owners, they would arguably still be service dogs, but if those behaviors do not in fact correlate with the aspect of the disability the dogs are supposedly trained to react to, is the training still related to the disability? That is a legal question that, my guess is, courts will not look forward to considering soon.

Conclusion

Hypoglycemia alert studies bear a resemblance to seizure alert studies in that most results to date have involved self-reporting. As I noted in the chapter on this subject in Service and Therapy Dogs in American Society, one study that recorded two patients with dogs in an epilepsy care unit (Ortiz and Liporace, 2005) found that seizure dogs were poor in alerting before a seizure and concluded that seizure dogs “were not as effective as previously thought in predicting seizure activity.” These authors acknowledged the small size of their sample. Objective research must be continued with both types of dogs. It is important that hypoglycemia alerting be verified in strict double-blind settings, and it can be expected that such conflicting results as discussed here, and the ultimately positive benefits if alerting is verified to actually occur, will encourage additional research and open the spigot for funding such research.

Scientific discoveries often begin with anecdotal accounts, such as the initial reports of dogs that seemed to recognize that dark patches of skin on their owners were somehow disturbing, followed by the discovery that the spots were melanomas. This led to the phenomenon of cancer sniffers. Rigorous studies on cancer detection by dogs, however, have led to high levels of specificity and sensitivity of 80% or more, not the anemic 50% shown here. For scientists to be persuaded that dogs can reliably detect hypoglycemia, there will have to be something more than has been demonstrated by survey studies, no matter how sophisticated, since these studies are inevitably subjective, sometimes little more than a distillation of multiple anecdotal reports. The law should sit on the sidelines for a time, as long as dogs that are claimed to have blood sugar level detection abilities are also trained well enough not to be a distraction to other patrons or passengers in public places and transportation. Nevertheless, even here there should be an expectation that this type of alerting can eventually be supported by highly controlled scientific results.

This blog was written by John Ensminger and L.E. Papet. Thanks to Dr. Tadeusz Jezierski for comments.

Sources:

Dehlinger, K., Tarnowski, K., House, J.L., Los, E., Hanavan, K., Bustamante, B., Ahmann, A.J., and Ward, W.K. (2013). Can Trained Dogs Detect a Hypoglycemic Scent in Patients with Type 1 Diabetes? Diabetes Care, 36, e-98-9.

Gonder-Frederick, L., Rice, P., Warren, D., Vajda, K., and Shepard, J. (2013). Diabetic Alert Dogs: A Preliminary Survey of Current Users. Diabetes Care, 36, e47.

Ortiz, R., and Liporace, J. (2005). “Seizure-alert dogs”: Observations from an Inpatient Video/EEC Unit.” Epilepsy and Behavior, 6(4), 620-622.

Rooney, N.J., Morant, S., and Guest, C. (August 2013). Investigation into the Value of Trained Glycaemia Alert Dogs to Clients with Type 1 Diabetes. PLOS/One 8(8), 369921.

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Law Student Training Service Dogs Can Sue Law School for Refusing to Admit Dogs to Classes

December 2, 2013, 3:24 am

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Nicole Lara Shumate enrolled in Drake University Law School in Des Moines in 2006 and graduated three years later. Shumate is a service and therapy dog trainer and founded a non-profit organization called Paws and Effect the same year she started law school. It is not clear when she first tried to bring dogs in training to classes, but her complaint stated that the law school dean notified her in September 2009 that “access to law school facilities with a service dog in training would not be tolerated per the university policy.”

Shumate brought suit in 2011, alleging that she had been denied access to classes “because she was assisted by a service dog in training.” She also said that a professor had denied her admittance to a cultural event being held at a local church because she was accompanied by a service dog in training. Finally, she argued that the law school directed hostility toward her and created a “poisonous learning environment.” The trial court determined that Shumate came within the coverage of the Iowa disability statute, but held that the statute did not grant her a private right of action. Therefore, that court granted the university’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Shumate appealed.

Iowa Disability Statute Regarding Service Dogs

Iowa Code 216C.11(2) states that a "person with a disability or person training an assistive animal has the right to be accompanied by a service dog or an assistive animal, under control," in places of public accommodation and transportation.The trial court determined that Shumate's training activities were covered by this statute. Drake University disagreed, referring to the definition of a service dog that applied in 2009, under which such a dog had to be “specially trained at a recognized training facility.” Drake contended that the statute applicable at the time of Shumate’s attendance of law school did not intend “any and every service-dog trainer to be a member of the class of persons protected" by the statute. Presumably, Shumate’s Paws and Effect qualified as a “recognized training facility,” though the issue received no analysis in the appellate decision. In 2011, the reference to training in the statute was revised to state that a service dog “means a dog specially trained to assist a person with a disability….” The university also noted that the title of Chapter 216C is “Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” indicating a legislative intent only to protect persons with disabilities, not trainers of service dogs without disabilities.

The appellate court agreed with the trial court that Shumate fell within the class of persons protected by the statute, and added that “[e]nsuring access to public places and accommodations for persons training service dogs will increase the availability of skilled dogs for disabled persons, who will then be better equipped to participate in the ‘social and economic life’ of the community.” The court elaborated that “[e]nsuring that service dog trainers have full access to places open to the public, and thereby creating a pool of well-trained dogs to assist disabled persons in navigating public facilities, advances the stated aim of chapter 216C.”

Private Right of Action

The fact that the statute applied to Shumate as a trainer of service dogs was not the only hurdle she had to overcome. She also had to demonstrate that she had a private right of action under the statutes cited. It could, after all, be the case that only a district attorney or other official could bring a criminal action under the statute. The trial court had, in fact, concluded that a simple misdemeanor remedy “communicated the legislature’s exclusion of a private suit for damages.”

The Iowa Court of Appeals observed that the statutory right of “a person training a service dog to be accompanied by the dog at certain public facilities and places of public accommodation … is more than a general statement of policy; instead it sets out concrete requirements to allow access to trainers accompanied by service dogs.” The appellate court concluded that the trial court “erred in finding the inclusion of a simple misdemeanor penalty ... revealed a legislative intent to deny a private cause of action,” adding:

“The overarching purpose of chapter 216C is to guarantee persons with disabilities greater access to public facilities and wider participation in the social and business community, not to craft a criminal offense to punish those who exclude persons training service dogs from public places.”

The court stated that it “would be inconsistent with the underlying purpose of the chapter to pair these robust rights with the meager remedy of a simple misdemeanor prosecution.” (The maximum penalty if the university were convicted of a misdemeanor would have been a fine of $625.) The court continued that it “follows that allowing a service dog trainer to enforce this policy by bringing a private right of action, if denied access while accompanied by a service dog, is consistent with the underlying purpose of the statute.”

The Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of Shumate’s petition and remanded for further proceedings.

Conclusion

The case is not over. Shumate will have to support her claims for monetary damages and the university might still make a fundamental-alteration argument with respect to the presence of dogs in training in a law school environment. This might be difficult, however, given that Drake appears not to have given Shumate much, if any, opportunity to have a dog in a class and demonstrate that it would not interfere with the class or other students.Had she brought one in, and had it been unruly and distracting, then the university would have had other arguments, but this is not stated in the facts as having happened. If Shumate had been going to medical school, the sanitary requirements of certain environments would have allowed the university to exclude her dogs from those environments. Law schools, however, are just classrooms with desks and a blackboard.

Although I think the case is correctly decided, I have to say that when I was going to law school I would not have considered bringing a dog I was training with me. I began law school at a time when cases were still recited. A student called on to explain a case had to stand up, summarize the facts of the case and justify a position that it was correctly or incorrectly decided, then withstand sometimes half an hour of debate with a professor over the issues. (I once worked with a lawyer who had been a classmate of John Jay Osborn, author of The Paper Chase. He assured me that he was in the same class as Osborn when the Harvard law prof Osborn fictionalized as Charles W. Kingsfield gave a dime to a student after a poor recitation and actually said, 'Here’s a dime. Go call your mother and tell her you’re not going to be a lawyer.') I would not have wanted to have a dog at my feet, and thinking back on it, would not have wanted to risk the dog becoming restless or sensing my anxiety. Nevertheless, that was a long time ago and law school is apparently somewhat more benign these days.

Shumate v. Drake University, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 1152 (Ct.App. 2013)

Thanks to Michael Perlin and Leigh Anne Novak for comments.

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Field Records Remain Valuable in Establishing Reliability of Tracking Dogs (unlike Drug Dogs after Florida v. Harris)

December 12, 2013, 5:34 am

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The history of tracking goes back to the dark days of slavery, as discussed by us elsewhere. That tradition produced a case law, and principles of evidence, very different from what began to arise in the 1970s for narcotics and explosives detection dogs. Tracking dogs were often trained as an economic activity, and well-known dogs could be brought over state lines—sometimes over several state lines—to track in notorious criminal cases. There was also a long tradition of prisoners training dogs, dogs that would be used to follow the trails of fellow prisoners who tried to escape. Since these dogs were often not owned by law enforcement agencies, legend was far more important than recordkeeping. A prison-trained tracking dog was involved in a recent case in Louisiana.

A Robbery in Natchitoches

The Tobacco Warehouse Convenience Store in Natchitoches, Louisiana, was robbed at gunpoint by two men. Two brothers, Corey W. and Andre Oliphant, were convicted in January, 2007. The appeal described here involves only one of the brothers, Corey, who was sentenced to forty years at hard labor without benefit of parole. The appeal came about after the federal district court for the Western District of Louisiana, on a habeas petition, essentially directed Louisiana to allow an appeal in the case.

The evidence at trial is summarized as follows.

On April 23, 2005, a man with a pistol entered the Tobacco Warehouse and took approximately $700 from store employees. The robber was described as black, with a hood pulled over his head. He also had a piece of cloth across his chin. At approximately the same time, a retired detention officer, living near the strip mall where the Tobacco Warehouse was located, saw a man with a hood over his head run through his yard, jump a fence, and get into the passenger side of a white, older-model Lincoln. He noticed the molding below the bottom of a door was missing.

Two hours later a police officer saw a Lincoln Town Car run a stop sign. The officer put on his lights but had to chase the car until it stopped. The car was being driven by Nicholas Oliphant and was registered to Odell Oliphant, respectively another brother of the defendant and his father. Knowing of the robbery, the officer asked Nicholas if he had a gun in the car, which he admitted he did. The officer put Nicholas in cuffs and took a nickel-plated, snub-nosed, 22 caliber revolver with a blued cylinder from the Lincoln.

Detention Center Tracking Dogs

Nicholas said that his brother, Corey, could verify that he had been at home all day. Corey was brought to the police station and gave an inconsistent account of his own whereabouts earlier in the day. A determination was made to use tracking dogs in the investigation and Corey was asked to provide a sock, with which he complied. A tracking team was brought to the Tobacco Warehouse. The sock was given to Officer Roy Gallien, a dog handler assigned to a nearby detention center.

Regarding the dogs, the Louisiana Court of Appeals states:

“According to Officer Gallien, the Detention Center has six tracking dogs including ‘Bo’ and ‘Trusty,’ the dogs used in this search, as well as a number of puppies in training. He testified that ‘the mamma dog’ had come from Angola State Prison and that she had been bred to dogs from two other correctional facilities around the state. The dogs are not certified in any capacity, and all of their tracking expertise has arisen from use at the Detention Center. While Officer Gallien testified concerning at least two situations where the bloodhounds were useful in a search, he provided no information concerning the expertise of anyone involved in the training, including himself. Additionally, he acknowledged that the Detention Center keeps no records concerning the dogs’ use.”

Officer Gallien also indicated that the dogs were trained by trustees of the Detention Center.

At the Tobacco Warehouse, Officer Gallien let Bo and Trusty sniff the sock from Corey Oliphant at about 7:15, five hours after the robbery. The dogs tracked separately “along a route similar to what” Officer Gallien would later learn was described by the retired detention officer. In a later part of the discussion, however, the court states that the dogs “neither tracked the exact same trail and both terminated their tracking efforts at different locations.” It is not detailed how far apart these two tracking endpoints were.

Corey Oliphant was arrested for armed robbery. The Lincoln was searched, producing two items made of panty-hose or stocking-type material. Searches of the car and the house, however, produced no clothing resembling that worn by the robber, and no money that might have been taken from the Tobacco Warehouse. Witnesses did not pick pictures of Nicholas or Corey Oliphant from a photographic lineup. One witness, pressed to pick the photograph closest to the robber, picked someone other than the brothers. The retired detention officer did not identify anyone. Nor did anyone identify the gun found in the Lincoln as the weapon used in the robbery.

Appellate Court’s Consideration of Tracking Evidence

The defendant made five assignments of error, one of which was the admission of the bloodhound testimony. The appellate court noted that there was no evidence of certification of the two dogs but added:

“[T]he only evidence of training was Officer Gallien's testimony to the effect that much of the dogs’ training was accomplished by inmates at the Detention Center. Officer Gallien was not offered as an expert in the handling of bloodhounds, and the record contains no evidence of his training or the training of anyone else associated with the dogs. While Officer Gallien did testify to incidences of successful use of the bloodhounds, he acknowledged that no records were kept concerning the success or failure rate of operations involving the bloodhounds. When the defendant objected to Officer Gallien's testimony and lack of expertise and documentation, the trial court overruled the objection, noting that the objection would go to the weight of the evidence instead of its admissibility.”

The appellate court referred to the admission of bloodhound evidence as “an uncommon occurrence,” in contrast to narcotics detection dog evidence. While this is true, it perhaps overlooks the fact that the earliest criminal cases where dogs were part of the investigation, going back to the nineteenth century, involved tracking dogs. The court noted that where tracking dogs have been used, issues with regard to them have not often been raised on appeal. This is also true, and understandable. As with cadaver dogs, the discovery of a body often makes the question of how it was discovered irrelevant. If, say, a gun from a robbery is found by a dog along the path the robber used to flee the scene of the crime, there are commonly other ways to connect the gun with the robber.

The court then reviewed older Louisiana case law regarding bloodhounds, but found the best statement of a proper foundation for bloodhound evidence in a 1980 Tennessee case, Tennessee v. Barger, 612 S.W.2d 485 (Tenn.Crim.App. 1980), which stated that the handler had to be available for examination and the dog must:

Be a purebred and of a type characterized by acuteness of scent and power of discrimination.
Be accustomed and trained to track human (as opposed to animal) scents.
Be shown by experience in actual cases to be reliable in tracking.
Have been placed on the trail at a spot where the suspect was known to have been or on a track which circumstances indicate he made.
Have been placed on the trail within a period of efficiency, i.e., before a rainstorm or lengthy passage of time.

Applying these factors to the case before it, the Louisiana Court of Appeals said that “there is insufficient evidence to establish the qualifications of the bloodhounds used to track the defendant’s exit from the Tobacco Warehouse.” The court emphasized the lack of certification, and aside from a few examples of success with the dogs, noted that Officer Gallien “could not assert any degree of overall tracking reliability because of a complete lack of records.”

In any case, the appellate court concluded that “the trial court erred in allowing the bloodhound evidence to be introduced to the jury.”

The court might have also noted research indicating that tracking dogs are less able to distinguish the scents of people closely related than of strangers. The fact that a number of brothers and a father were involved raises the possibility that the dog might have been tracking someone other than Corey.The court did consider that the tracking, which occurred five hours after the crime, might not have been in the dog’s period of efficiency. Many dogs would be considered efficient up to 24 hours, however, or even beyond. (For a discussion of the five elements listed here for admission of tracking evidence and their evolution over more than a century, see Police and Military Dogs, Chapters 3 and 5.)

Certification of Tracking Dogs

The appellate court emphasized that the dogs were not certified in any capacity, that there was “no evidence of certification of the two dogs involved in the tracking,” and that there was “a lack of Louisiana jurisprudence on the subject of bloodhound certification.” This, the court felt, was to be contrasted with the importance of certification for drug-detection dogs, for which the court cited numerous state and federal cases, including the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983). (There was no reference to the more recent decision in Florida v. Harris.)

Although the court felt the lack of certification was important, it apparently would not have excluded the bloodhound evidence had the five elements of Barger been satisfied. Those elements do not mention certification. Two of the five elements specifically relate to the facts of any case before a court—where and when the dog was placed on the trail. The other three relate to the dog and its background—its breed (that it be purebred), that it was “accustomed and trained to track humans,” and it be “shown by experience in actual cases to be reliable in tracking.” Thus, tracking cases often depend more on a dog’s actual production in the field than any certification. Why this is so—and that it should be so—is worth additional analysis.

Complexity of Tracking

In Florida v. Harris, 133 S.Ct. 1050 (2013), Justice Kagan compared field records to training and testing environments, stating:

“There, the designers of an assessment know where drugs are hidden and where they are not—and so where a dog should alert and where he should not. The better measure of a dog’s reliability thus comes away from the field, in controlled testing environments.”

The Justice observed that in the field it could be impossible to determine whether a dog’s alert, where no drugs were found, was genuinely false, or was rather an alert to a residual odor or an otherwise undetectable amount. We will argue in a forthcoming law review article that training and certification environments often contain residual odors and trace amounts of target drugs, but for purposes of analyzing this case, and tracking in general, it is to be noted that the situation in which the dog is placed and the circumstances of the assignment are very different.

A narcotics detection dog, when deployed to sniff a vehicle or other location, produces one of three results: no alert, interest without an alert, or an alert. For the most part, this is a binary analysis, alert or no alert. The Supreme Court, in Florida v. Harris, said that field records “in most cases have relatively limited import,” adding that “[e]rrors may abound in such records.” It is important to understand that, for any court analyzing a tracking case, this holding should not apply to tracking situations, where the dog’s choices cannot be described as binary. In fact, the dog’s potential actions can cover a broad set of patterns, some of which are indicated in the following table.

Where tracking begins:	Dog’s actions:	Evidentiary significance:
Scene of crime	No trail found	None or minimal
	Trail followed but soon lost	May indicate direction perpetrator took on leaving scene
	Trail followed leading to location where perpetrator may have entered vehicle and driven off	May be useful if evidence connects suspect with location or vehicle
	Dog finds item connected with the crime	Significant in verifying path perpetrator took after crime; item may have independent value
	Dog leads to house or building perpetrator may have entered	May lead to warrant for search
	Dog leads to individual who is potential perpetrator	Sometimes admitted as identification evidence (but see Curran et al. finding that tracking may be accurate without identification at end of trail being accurate)
	Dog loses trail but then resumes trail, perhaps even after handler has discontinued search	May excluded under some state requirements that tracking be continuous
	Dog loses field trail but then is encouraged to resume work at entrance to police station, leading to suspect already under arrest	Sometimes admitted as station identification (improperly in our opinion)
Location where perpetrator or suspect was seen	Dog leads back to scene of crime	May be admitted concerning path perpetrator took after crime (a reverse track), though may also indicate perpetrator returned to scene of crime

It is evident that many of these actions are far from two-choice situations such as are faced by drug dogs, that a dog following a trail is making countless assessments of the source and direction of an odor, sometimes producing significant evidence that can stand in its own right. This is not equivalent to the possibility of a dog alerting to residual odor in a narcotics case. Finding items associated with a crime, such as a weapon used in the commission of the crime or items taken from victims of the crime, should obviously not be evidence excluded merely because the dog involved was not certified. (Finding such items may also occur during an article search.)

Further, tracking in the field is probably more controlled, in a scientific sense, than a training or certification test environment. In a typical field deployment, the handler does not know at the beginning of the trail which way the dog will go. Nor does he or she know at any point along the trail when the dog will change course. It is possible that the handler in a training or certification situation will have some idea of these matters. The dog may be tracking in an area where other dogs have tracked before. The handler may have seen the instructor or tester place objects with the scent the dog is going to pursue. A field assignment is, thus, often much more of a double-blind situation than a testing or certification course. Consequently, field records of a tracking dog can be useful in assessing the dog’s reliability.

Also, because the tracking situation is not binary, there has seldom been an argument to correlate the results of tracking dogs to exclude those dogs whose deployments do not produce evidence. A drug dog that alerts more than others in a department may be suspected of being cued, and the Supreme Court in Harris may have wanted to avoid having full-blown trials of dogs on this basis. Tracking situations are too diverse for such a simplistic analysis and there is no need to analogize tracking evidence to drug dog evidence on the issue of certification.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court’s decision in Harris should not become a means of excluding valid field evidence in every type of police dog work. Even less should it become a reason for not keeping complete field records, or for destroying them before they may have to be made available to defense counsel.

Several months ago we analyzed a currency forfeiture action in which we discussed recent research on quantification of currency contamination by cocaine. Certain levels of currency contamination are expected on U.S. bills, not from the fact that most bills are handled by criminals at one point or another, but probably from mechanical currency counters distributing cocaine residue across bills that enter the machine. When a bill has above a certain level of contamination, however, it has a significant probability of having been associated with a drug trafficker. (See Jourdan et al., 2013.) If a dog alerts to it, the prevailing theory is that the dog is alerting to methyl benzoate, an unstable compound that disintegrates rapidly, so the alert of the dog indicates that the currency was probably in contact with cocaine in the previous two days. This creates some forensic formulas:

High residue + Alert = Drug enterprise contamination within 48 hours

High residue + No alert = Drug enterprise contamination older than several days

Normal residue + Alert = Recent contamination, perhaps innocent as from currency counter

These formulas oversimplify the possibilities, but do indicate why this kind of field alert evidence should be maintained, and should fit within the exception that Justice Kagan acknowledged in Harris where a “dog’s (or handler’s) history in the field … may sometimes be relevant….”

For any court tempted to apply the training and certification logic of Harris to a tracking dog, these considerations should be taken into account before there is any knee-jerk dismissal of field evidence or a refusal to allow discovery of such evidence. The reliability of a tracking dog may be best established by field records, in contrast to the general devaluation of such records for drug dogs by the Supreme Court in Harris. The failure to maintain field records in this case was a sufficient reason to reject the tracking evidence. Records should be kept and even prison-trained dogs should have records kept of their deployments, though this case demonstrates that this has not yet happened in Louisiana. The Louisiana appellate court is right to say that it should.

Louisiana v. Oliphant, 2013 La. App. LEXIS 2386 (Ct.App. 2013)

This blog was written by John Ensminger and L.E. Papet.

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Dogs, Once Hunters of Ringed Seals and Polar Bears, Now Help Protect Them

January 2, 2014, 6:33 am

≫ Next: Of Bonobos and Bottlenecks: Shifting Battle Lines in Dog Domestication Debates

≪ Previous: Field Records Remain Valuable in Establishing Reliability of Tracking Dogs (unlike Drug Dogs after Florida v. Harris)

Dogs have been trained to monitor the status of endangered species, including desert tortoises, Siberian tigers, and numerous other animals, but these functions were usually developed without any legal requirement. In the oil drilling areas of Alaska, however, regulations recommend, in the case of polar bears, and require, in the case of ringed seals, that their habitats, particularly breeding areas, be identified by trained detection dogs. Given that the skill of dogs in finding seals and bears was originally honed to hunt these animals, their use for conservation is a dramatic change in purpose.

National Marine Fisheries Service

Map of Alaska Showing Beaufort Sea and Oil Pipeline (Wikipedia)

The Marine Mammal Protection Act, signed into law by President Nixon in 1972, codified in Title 16, Chapter 31 of the U.S. Code, allows for the incidental but not intentional taking of marine mammals in activities other than commercial fishing if certain findings are made and regulations are issued. Authorization is to be granted if the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), an office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce, finds the taking will have a negligible impact on the species or stock, will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stocks for subsistence uses, and if the permissible methods of taking and requirements pertaining to the mitigation, monitoring, and reporting of such taking are set forth.

On December 12, the NMFS issued final regulations under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to govern the unintentional taking of marine mammals incidental to the operation of offshore oil and gas facilities in the U.S. Beaufort Sea, along the northern coast of Alaska. The request for the regulations came from BP (formerly British Petroleum). The regulations authorize the incidental taking of marine mammals for drilling operations in the Beaufort Sea from January 2014 to January 2019.

Marine Mammals Affected by BP Operations

BP requested authorization to take six mammal species incidental to operation of the Northstar development in the Beaufort Sea for five years. Northstar Island, a man-made facility consisting created for drilling operations, was completed in 2001. From 2014 through 2019, BP intends to continue drilling operations, though not on the scale conducted in earlier years. These operations will have both acoustic and non-acoustic effects on marine mammals in the area resulting from “vehicles operating on the ice, vessels, aircraft, generators, production machinery, gas flaring, and camp operations.” Animals that will be affected are:

Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus)
Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus)
Beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas)
Ringed seals (Phoca hispida)
Bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus)
Spotted seals (Phoca largha)
Polar bear (Ursus maritimus)
Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens)

BP estimates that it will take about five ringed seals annually by injury or mortality. The other species will be “harassed,” but less affected than the ringed seals. Walruses and polar bears are managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service (Department of the Interior), so were not considered in the rules of the Department of Commerce.

Southern Limit of the Ringed Seal Range (Heptner)

Ringed and bearded seals are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. There are estimated to be, in total, about a quarter million ringed seals and 155,000 bearded seals. Certain populations of gray, beluga, and killer whales and spotted seals are listed as “endangered.” There are estimated to be about 19,000 gray whales and 39,000 beluga whales. According to the regulatory preamble:

“Ringed seals are year-round residents in the Beaufort Sea and are anticipated to be the most frequently encountered species in the project area. Bowhead whales are anticipated to be the most frequently encountered cetacean species in the project area; however, their occurrence is not anticipated to be year-round. The most common time for bowheads to occur near Northstar is during the fall migration westward through the Beaufort Sea, which typically occurs from late August through October each year.”

Ringed seals build lairs under the snowpack (“subnivean lairs”) in the Beaufort Sea in the spring months. Specifically as to how seals might be injured, the preamble states:

“Potential non-acoustic effects could result from the physical presence of personnel, structures and equipment, construction or maintenance activities, and the occurrence of oil spills. In winter, during ice road construction, and in spring, flooding on the sea ice may displace some ringed seals along the ice road corridor. There is a small chance that a seal pup might be injured or killed by on-ice construction or transportation activities. A major oil spill is unlikely and, if it occurred, its effects are difficult to predict.”

Ringed Seal Pup (NOAA)

Ringed seals give birth in late March and April, and at that time of year young pups may get close to BP facilities. BP is to notify NMFS within 24 hours if more than five ringed seals are killed annually by BP’s activities.

Use of Detection Dogs Prior to Road Construction

The regulations issued at the request of BP state (50 CFR 217.144(a)(1)) that “to reduce the taking of ringed seals to the lowest level practicable, BP must begin winter construction activities, principally ice roads, as soon as possible once weather and ice conditions permit such activity.” Also:

“Any ice roads or other construction activities that are initiated after March 1, in previously undisturbed areas in waters deeper than 10 ft (3 m), must be surveyed, using trained dogs in order to identify and avoid ringed seal structures by a minimum of 492 ft (150 m).”

In a separate provision, the final regulations state:

“After March 1, trained dogs must be used to detect seal lairs in previously undisturbed areas that may be potentially affected by on-ice construction activity, if any. Surveys for seal structures should be conducted to a minimum distance of 492 ft (150 m) from the outer edges of any disturbance.”

As to road construction, the preamble explains how the use of dogs becomes important:

“In order to reduce impacts to ringed seal construction of birth lairs, BP must begin winter construction activities (e.g., ice road construction) on the sea ice as early as possible once weather and ice conditions permit such activities. Any ice road or other construction activities that are initiated after March 1 in previously undisturbed areas in waters deeper than 10 ft (3 m) must be surveyed, using trained dogs, in order to identify and avoid ringed seal structures by a minimum of 492 ft (150 m). If dog surveys are conducted, trained dogs shall search all floating sea ice for any ringed seal structures. Those surveys shall be done prior to the new proposed activity on the floating sea ice to provide information needed to prevent injury or mortality of young seals. Additionally, after March 1 of each year, activities should avoid, to the greatest extent practicable, disturbance of any located seal structure.”

It is also stated (50 CFR 217.146):

“If BP initiates significant on-ice activities (e.g., construction of new ice roads, trenching for pipeline repair, or projects of similar magnitude) in previously undisturbed areas after March 1, trained dogs, or a comparable method, will be used to search for seal structures…. If specific mitigation and monitoring are required for activities on the sea ice initiated after March 1 (requiring searches with dogs for lairs), during the operation of strong sound sources (requiring visual observations and shutdown procedures), or for the use of new sound sources that have not previously been measured, then a preliminary summary of the activity, method of monitoring, and preliminary results will be submitted within 90 days after the cessation of that activity.”

This is the only reference to a “comparable method.” Other references to dogs make their use mandatory by BP.

Hunting Seals with Dogs

The first use of dogs in finding ringed seals was not for preservation, but for hunting. Dogs pulled hunters on sleds to locations where seals could be caught, but they could also find seals that were below the surface. A 1976 treatise on mammals of the Soviet Union (Heptner et al., published in English in 1996) describes how the seals were caught in Russia:

“In winter-spring, much before the ringed seal emerges onto the ice floe surface, the hunters set out with dogs in various regions, most often in the Baltics and in Lake Ladoga. The dogs help them locate the seal's air hole or lair with pups inside. Often, using the pups as bait, the hunters attempt to catch the suckling mother.”

Returning to Camp after Hunting, Dogs Pulling Parts of Seal (Stefansson)

According to Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1913): “By the aid of their dogs the Eskimo find these breathing-holes of the seals underneath the snow that hides them in winter, and spear the animals as they rise for air.” The photograph from Stefansson’s book shows men and dogs returning from a seal hunt, each dog dragging a segment of the seal. Stefansson adds the following detail regarding several groups of Eskimos that use dogs:

“The Coronation Gulf and Victoria Island Eskimo live almost exclusively on seals in the winter. They find the seal's breathing-hole by the aid of dogs, and wait at the hole for the seal to come up to breathe, when they kill it with a spear. In all districts the Eskimo depend largely upon the blubber of the seal for their fatty food, even the inland Alaskans being obliged to trade for a few ‘pokes’ of blubber oil annually. The summer water boots of the Eskimo are practically always made of sealskin, usually with soles of the large bearded seal's skin or the skin of the white whale. The seal oil is usually kept in pokes - bags made of the skin of the seal removed intact and turned so as to be impervious to oil. Seals killed in summer usually sink quickly, but after the last of September a majority of the seals shot float until they can be recovered. An average seal of this species weighs from 125 to 175 pounds. A very large male shot at Cape Parry, December 12th, 1910, measured 65 inches in length and greatest girth 54 inches, weight about 200 pounds.”

Seals could also be taken when outside of their holes, as described by Charles Francis Hall (1865):

Smile Capturing a Seal (Hall)

"In an instant the dogs were off toward the prey, drawing the sledge after them at a marvelous rate. The seal for a moment acted as if frightened, and kept on the ice a second or two too long, for just as he plunged, 'Smile' the noblest-looking, best leader, seal, and bear dog I ever saw, caught him by the tail and flippers. The seal struggled violently, and so did dog Smile, making the sledge to caper about merrily; but in a moment more the other dogs laid hold, and aided in dragging the seal out of his hole on the ice, when Smile took it wholly in charge. The prize was secured this time wholly by the dogs.”

The drawing from Hall’s book shows Smile catching the seal's tail.

Finding Seal Lairs for Science and Conservation Purposes

The use of dogs trained to find lairs of ringed seals has, in recent years, been particularly associated with the research of Dr. Brendan P. Kelly of the University of Alaska, and with students and associates who have worked with him. In the 1970s various research groups used trained dogs to locate subnivian seal structures. The dogs were trained to follow the seal odor to its source and indicate the location of the structure by digging in the snow above it. In 1982, Dr. Kelly (1986) used Clyde, a Labrador retriever to locate 157 seal structures, finding an average of 0.53 per kilometer searched. Those structures could be just breathing holes or could be lairs, with or without pups. By searching areas two or three times under optimal scenting conditions, the team believed that virtually all seal holes were found. In more recent research, Dr. Kelly (2010) has also been able to determine home ranges of ringed seals.

Polar Bear Hunt (Hall)

Polar Bear Dens

As already mentioned, polar bears and walruses may also be affected by drilling and construction activities in Alaska and are protected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior. Under 50 CFR 18.117(a)(5)(iii)(A) and 18.128(a)(2)(ii), oil companies carrying out onshore exploration activities in known or suspected polar bear denning habitats “must make efforts to locate occupied polar bear dens within and near proposed areas of operation, utilizing appropriate tools, such as forward looking infrared (FLIR) imagery and/or polar bear scent-trained dogs.” For a description of dogs being used to find polar bear dens, see Kirschhoffer (2013). For a polar bear behavior study that was assisted by dogs, see Smith et al. (2007).

Conclusion

This is a case where the hunting value of dogs was turned into a conservation value for two species whose breeding habitats are being threatened from many quarters. Not only was the value of dogs recognized by researchers, but subagencies within the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior have recognized the importance of dogs by requiring that oil exploration and drilling operations use dogs to determine where to conduct construction and exploration activities and how to minimize deaths to threatened populations. Requiring, as opposed to just recommending, the use of trained dogs makes the rules applying to BP unique.

For suggestions and corrections, I must thank Kingsbury who once worked on the pipeline, Yva and John who lived for a time among the Inuit, and Eric who recently restored a classic dog sled.

Sources:

Department of Commerce: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Taking and Importing Marine Mammals; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Operation of Offshore Oil and Gas Facilities in the U.S. Beaufort Sea. RIN 0648-AY63, 78 Fed. Reg. 75488 (December 12, 2013).

Snow Village at Oopungnewing, Showing Seal Catch and Dog Pulling Young Seal (Hall)

Department of the Interior: Fish and Wildlife Service. Marine Mammals; Incidental Take During Specified Activities. RIN 1018-AX32, 76 Fed Reg. 47010 (August 3, 2011).

Hall, Charles Francis (1865). Arctic Researches and Life Among the Esquimaux. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Heptner, V.G., Chapskii, K.K., Arsen’ev, V.A., and Sokolov, V.E. (1976, translated into English, 1996). Pinnipeds and Toothed Whales. In Mammals of the Soviet Union, II(3) (quotation at 259).

Kelly, B.P., Badajos, O.H., Kunnasranta, M., et al. (2010). Seasonal Home Ranges and Fidelity to Breeding Sites among Ringed Seals. Publications, Agencies and Staff of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Paper 168.

Kelly, B.P., Bengtson, J.L., Boveng, P.L., et al. (2010). Status Review of the Ringed Seal (Phoca hispida), NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-AFSC-212), 128.

Kelly, B.P., Quakenbush, L.T., and Rose, J.R. (1986). Ringed Seal Winter Ecology and Effects of Noise Disturbance, Final Report: Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program, Research Unit 32.

Kirschhoffer, B.J. (2013). Den-Sniffing Dogs, on website of Polar Bears International (posted March 13, 2013).

Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, PL 92-522 (October 21, 1972).

Smith, T. S., Partridge, S. T. Amstrup, S.C., and Schliebe, S. (2007). Post-Den Emergence Behavior of Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) in Northern Alaska. Arctic, 60(2), 187-194.

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur (1913). My Life with the Eskimo. New York: Macmillan Co.

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Of Bonobos and Bottlenecks: Shifting Battle Lines in Dog Domestication Debates

January 21, 2014, 5:31 am

≫ Next: The Dogs of George Washington and the Less Fortunate Ones of His Slaves

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A year ago I attempted to synthesize and, within my limited competence, comment upon archeological and genetic research regarding the origins of canine domestication. This is not a static field and a number of papers that have appeared since show that the landscape continues to shift in significant ways. The date of initial domestication of dogs has been pushed back to 32,000 years ago by one group(Wang et al. 2013), while analyses of the bones found in the Goyet Cave in Belgium and the Altai Mountains in Russia, dated respectively from 36,000 and 33,000 years ago, appear to contain DNA of animals that were more dog than wolf, or at least somewhere in between, though perhaps not ancestors of current dogs but rather “aborted domestication episodes”—animals that had begun relationships with humans but which did not survive the Last Glacial Maximum.

There have been so many publications from different laboratories, with overlapping teams of researchers, that it is sometimes difficult to clearly identify the positions of the schools of thought on dog domestication. Certain scientists appear on many papers, yet inconsistencies between the conclusions of those papers make it nearly impossible to determine what those scientists actually believe from moment to moment. This is primarily a problem for amateurs such as myself, however, as the percolating nature of the research probably proves that dog domestication is truly one of the most exciting fields for a biologist, of whichever subdiscipline, to be working in.

Where Domestication Occurred

Bone Pendant of Dog or Jackal (Anthropologie, 27, at 21)

In my March 2013 blog on the archeology and genetics of domestication, I found that a principal focus of debate between the major groups working in this area concerned the original locus of domestication, with arguments being presented primarily for East Asia and South China, the Middle East, and Europe. This debate continues but no longer seems as heated a stretch of the battle line between the principal research teams. Consider the following statement in a review paper by Robert Wayne and Bridgett vonHoldt:

“Nuclear genetic evidence is consistent with European as well as Middle Eastern wolf populations contributing to the dog genome, whereas mtDNA evidence suggests an East Asian origin. However, backcrossing to various wolf populations complicates a simple scenario for dog origins.”

The statement that mitochondrial DNA evidence suggests an East Asian origin is at least a tentative acknowledgment of the work of Savolainen and others. This tentativeness becomes even more pronounced deeper into the paper:

“The high degree of haplotype sharing among dog breeds and Middle Eastern wolves suggests an origin there or, as mentioned above, extensive backcrossing between Middle Eastern wolves and ancestors of modern and ancient dog breeds. However, the similarity of some specific East Asian ancient breeds and Chinese wolves suggest that wolves from this area contributed to the dog genome as well…. Moreover, the significant component of haplotype sharing for 15-SNP [single-nucleotide polymorphism] windows implies both the Middle East and Europe may have contributed substantially to the genome of domestic dogs, a result that is consistent with the archeological record.”

Wolves on Stone and Bone (Capitan, Fig. 131)

Such openness to complexity in the locus of domestication is not shared by all researchers working in the area, and depending on what co-authorship means, may not be what Robert Wayne believes. A paper analyzing complete mitochondrial genomes, Olaf Thalmann (2013), which had 30 co-authors, one of whom was Wayne, who was also a contact author, remains critical of arguments for a non-European location for the onset of domestication, stating that such research, particularly associated with Peter Savolainen, was “more limited in sampling of modern or ancient wolves or prehistoric dogs and had weak statistical support for phylogenetic branching points.” While acknowledging that their own sampling “does not contain specimens from the Middle East or China, two of the proposed centers of origin,” the researchers argue that specimens from those regions are not older than approximately 13,000 years. The paper states that “the mitochondrial legacy of dogs derives from wolves of European origin,” which is difficult to reconcile with the statement of Wayne and vonHoldt that “mtDNA evidence suggests an East Asian origin.”

Genetics of Late Pleistocene Dog-Like Canids

Thalmann et al. analyzed the Goyet Cave canid, which was dated by Mietje Germonpre, one of Thalmann's co-authors, to 36,000 years ago. The current team said that this animal’s “mtDNA relation to other canids places it as an ancient sister-group to all modern dogs and wolves rather than a direct ancestor of dogs.” Therefore, “the Belgian canids, including the Goyet dog, may represent an aborted domestication episode or a phenotypically distinct, and not previously recognized, population of gray wolf.”

As to the wolf-like canid from the Altai Mountains, dated to 33,000 years ago and also discussed in the prior blog, the team, which also included Nikolai Ovodov, who first described the Altai specimen archeologically, classified it in the extant dog clade D, consisting at present of two Scandinavian breeds. As to this clade, the paper states:

“The grouping of clade D with ancient wolf lineages and the association of the Altai specimen with this clade do not support recent common ancestry of the Altai specimen lineage with the great majority of modern dogs. However, clade D dog haplotypes could have been captured as a result of interactions between ancient wolves and early humans that migrated into Scandinavia.”

The Altai dog is not described as ancestral to the extant Scandinavian breeds with which it shares a small clade. Is there a presumption that traits of the group of canids to which the Altai dog belonged were still breeding with wolves and that there is enough difference between the ancient group and the modern Scandinavian breeds that the connection is best explained by the mediation of wolves? In a paper concerning coat color to be discussed below (Ollivier et al.), something of the opposite (i.e., transmission from dogs to wolves) is used to explain the presence of black coat color in North American wolf populations. Since Thalman et al. speculate that the Altai specimen may represent an “aborted domestication episode,” it should be explained why wolves would be more likely than proto-dogs to migrate to Scandinavia. (See also the discussion of DNA haplogroup d1 in Klutsch et al. (2010).)

There is a bigger problem, however.A separate paper by Anna Druzhkova (2013)and a team that included Thalmann, Ovodov, and Wayne, and which was published barely six months earlier, reaches an inconsistent conclusion regarding the clade to which the Altai canid should be assigned. Although stating that the specimen has “no perfect match to any extant dog or wolf,” the earlier paper concludes that the Altai canid’s—

“haplotype cluster is embedded in a clade comprising exclusively contemporary dog sequences (Clade A) and contains the majority of dog haplotypes (45 out of 72) including diverse breeds such as Tibetan Mastiff, Newfoundland, Chinese Crested, Cocker Spaniel or Siberian Husky.” This team concludes that “the Altai specimen is likely an ancient dog with a shallow divergence from ancient wolves. These results suggest a more ancient history of the dog outside the Middle East or East Asia, previously suggested as centres of dog origin.”

The later paper makes no reference to the first though its supplementary materials cite it and allude rather obliquely to the discrepancy by stating that an “unambiguous delineation of the phylogenetic position of this Altai dog mtDNA as either dog or wolf is inconclusive…. Interestingly, the highest proportion of quartets supports a topology of the Altai dog clustering with other ancient canids to the exclusion of modern dogs and wolves, which is indicative of some shared mutations uniting all ancient canids. ” I was advised by one of the joint authors that the results of the Science paper, the team headed by Thalmann, are “more robust” than the earlier paper, so the Clade D affiliation is to be accepted for the moment.

Wolves (Capitan, Fig. 132)

If the Goyet and Altai canids were more genetically like dogs than wolves, or at least in between, yet were also aborted domestication episodes, the fact that genetic changes could have parallels between humans and dogs (the evidence for which is discussed below) certainly suggests that genetic changes in aborted episodes could run parallel to changes in the successful domestication episode that eventually led to modern dogs. This would not, of course, include those changes associated with the human development of agriculture, which did not occur before the Last Glacial Maximum when, presumably, lines including the Altai and Goyet dogs would have disappeared. By taking both the Goyet and Altai canids out of most lines of subsequent canid groups, however, the dating of those bones remains primarily the province of paleontological techniques.

Admixture of Wolf and Dog Populations

Adam Freedman and 29 colleagues (2014) sequenced wolf genomes from possible centers of the origin of canine domestication but “found that none of the wolf lineages from the hypothesized domestication centers is supported as the source lineage for dogs.” Greger Larson and Daniel Bradley, writing in the same issue of PLoS Genetics in which Freedman’s paper appears and introducing it, describe the use of whole genome sequences, also found in Thalmann et al., as “an exciting new phase” for genetic research on dog domestication.

Freedman et al. state that post-divergence gene flow complicates the attempt to understand the separation of dogs from wolves, which they note is also a complicating factor in analyzing the relationship between and evolution of humans and Neandertals. Gene flow between wolves and dogs is found by these researchers to have occurred in different parts of the world:

“We found significant evidence of admixture for three population pairs: Israeli wolf and Basenji, Chinese wolf and Dingo, and Israeli wolf and Boxer…. Care should be taken in interpreting these results, as the detected admixture signals may reflect gene flow between lineages ancestral to our contemporary samples. The signal for Chinese wolf and Dingo likely represents ancient admixture in Eastern Eurasia, and the signal observed for Israeli wolf, Basenji, and Boxer likely represents ancestral admixture that occurred in western Eurasia.”

The researchers also found “significant gene flow between the golden jackal and the Israeli wolf.” They estimate a divergence time between 415,000 and 382,000 years “between the golden jackal and the population ancestral to dogs and wolves, which is considerably more recent than previously reported.” The latter is a reference to Perini et al., 2010, which at Figure 4 graphically indicates the separation of the golden jackal (Canis aureus) from the wolf line as more than a million years ago.This result is also relevant to the work of Rueness et al. (2011) on Canis aureus lupaster, “the cryptic African wolf,” discussed in a prior blog.

Freedman et al. argue that admixture with wolves may not have been adequately taken into account in prior research:

“[T]he presence of long shared haplotypes in Middle East wolves with several dog breeds may reflect historic admixture rather than recent divergence. Similarly, elevated genetic diversity in East Asian dogs and affinities between East Asian village dogs and wolves may be confounded by past admixture with wolves. In areas where village dogs roam freely and wolves have historically been in close proximity, admixture may also be present and exert a non-trivial impact on patterns of genetic variation.”

Distinguishing recent from ancient admixture (e.g., by the presence of long shared haplotypes) may become a major focus of research. The proponents of an East Asian origin will undoubtedly have to deal with this issue as well.

Freedman et al. note that estimates of mutation rates vary considerably in different studies, describing this as “the dominant source of uncertainty in dating the origin of dogs.” Their calculations used a mutation rate that argued for domestication between 16,000 and 11,000 years ago, but they note that if they accepted the mutation rate used by Wang et al., the event might have to be placed even earlier than the 32,000 year-ago domestication that team proposes.

As to which wolf population domesticated dogs came from, Freedman et al. did not find that dogs diverged from any specific population, but rather that “dogs diverged from wolves at about the same time that the sampled wolf populations diverged from each other.” Thus, dogs may have diverged from a population ancestral to modern wolves, but the team also accepts that dogs might have diverged from a now-extinct wolf population.

Size of Founding Population and Bottlenecks

Niskanen et al. (2013), a team that included Peter Savolainen, attempted to estimate the size of the wolf population from which dogs arose and concluded that there were a minimum of 51 wolf founders but that the number was most likely larger, at least 500 animals. They argue that domestication “was not a very rapid or local process,” and elaborate:

“Possibly, domestication of wolf was a cultural process, which was spread across a large geographical area and involved many wolf populations. It has also been suggested that the domestication process was started by the wolves taking advantage of the food waste around villages—rather than by deliberate human action [citing the Coppingers]. If so, this behavior probably developed over a period of time and in an extended region.”

Wang et al, the team that pushed domestication back to 32,000 years ago, concludes that bottlenecks subsequent to domestication were rather mild, which the authors argue is consistent with “an evolutionary trajectory for dogs that is often called self-domestication,” again citing the Coppingers. Although this paper does not refer to Niskanen et al., the team that concluded that the number of wolf founders was probably at least 500 animals, both papers had Peter Savolainen as a co-author and presumably can be correlated to some degree. Such a small founding population would have had to expand before a severe bottleneck could be tolerated.

Freedman et al., who, as discussed above, date the divergence of wolves from dogs at about 15,000 years ago, reach dramatically different conclusions on founding numbers and bottlenecks. This team states that their “results indicate the ancestral wolf population from which dogs were domesticated was considerably larger than estimated from current levels of diversity in wolves.” They believe that the population ancestral to both dogs and wolves numbered about 45,000 individuals, but that following the separation there was a 3.6 fold reduction in the number of wolves to about 12,600 individuals but a 22-fold reduction in the population ancestral to all dogs of only 2,000 individuals. They note that these bottlenecks are more severe than previous estimates of a two- to four-fold reduction in the dog population, referring to Lindblad-Toh et al. (2005) and Gray et al. Lindblad-Toh found that modern dog breeds “are the product of at least two population bottlenecks, the first associated with domestication from wolves (~ 7,000—50,000 generations ago) and the second resulting from intensive selection to create the breed (~ 50—100 generations ago).” Gray et al. similarly “found evidence for a modest population contraction ~ 15,000 years ago (5000 generations ago) and severe contractions at breed formation.”

Thalmann et al., which shares three co-authors with Freedman, including Wayne, though only speaking about one clade (A, the largest in terms of breeds), states:

“A Bayesian Skygrid analysis applied to the largest clade (A), found a continuous population increase from the most recent common ancestor of the group, approximately 18,800 years ago, to about 5,000 years ago, followed by a decline from 5,000 to 2,500 years ago, and then a sharp increase in population size correlating with the increase in the human population. The paper states that this “suggests demographic dependence of dogs on human populations. In contrast, wolf numbers declined during this period, consistent with the emergence of agrarian cultures and the loss of vital wolf habitat and wild game.”

Determining the size of the ancestral wolf population from which dogs arose must, in the end, not be merely a matter of the mathematics of genetics. If that population was 500 and occurred 32,000 years ago or 2,000 and occurred 15,000 years ago, one must still explain the environmental context in which such a number of individuals began to go in a separate direction from a group that remained wild. If self-domestication was the behavioral mechanism at a time when human groups were relatively small bands of hunters, how many such bands would have to be involved, over how large an area? Were these bands essentially sedentary, living in caves over many generations, or were migratory patterns involved that spread the tamer wolves to other groups? Perhaps the proto-dogs were domesticating themselves not just as a matter of stabilizing their relationships with humans but also in order to be more cooperative with each other, as happened in the intraspecific behavior of bonobos after they separated from chimpanzees, as will be discussed below.

Southeast Asia as a Secondary Locus of Canine Expansion

Benjamin Sacks, Sara Brown and four others (2013) note that dogs are “an especially valuable proxy for understanding Holocene human movements,” but note that inconsistent faunal and DNA remains, which can be combined with canine data, “have limited our understanding of phylogeography of the earliest dogs.” They accept the conclusion of Savolainen and others that “worldwide analyses of mtDNA indicate that modern dog matrilines reflect a subset of those found today in Southeast Asia.” The Southeast Asian origin theory can, however, be refined:

“If, however, dogs were absent from Southeast Asia until the Neolithic, the most parsimonious hypothesis reconciling archeological and mtDNA observations would be that early dogs entered Southeast Asia with pre-Neolithic peoples from the west or north, then later expanded outward 8–5 Ka [thousand years ago] swamping or replacing more primitive dog populations. Several lines of evidence support such a ‘Neolithic replacement’ hypothesis. First, Neolithic expansion of dogs from Southeast Asia 8–5 Ka would be in line with linguistic, cultural, archeological, and human genetic evidence of a westward expansion of Neolithic humans from the Yangtze and Yellow River basins … , the precursor to the slightly later migrations of Austronesian-speaking farmers from this same region, which were responsible for spreading dogs to Island Southeast Asia and Oceana.”

This team calls this the Neolithic Replacement hypothesis, to be contrasted with a Southeast Asian Origins hypothesis. Thus, they see Southeast Asia as “a secondary center of diversification associated with Neolithic rather than Paleolithic peoples.” They describe this secondary expansion as “massive,” and argue that the Southeast Asian dogs were able “to demographically dominate and largely replace earlier western forms.” (This might be comparable to the large-scale replacement of pre-Colombian American dogs with European dogs discussed below.) The researchers believe this transformation could have been central to the evolution of dog diversity.

“[T]he dogs of southern China could have been the first large population to have been reproductively isolated from wolves (Canis lupus), possibly accelerating their phenotypic divergence and diversification as a domesticate. Rapid spread of such a [southern Chinese] dog in combination with interbreeding with ancient western dogs could have produced a variety of forms, laying the basis for the first ancient regional breeds, which were first evident approximately 8,000 years ago.”

Apparently “ancient western dogs” were not reproductively isolated from wolves. Are we to imagine that the Goyet and Altai dogs were such dogs? In any case, the Neolithic Replacement hypothesis could arguably receive archeological support from the dog burial research of Losey et al., discussed several sections below.

Genetic Changes During Domestication

Wang et al. (2013), already mentioned as having used genetic evidence to date domestication at 32,000 years ago, state that “Chinese indigenous dogs are likely one of the early groups that resulted from the first stage of dog domestication and were subsequently the source from which dog breeds were further selected,” but nevertheless concede that “the ancestral Chinese wolf, from which domesticated dogs may have originated, may already be extinct. In addition, several wolves from Europe and Mexico are closer to dogs than the Middle-Eastern wolves … , thus, it may be difficult to use patterns from extant wolves to infer domestication location.” This seems to reflect the willingness noted at the beginning of this blog to move the debate on domestication away from one primarily about location. This team speculates on what the earliest domesticated populations were doing for men in the 20,000 years before agriculture arose:

Wolf from Laugerie-Basse (Anthropologie, 27, at 16; Paillet, Figs. 10, 11)

“Early wolves might have been domesticated as scavengers that were attracted to live and hunt commensally with humans. With successive adaptive changes, these scavengers became progressively more prone to human custody. In light of this view, the domestication process might have been a continuous dynamic process, where dogs with extensive human contact were derived from these scavengers much latter when humans began to adopt an agricultural life style.”

Wang et al., describing the “striking parallelism in the recent evolution of dogs and humans,” find genes apparently selected for in both dogs and humans “specifically for sexual reproduction, digestion and metabolism, and neurological processes.” Also, many cancer-related genes are shared by both species. They note that genes associated with nerve cells were selected, and citing Belyaev’s work on foxes, state: “Strong selection on behaviour (for example, reducing aggression) and neurological traits (for example, complex interactions with human beings) is often involved in the first steps of animal domestication.” A gene for a membrane protein that transports the neurotransmitter serotonin, variations of which lead to aggressive behavior, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and autism, is found in both species.

“Most interestingly, dogs respond similarly to the drugs that are used to treat humans (for example, clomipramine hydrochloride, a serotonin-reuptake inhibitor often also used as an anti-depressant drug), suggesting possible common genetic components for these behaviours in humans and dogs…. The protein coded by SLC6A4 might underlie the genetic component of many neurological traits in both dogs and humans.”

The authors indicate that a possible explanation of the need for neurological change might relate to the population density resulting from domestication:

“As domestication is often associated with large increases in population density and crowded living conditions, these ‘unfavourable’ environments might be the selective pressure that drove the rewiring of both species. Positive selection in neurological pathways, in particular the serotonin system, could be associated with the constant need for reduced aggression stemming from the crowded living environment. Moreover, the complex intimate interactions between dogs and humans might have also driven some of the striking parallelism seen in these two species.”

The similarity of diseases between both species might be worth studying more as this could “shed light on the genetic architecture of these disorders in humans.” Unfortunately, this may imply more pharmaceutical research using dogs as laboratory animals.

Axelsson et al. (2013), discussed in a prior blog, had concluded that dogs, during the human development of agriculture, adapted to “thrive on a diet rich in starch, relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves.” Wang et al., referring to this research, note that genes having roles in the selective transport of dietary cholesterol were affected in both humans and dogs. “As domestication has led to drastic changes in the proportions of plant food, relative to animal food, natural selection on these genes in both species is expected due to this shared evolutionary history.”

Wolves (Capitan, Fig. 131)

Yan Li and six colleagues (2013), including Bridgett vonHoldt and Robert Wayne, found that during domestication genes expressed in the brain evolved rapidly, “consistent with the evolution of dog-specific behaviors during domestication.” They elaborate:

“The primary key for early domestication is the transformation of negative defensive reactions toward humans (the fearful-aggressive response) to positive reactions, which means physiological changes in the systems that govern neurochemical production …. Specifically, such physiological change has been characterized by fearful response and a reduced locomotion in a novel environment and increased glucocorticoids that regulate the fear response by mediating neurotransmitter serotonin metabolism …. The behavior evolution is mostly attributable to brain evolution.”

Freedman et al., already discussed regarding the wolf population in which domestication began, also refer to Axelsson’s research regarding the genetic changes in dogs correlating with the human development of agriculture. This team, however, focused specifically on the AMY2B gene, encoding alpha-2B-amylase. They report that the Dingo has just two copies of the gene, “suggesting that the AMY2B copy number expansion was not fixed across all dogs early in the domestication process.” The team also says that the Siberian Husky, “a breed historically associated with nomadic hunter gatherers of the Arctic, has only three to four copies of AMY2B, whereas the Saluki, which was historically bred in the Fertile Crescent where agriculture originated, has 29 copies.”

It can be expected that an ever more detailed picture of the genetic stages during domestication, with correlations to behavioral and environmental changes, will begin to emerge in the coming years.

Behavioral Changes During Domestication

An international group of behavioral scientists headed by Bridgett Waller finds that dogs with facial expressions that enhance their neonatal appearance were preferentially selected by humans visiting shelters. This team (Waller et al. 2013) summarizes prior research establishing that in “many ways dogs appear more like wolf puppies than wolf adults.” Among features making dogs look more like wolf puppies than adults are shorter snouts, wider craniums, upper face facial muscle contractions that increase the apparent size of the animal’s eyes, and other submissive behaviors such as tail wagging. Using shelter dog adoptions as a proxy for dogs’ selection by humans over evolutionary time, these researchers “tested whether humans (when adopting dogs from a shelter) actively select for dogs, which appear more juvenile in the face as a result of facial muscle contraction.” Facial movements were analyzed under the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) developed by other researchers for use across species, and specially adapted for dogs under the name DogFACS. (See Ekman et al., 2002, for an overview of FACS.)

These researchers found that dogs that produced a high frequency of facial movement to raise the inner brow were adopted more quickly from shelters and conclude that “this suggests that dogs have evolved to manipulate the human preference for paedomorphic features using the face.” Curiously, excessive tail wagging did not help dogs but actually hurt their chances, suggesting that “indirect manipulation of human sensory preferences (particularly a preference for juvenile facial characteristics) has been a particularly powerful selective force in domestication.”

The team finds that facial expressions that were effective also make the dogs look sad, so that the adopters may have been responding to perceived sadness. They argue, however, that sadness expressions may be paedomorphic in humans, a means of displaying vulnerability. “We can therefore speculate that early domestication of wolves may have occurred not only as wolf populations became tamer, but also as they exploited human preferences for paedomorphic characteristics.”

A recent paper that concerns bonobos rather than dogs is important in connection with behavioral changes during domestication. Brian Hare et al. (2012) considered the lower level of aggression demonstrated by bonobos (Pan paniscus) than is found among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). They state that the two species diverged about a million years ago, but that bonobos had more plentiful feeding areas and did not have to compete with gorillas for resources. In this environment, females formed strong coalitions with one another, these coalitions thwarted male efforts to dominate females, less aggressive males allied with female relatives, males with more juvenilized adult aggressive behavior were favored, and other changes had a cascading effect “as in human-driven domestication.” This suggests that not only must the interspecific communication of dogs and humans be considered in analyzing behavioral changes during domestication, but attention must also be given to intraspecific communication. Using the Coppingers’ self-domestication model, when dogs began to live near dung heaps on the edges of villages, they presumably were more stationery and in closer proximity to each other for longer periods of time, during which their relationships were slowly transformed. Perhaps some level of instraspecific change had to occur before the first animal was brought into the camp.

That intraspecific factors must have been involved in the self-domestication of dogs is arguable from the size of the founding population hypothesized by Freedman et al. (2,000, after a bottleneck following separation from a wolf population of about 45,000 individuals), or even Niskanen (probably 500, but perhaps as few as 51). Although it is easy to imagine 51 wolves becoming camp followers to a few bands of humans, larger numbers might require an additional explanation. Alteration of intraspecific behavior with reduced aggression and accompanying morphological changes (per Belyaev's foxes) seems likely to have been critical in the domestication process.

Arctic Breeds, Chihuahuas, and Carolina Dogs Keep Pre-Colombian Markers

The difficulty of finding genetic evidence concerning pre-Colombian American dogs was discussed in a prior blog, but recent research has made dramatic headway in this area. Barbara von Asch et al. (2013),in a team that included Peter Savolainen, summarize prior research on pre-Colombian dogs by stating that such “dogs must have been brought along by Paleo-Indians of Asian origin in their expansions throughout the American continent, although not necessarily in connection with the first waves of humans.” The question this group posed was as follows:

“Did the ancient migrants leave descendants in the modern American gene pool or were they completely erased by European dogs brought across the Atlantic in the post-Columbian era, and are extant dog populations direct descendants of the ancient populations in the same geographical region?”

The researchers find that “Inuit sled dogs, Canadian Eskimo dogs and Greenland dogs had similar mtDNA gene pools.” They find evidence that the modern Alaskan Malamute descended from the pre-European Alaskan population, but note that a particular haplotype (A29) was shared with the Siberian husky with which Alaskan huskys were interbred in the early 1900s. They also describe the results for the Malamute as “ambiguous,” apparently because of this interbreeding. The researchers state that the presence of the A29 haplotype (absent in Europe) indicates genetic links between East Asia, Siberia and Arctic America. They find that the “Alaskan Malamute and the Eskimo/Greenland/Inuit group had almost totally different mtDNA gene pools.” The researchers conclude that the Inuit/Eskimo/Greenland group “have remained practically uninfluenced by European lineages.” They also note that the “total lack of shared haplotypes” between the two broad arctic groups “possibly reflects sequential arrival to America of the related human populations.”

The researchers found a haplotype (A185) unique to Chihuahuas among modern dogs. A185 was found in one pre-Colombian sample from Mexico “suggesting direct ancestry of Chihuahua from ancient Mexican dogs.” The Mexican xoloitzcuintle (xolo) had “only haplotypes occurring universally and two haplotypes found in Europe.” The Peruvian perro sin pelo del Peru included individuals with haplotypes unique to Europe but shared a haplotype with the xolo. The Paulishtinha and dog Argentino breeds were believed to “originate from dogs of known European ancestry… and carried only haplotypes that are frequently found in Europe.”

A haplotype (A184), unique to Carolina dogs among American breeks, is described by the researchers as belonging to an East Asian-specific phylogenetic subclade. The researchers conclude that this and the presence in one individual of a haplotype found only among Chinese non-breed dogs and the Japanese shiba inu, “gives strong support to the hypothesis that the Carolina dog has indeed originated from pre-Colombian dogs.” South American free-ranging dogs, however, were found likely “to originate mainly from European dogs, although traces of native dogs cannot be totally excluded.”

The overall conclusion of the research was that “all ancient American sequences except one (D40; possibly the result of dog-wolf crossbreeding) can now be linked to haplotypes present in East Asia or Siberia.” That there was dog-wolf crossbreeding in the Americas is indicated in the next paper discussed.

Coat Color Variation Appears in Dogs

Font de Gaume Wolf (Capitan)

Morgane Ollivier and 14 colleagues (2013), looking at two genes controlling coat color in 68 dogs and wolves from 28 different archeological sites in Asia and Europe, ranging from 12,000 to 4,000 years ago, find that an allele that causes melanism and a variant that may cause light hair color, were present as early as the beginning of the Holocene, over 10,000 years ago. In the introduction to the paper, the researchers state that the diverse locations where early dogs have been excavated “had no cultural ties.” They add that “several populations of wolves may have been at the origin of these domestication events and early dogs were probably characterized by significant genetic variability.”

The genes studied by this group, Mc1r and CBD103, are “implicated in coat color variation,” regulating the production of red/yellow versus brown/black pigment. A particular mutation is currently only found in the Mc1r sequences of Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes. The mutation was found in ancient dog samples in Asia and Southeastern Europe, but not Western Europe. Where a particular allele was dominant, coat color was, the authors hypothesize, black. They state that “this mutation and the subsequent black phenotype have been present in the dog for 8,000 years at least.” They give a date range of 11,000 to 8,000 years ago for the first occurrence of this mutation in Eurasia. They state that their results are “congruent” with prior results indicating that the mutation is at least 46,886 years old, but do not explain how congruence to a change 35,000 years earlier is to be understood.

Melanism is found only in North American and Italian wolves. In Italy, this team accepts that the transfer arose from recent hybridization between wolves and free-ranging dogs. In America, however, Ollivier et al. believe the “data would suggest that early black dogs of Eurasia could have migrated since the Upper Palaeolithic to North America across the Bering Strait and be at the origin of the present-day American black wolf populations, via a back-crossing process with local wolves.”

Dog Burials in Siberia

Lake Baikal above Mongolia (Wikipedia)

One of the criticisms of the hypothesis for domestication in Asia has been that it does not square with the archeological record. There may, however, be a tendency to get closer to Asia with some recent research in Siberia, though as already mentioned, the archeological research might also be consistent with the Neolithic Replacement hypothesis. Robert Losey and nine colleagues (2013) wanted to know if dog burials on the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia “could be related to the particular ways in which dogs were utilized by people in the past.”

Canid burials first appear in the region “near the Mesolithic/Early Neolithic transition,” 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, beginning with a wolf, but followed several centuries later by a number of dogs. Dog burials appear at the same time as human graves and cemeteries become common in the area. A dog buried between 7,420 and 7,325 years ago was found in a grave of an adult male human. A dog buried from 7,150 to 6,945 years ago was placed in a sitting or crouching position. One dog, buried between 6,880 and 6,755 years ago “was interred wearing a necklace of eight red deer canine tooth pendants and also associated with its skeleton were a Bovidae scapula and horn core, two whole roe deer antlers, and other unidentified bones.” The paper contains excellent drawings and photographs of these burials. The researchers conclude:

“Dogs were the only domesticated animals living with humans at this time, and it appears that dogs and animals such as bears were considered by foraging groups here to be spiritually similar to humans, as were many animals among historic northern indigenous groups. When these broader beliefs were combined with intimate personal relationships with dogs, which here involved sharing many of the same foods, and the broader practice of burying one’s group members in cemeteries, some dogs were given ‘human’ mortuary rites.”

The dogs “had variable diets, with some relying heavily on aquatic foods, others much less so.” The dogs “were eating much like the local humans who were most reliant on aquatic foods.” The humans dogs were associated with, however, did not all have aquatic-food diets. The authors conclude:

“Clearly, no single human subsistence practice or diet is correlated with the practice of burying dogs in Cis-Baikal. If anything, dogs were more commonly buried where diets were broader as a result of use of both terrestrial and aquatic fauna.” The researchers speculate that humans may sometimes have kept larger fish for themselves, and given smaller fish to dogs.

Dog burials found so far are concentrated in the Early Neolithic, but were absent in the Middle Neolithic and rare thereafter. As to the pastoralists of the Late Holocene, the authors state:

“Pastoralist groups by definition lived in close association with many domesticated species, here most often sheep, goats, horses, and cattle. These groups regularly rode, sold, traded, sacrificed, and consumed these animals, and considered them property. Perhaps because dogs in these societies no longer had the unique position of being humans’ only cohabitant animal, and because people’s relationships to animals more broadly had changed with the emergence of pastoralism, dogs no longer were considered to have spiritual equivalency with humans and were no longer considered eligible for burial in human cemeteries.”

Conclusion

Reindeer Bone with Fox Head (Capitan, Fig. 131)

I can add but one suggestion for further research, which is that among the archeological data in need of reanalysis are certain caves and other locations of rock art, some of which date to the Upper Paleolithic. Early analysis of canids depicted in such locations assumed that the animals could not be dogs because of the dating.(H. Breuil, Anthropologie 27, p. 595: “Étant donné l'âge des peintures, ce n'est pas admissible,” though Breuil considered the issue open. See Paillet and Man-Estier (2011) for rediscovery of items from the early digs.) Figures that look like dogs could thus be labelled wolves or even hyenas a century ago, as was the case with the first figure above. For the significance of this item and its likely depiction of a dog I am indebted to Don Hitchcock (personal communication and Megalithic Portal website). The other figures included in this blog are from the early twentieth century and were labeled as wolves or foxes but, under the timelines accepted by the research discussed here, might just as well be dogs. If humans were burying dogs, would it not be likely that they were also drawing them on rocks?

Although it appears that most geneticists are willing to accept some level of domestication for the dog-like canids found in the Goyet Cave and the Altai Mountains, these animals appear to be aborted domestication events. Current dogs, for most geneticists, appear to reflect a divergence from wolves of about 15,000 years ago, though one team now pushes the domestication event back to 32,000 years ago. This date, however, assumed a mutation rate that has been rejected by a team that would date domestication more recently. Research on mutation rates will be a major focus in the coming years, and may alter already published estimates of significant genetic events.

That dogs arose from wolves is no longer disputed, but where this occurred remains in doubt. Although the various schools still plant flags on maps, there seems to be a growing acceptance that this issue is complicated and that conflicting data may have to be amalgamated, probably including findings that have yet to be made. The wolf population from which dogs arose may have been confined to one region but the extent of the region is unclear and the size of the founding group is a matter of dispute. The level of gene flow after domestication is a complicating factor in determining the date and place of domestication, and further research on wolf populations is likely to adjust the significance of current genetic evidence. Findings from different research groups on bottlenecks in both wolf and dog populations cannot be reconciled at present.

An area of dramatic development in the last two years concerns genetic and behavioral changes associated with domestication. Regardless of when and where domestication began, it appears that dogs and humans underwent genetic alteration as they began living and cooperating with each other, and that some of these changes ran in parallel. Areas showing overlap include neurological mechanisms, digestion and metabolism, and even disease. Dogs became smaller than their wolf progenitors, and by the beginnings of agriculture if not earlier, began to look different from them in terms of coat color.

The excavation of burial sites near Lake Baikal suggests that even before agriculture dogs were sufficiently important to receive human-like burials in Asia, sometimes with humans with whom they had been associated. The effort to correlate archeology with genetics may often be fruitless, but must continue to be made, as was done by Larson et al. in 2012. As Wayne and vonHoldt said in their review paper discussed at the beginning of this blog, it "is truly an exciting time for canine evolutionary genomics."

Thanks to Richard Hawkins and Kingsbury Parker for suggestions.

Sources:

Axelsson, E., Ratnakumar, A., Arendt, M-J., Maqbool, K., Webster, M.T., Perloski, M., Liberg, O., Arnemo, J.M., Hedhammar, A., and Lindblad-Toh, K., (2013). The Genomic Structure of Dog Domestication Reveals Adaptation to a Starch-Rich Diet. Nature (published first online); doi:10.1038/nature11837.
Bourlon, Le Capitaine (1916). Nouvelle Decouvertes a Laugerie-Basse. L’Anthropologie, 27, 1-26.
Capitan, L., Breuil, H., and Peyrony, D. (1910). La Caverne de Font-de-Gaume. A. Chene, Monaco.
Coppinger, R., and Coppinger, L. (2001). Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Bheavior and Evolution. New York: Scribners.
Druzhkova, A.S., Thalmann, O., Trifonov, V.A. et al. (2013). Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog. PLOS ONE 8(3), e57554.
Ekman, P. Friesen, W.V., and Hager, J.C. (2002). The Facial Action Coding System. Salt Lake City, Research Nexus.
Freedman A.H., Gronau, I., Schweizer R.M., Ortega-Del Vecchyo, D., Han, E., et al. (2014). Genome Sequencing Highlights the Dynamic Early History of Dogs. PLoS Genetics 10(1). e1004016.
Gray, M.M., Granka, J.M., Bustamante, C.D., Sutter, N.B., Boyko, A.R., Zhu, L., Ostrander, E.A., and Wayne, R.K. (2009). Linkage Disequilibrium and Demographic History of Wild and Domestic Canids. Genetics, 181(4), 1493-1505.
Hare, B., Wobber, V., and Wrangham, R. (2012). The Self-Domestication Hypothesis: Evolution of Bonobo Psychology Is Due to Selection against Aggression. Animal Behaviour, 83(3), 573-585.
Hitchcock, D. posting on Megalithic Portal, identification of canid on pierced stone found at Laugerie-Basse (Aquitaine: Dordogne) as possibly a dog.
Klutsch, Seppala, Fall, et al. (2010). Regional Occurrence, High Frequency but Low Diversity of Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroup d1 Suggests a Recent Dog-Wolf Hybridization in Scandinavia. Animal Genetics, 42(1), 100-103.
Larson, G., and Bradley, D.G. (2014). How Much Is That in Dog Years? The Advent of Canine Population Genomics. PLoS Genetics, 10(1), e1004093.
Larson, G., Karlsson, E.K., Perri, A., et al. (2012). Rethinking Dog Domestication by Integrating Genetics, Archeology, and Biogeography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(23), 8878-83.
Li, Y., vonHoldt, B.M., Reynolds, A. et al. (2013). Artificial Selection on Brain-Expressed Genes during the Domestication of Dog. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30(8), 1867-1876.
Lindblad-Toh, K., Wade, C.M., Mikkelsen, T.S., Karlsson, E.K., Jaffe, D.B., Kamal, M., et al. (2005). Genome Sequence, Comparative Analysis and Haplotype Structure of the Domestic Dog. Nature, 438(8), 803-819.
Losey, R.J., Garvie-Lok, S. Leonard, J.A., Katzenberg, M.A., Germonpre, M., Nomokonova, T., Sablin, M.V., Goriunova, O.I., Berdnikova, N.E., and Savel’ev, N.A. (2013). Burying Dogs in Ancient Cis-Baikal, Siberia: Temporal Trends and Relationships with Human Diet and Subsistence Practices. PLos One, 8(5), e63740.
Niskanen, A.K., Hagstrom, E., Hohi, H., et al. (2013). MHC Variability Supports Dog Domestication from a Large Number of Wolves: High Diversity in Asia. Heredity, 110, 80-85.
Ollivier, M., Tresset, A., Hitte, C. et al. (2013). Evidence of Coat Color Variation Sheds New Light on Ancient Canids. PLoS One, 8(10), e75110.
Paillet, P., and Man-Estier, E. (2011). Oeuvres d'Art Meconnues de Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne). Collection Capitaine Maurice Bourlon-Institut de PaleontologieHumaine, Paris. L'Antrhopologie, 115, 505-521) ("Les représentations de Canidés, et plus spécifiquement de caninés, sont très rares dans l’art paléolithique. Leur détermination n’est pas toujours aisée." As to Fig. 11, a new drawing of the item in the fourth picture here, these authors note: "Le stop est bien marqué et le front bombé," yet they put a question mark after their designation of 'loup?', without stating any possibility that it might be a dog. Dr. Germonpre pointed out to me the stop and the swollen frontals of this animal, which could argue that it is a dog rather than a wolf. I believe that the same could be said of the canid on the pendant in the first picture here, as well as the left figure in the fifth picture and the Font de Gaume wolf.)
Perini, F.A., Russo, C.A.M., and Schrago, C.G. (2010). The Evolution of South American Endemic Canids: A History of Rapid Diversification and Morphological Parallelism. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 23(2), 311-322.
Sacks, B.N., Brown, S.K., Stephens, D. (2013). Y Chromosome Analysis of Dingoes and Southeast Asian Village Dogs Suggests a Neolithic Continental Expansion from Southeast Asia Followed by Multiple Austronesian Dispersals. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 30(5), 1103-1118.
Thalmann, O., Shapiro, B., Cui, P., et al. (2013). Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of Ancient Canids Suggest a European Origin of Domestic Dogs. Science, 342 (6160), 871-4.
Tito, R.Y., Belknap III, S.L., Sobolik, K.D., et al. (2011). Brief Communication: DNA from Early Holocene American Dog. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 145, 653-7.
von Asch, B., Zhang, A.-b., Oskarsson, M.C.R., Klutsch, C.F.C., Amorim, A., and Savolainen, P. (2013). Pre-Colombian Origins of Native American Dog Breeds, with Only Limited Replacement by European Dogs, Confirmed by mtDNA Analysis, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 280: 20131142.
Waller, B.M., Peirce, K., Caeiro, C.C., Scheider, L., Burrows, A.M., McCune, S., and Kaminski, J. (2013). Paedomorphic Facial Expressions Give Dogs a Selective Advantage. PLoS One, 8(12), e82686.
Wang, G-d, Zhai, W., Yang, H-e, et al. (2013). The Genomics of Selection in Dogs and the Parallel Evolution between Dogs and Humans. Nature Communications, 4:1860.
Wayne, R.K., and vonHoldt, B.M. (2012). Evolutionary Genomics of Dog Domestication. Mammalian Genome, 23(1-2), 3-18.

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The Dogs of George Washington and the Less Fortunate Ones of His Slaves

March 3, 2014, 6:03 am

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George Washington loved the chase, and engaged in it with hunting hounds through most of his life. Diary entries and correspondence refer to hunts of deer, fox, hare, and pheasant. Hunting hounds at Mount Vernon came from English and American stock and, after the war, from France, though the French dogs may have been something of a disappointment. Besides foxhounds, Washington mentions water dogs (spaniels), pointers, terriers, mastiffs, and curs. He had heard of Irish wolfhounds and for a time sought to get some to reduce predation of his flocks.

Washington personally treated the ailments of his dogs, for instance applying a concoction of hog’s lard and brimstone when mange spread through a kennel. Washington was particularly interested in rabies, and at least once shot a rabid dog. He corresponded with Dr. James Mease, who conducted research on the nature of the disease. In 1797, he sent a slave, Christopher, to Dr. James Stoy near Philadelphia in hopes that medical attention could avert the consequences of the bite of a mad dog. The slave did not become sick.

The first president’s attitudes towards dogs were those of the aristocrats of Virginia, at least those of English descent, but also reflected concerns about why slaves might want dogs, particularly when sheep or other livestock might be stolen with their help. Although Washington took great care with his own dogs and those of his friends he borrowed for the chase, his concerns about sheep stealing led him to order that a slave should only own one dog, and if any slave owned more, overseers were to kill the excess by hanging the dogs. It is not clear that this was ever enforced, but Washington certainly wanted his overseers, and his slaves, to believe that it would be.

The Wessyngtons of County Durham

Sometime around 1183 AD, Washington’s ancestor William de Hertburn exchanged the village of Hertburn for the manor and village of Wessyngton in a land transaction whereby William agreed to attend the bishop of Durham with two greyhounds in grand hunts. The bishop, who also held the title of Count Palatine from the Norman conquerors, had a castle in Durham, with responsibility of keeping an eye on Scotland not far to the north. William de Wessyngton, having changed his surname to that of the village he had obtained in the trade, was obligated to provide men at arms whenever military aid was required by the bishop. Washington Irving, in his four-volume biography of the first president, says that the condition of military service required of William’s manor was often exacted, and that the service in the grand hunt was far from an idle form:

“Hunting came next to war in those days, as the occupation of the nobility and gentry. The clergy engaged in it equally with the laity. The hunting establishment of the Bishop of Durham was on a princely scale. He had his forests, chases and parks, with their train of foresters, rangers, and park keepers. A grand hunt was a splendid pageant in which all his barons and knights attended him with horse and hound. The stipulations with the Seignior of Wessyngton show how strictly the rights of the chase were defined. All the game taken by him in going to the forest belonged to the bishop; all taken on returning belonged to himself.”

Washington’s great-grandfather, John, arrived in Virginia in 1657, and with his brother, Andrew, bought land in Westmoreland County between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, land that was good for both farming and hunting. John, according to Irving, “became an extensive planter,” and, as Colonel Washington, he led a force of Virginians and Marylanders against a Seneca tribe that had been ravaging settlements along the Potomac. His estate at Bridges Creek passed in time to his grandson, Augustine Washington, father of the president, and it was in the house on this estate that George was born in 1732. His boyhood was spent in a home in Stafford County, opposite Fredericksburg, and it was here that Washington was soon exposed to the pleasures of the chase.

Survey Work

Washington saw the dogs of poor people when he worked as a surveyor. In a letter from 1749 or 1750, he describes walking all day and sleeping the night with a family before the hearth, “like a Parcel of Dogs or Catts and happy’s he that gets the Birth nearest the fire.” During this work, where inns were often unavailable, he “never had my cloths of [off] but lay and sleep in them like a Negro except the few Nights I have lay’n in Frederick Town.” He would have known of the warmth that a dog can provide on a cold night.

At that time in America, poorer quality shoes were sometimes made of dog leather, and in a letter of November 1759, he directs John Didsbury: “Never more make any of Dog leather.” Thirteen years later, in July 1772, he is required to reinforce this point to the same Didsbury: “I beg that none of the Shoes you now, or hereafter may send me, may be made of Dogskin unless particularly required to be so.”

Lord Fairfax

As a young man, Washington was a favorite of Lord William Fairfax, head of a family with which the Washingtons had been allied for more than a century. Lord Fairfax loved the chase, and found George equally enthusiastic, as described by Irving:

“His lordship was a staunch fox-hunter, and kept horses and hounds in the English style. The hunting season had arrived. The neighborhood abounded with sport; but fox-hunting in Virginia required bold and skilful horsemanship. He found Washington as bold as himself in the saddle, and as eager to follow the hounds. He forthwith took him into peculiar favor; made him his hunting companion; and it was probably under the tuition of this hard-riding old nobleman that the youth imbibed that fondness for the chase for which he was afterwards remarked.”

Map of Mount Vernon drawn by Washington (Wilstach)

As can be seen from the map Washington made of Mount Vernon, about half of the estate was in woodland, and suitable for hunting. Even when engaged in other business on his estate, Washington would take dogs with him “for the chance of starting a fox, which he occasionally did, though he was not always successful in killing him.” Such an experienced is described in an entry in Washington’s diary for August 1768: "The hounds havg. started a Fox in self huntg. we followed and run it sevl. hours chase into a hold [sic] when digging it out it escaped."

Hunts were often successful, however, as described in a diary entry for January 1786:

“After breakfast I rid by the places where my Muddy hole & Ferry people were clearing--thence to the Mill and Dogue run Plantations and having the Hounds with me in passing from the latter towards Muddy hole Plantation I found a Fox which after dragging him some distance and running him hard for near an hour was killed by the cross road in front of the House.”

Sometimes, as in modern Britain, foxes were held captive to be released for the chase. A diary entry for October 27, 1787 states: “Went to the Woods back of Muddy hole with the hounds. Unkennelled two foxes & dragged others but caught none. The dogs run wildly & under no command.”

Irving describes hunting as Washington’s passion:

“When the sport was poor near home, he would take his hounds to a distant part of the country, establish himself at an inn, and keep open house and open table to every person of good character and respectable appearance who chose to join him in following the hounds.”

Washington personally treated his dogs for their ailments. A diary entry for September 1768 states: “Anointed all my Hounds (as well old Dogs as Puppies) which appeard to have Mange with Hogs Lard & Brimstone.”

Washington was also concerned with keeping breeding lines pure. An entry for the same month reads: “The Hound Bitch Mopsey going proud, was lind by my Water dog Pilot before it was discovered—after which she was shut up with a hound dog—Old Harry.” An entry for October 1768 indicates the water dog was a spaniel named Pompey.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an obscure meaning of “line” as a verb is largely restricted to dogs and wolves, meaning copulate, cover. An entry for December 1770 states: “Truelove another Hound Bitch Shut up with Ringwood & by him alone lined.”

An entry for March 2, 1769, is particularly detailed:

First Gentleman of Virginia (John Ward Dunsmore, 1909)

“Returnd home from my Journey to Frederick &ca. and found that the Hound Bitch Maiden had taken Dog promiscuously. That the Bitch Lady was in Heat & had also been promiscuously lined, & therefore I did not shut her up—That Dutchess was shut up, and had been lind twice by Drunkard, but was out one Night in her heat, & supposd to be lind by other Dog's—that Truelove was also in the House--as was Mopsy likewise (who had been lind to Pilot before she was shut up). The Bitch Musick brought five Puppies one of which being thought not true was drownd immediately. The others being somewhat like the Dog (Rockwood of Mr. Fairfaxs) which got them were saved.”

Sometimes there was sufficient promiscuity that puppies would be drowned automatically, as indicated in a diary entry for June 1768: “Musick was also in heat & servd promiscuously by all the Dogs, intending to drown her Puppy's.”

Drowning puppies that did not fit some concept of the breed involved is not a practice confined to the eighteenth century. Washington continues on March 31, 1769:

“To this time Mopsy had been lind several times by Lawlor as Truelove had been by Drunkard--but as this Bitch got [out] one Night during her Heat it is presumable she was lind by other Dogs especially Pilot, the Master Dog, & one who was seen lying down by her in the Morning.”

There were apparently dogs around the plantation that were either ownerless or perhaps owned by slaves that were not to be permitted to breed with the hunting hounds. A diary entry for December 1770 states:

“Shut up Singer after She had been first lined by one or two Cur Dogs. Jowler being put in with her lind her several times; and his Puppies if to be distinguished saved.”

Naming puppies is described often in Washington’s diaries. An entry for June 1768 says something about how names were chosen: “The hound bitch Mopsey brought 8 Puppys, distinguishd by the following Names--viz.--Tarter--Jupiter--Trueman--& Tipler (being Dogs) --and Truelove, Juno, Dutchess, & Lady being the Bitches--in all eight.”

Dogs could be fixed. An entry for June 1769 states: “James Cleveland [Washington’s overseer for River Farm, one of Washington’s properties] spaed the three hound Bitches Musick, Tipsey, & Maiden as also two hound puppies which came from Musick & Rockwood.”

The rural hunting life came to an end for Washington in 1775 as he became involved in revolutionary activities, though he would renew his passion for the chase after the war was over.

Revolution

Charles Lee (Andrews, 1894)

Washington was willing to give up the chase, and the company of his hounds, during the course of the American Revolution, but one of his commanders was reluctant to do so. In February 1777, Major General Charles Lee wrote to Washington: “I am likewise extremely desirous that my Dogs should be brought as I never stood in greater need of their Company than at present.”

Lee was not related to the distinguished Lees of Virginia but Washington had known him before the war and the two men had no doubt hunted together. Irving says of Lee:

“He was whimsical, eccentric, and at times almost rude; negligent also, and slovenly in person and attire; for though he had occasionally associated with kings and princes, he had also campaigned with Mohawks and Cossacks, and seems to have relished their ‘good breeding.’ What was still more annoying in a well regulated mansion, he was always followed by a legion of dogs, which shared his affections with his horses, and took their seats by him when at table. ‘I must have some object to embrace,' said he misanthropically. 'When I can be convinced that men are as worthy objects as dogs, I shall transfer my benevolence, and become as staunch a philanthropist as the canting Addison affected to be.’”

Washington let his friend down gently as to his wish of bringing his dogs on campaign. A week after receiving the none-too-subtle request, Washington wrote: “Your Dogs are in Virginia. This Circumstance I regret, as you will be deprived of the satisfaction and amusements you hoped to derive from their friendly and companionable dispositions. I am etc.”

Lee, it is to be noted, is responsible for a quip that has considerable currency for a time, describing to Washington in a letter of March 1776 how difficult he found it to position his army, saying he felt “like a Dog in a dancing school. I know not where to turn myself, where to fix myself.”

Victims of War

Horses, dogs, and other domestic animals are often victims of war, and in orders issued in April 1777, Washington commands that an officer and twenty privates be employed to bury “dead horses, dogs, or any kind of Carrion.” In November 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold’s forces in Canada were starving to a degree that a corporal in a company of Pennsylvania riflemen wrote about having “passed some musketmen devouring two dogs which they had roasted, skin and all, and were making a hearty meal of it, not having eat anything for 2 or 3 days. I saw them offer a Dollar for a bitt of Cake not 2 ounces.”

This was, of course, long before Arnold’s treason. John Adams, an early advocate for Arnold, repeated the words of Arnold’s troops that “he fought like Julius Caesar.” The future president made several analogies regarding Arnold’s detractors and those officers who quarreled among themselves rather than concentrating on the enemy:

“I am wearied to death with the wrangles between military officers, high and low. They quarrel like cats and dogs. They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts."

Mastiffs were Shakespeare’s dogs of war, and were often kept by camp followers to guard military encampments, but whether Adams was imagining their actual use for this purpose during the Revolutionary War is unclear.

An incident occurring in 1779 is worth recounting in connection with the fate of dogs in war. As described by Irving:

“On the 15th of July, about mid-day, Wayne set out with his light-infantry from Sandy Beach, fourteen miles distant from Stony Point. The roads were rugged, across mountains, morasses, and narrow defiles, in the skirts of the Dunderberg, where frequently it was necessary to proceed in single file. About eight in the evening they arrived within a mile and a half of the forts, without being discovered. Not a dog barked to give the alarm—all the dogs in the neighbourhood had been privately destroyed beforehand. Bringing the men to a halt, Wayne and his principal officers went nearer, and carefully reconnoitred the works and their environs, so as to proceed understandingly and without confusion. Having made their observations they returned to the troops. Midnight, it will be recollected, was the time recommended by Washington for the attack. About half-past eleven, the whole moved forward, guided by a negro of the neighbourhood who had frequently carried in fruit to the garrison, and served the Americans as a spy. He led the way, accompanied by two stout men disguised as farmers.”

Destroying dogs that might sound an alarm has, unfortunately but practically, occurred throughout history.

General Howe’s Terrier

An incident during the battle of Germantown, which has become the subject of a book by Caroline Tiger, concerned a terrier that wandered onto the battlefield and was retrieved by Washington’s men. A collar identified the dog as belonging General William Howe, Washington’s opponent. Washington had the dog returned under a flag of truce on October 6, 1777, with an accompanying letter:

“General Washington's compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar, appears to belong to General Howe.”

A footnote to the letter in Washington’s collected papers states that the surviving draft of the letter is in the hand of Alexander Hamilton. Although accounts of this event often emphasize Washington’s humanitarian concern for the dog, his motive was at least in part to establish for Howe that Americans could fight as British gentlemen should, with particular concern for the officers of the opposition and their property.

Peace

With the arrival of peace, Washington attempted to return to the chase. The Marquis de Lafayette promised to provide the general with French hunting hounds, for which Washington thanked him in a letter of July 1785:

“I am much obliged to you my dear Marquis, for your attention to the hounds, and not less sorry that you should have met the smallest difficulty, or experienced the least trouble in obtaining them: I was no way anxious about these, consequently should have felt no regret, or sustained no loss if you had not succeeded in your application.”

Washington and Lafayette, 1794 (Rossiter/Mignon, 1859)

His seeming patience with the arrival of the dogs was belied by another letter less than a month later to William Grayson:

“Apropos, did you hear him say anything of Hounds which, the Marqs. de la Fayette has written to me, were committed to his care? If he really brought them (and if he did not I am unable to account for the information) it would have been civil in the young Gentleman to have dropped me a line respecting the disposal of them, especially as war is declared against the canine species in New York, and they being strangers, and not having formed any alliances for self-defence, but on the contrary, distressed and friendless may have been exposed not only to war, but to pestilence and famine also. If you can say anything on this subject pray do so.”

The reference to a war against the canine species in New York is unclear to me. There may have been an effort to reduce the number of stray dogs in the city at the time.The French dogs were brought across the ocean by John Quincy Adams, who found the task of escorting them distasteful (apparently the sixth U.S. president was not a dog person). In a letter to Lafayette of September 1, 1785, Washington reveals more about the ultimate source of the animals:

“The Hounds which you were so obliging as to send me arrived safe, and are of promising appearance; to Monsieur le Compte Doilliamson (if I miscall him, your handwriting is to blame, and in honor you are bound to rectify the error); and in an especial manner to his fair Competesse, my thanks are due for this favor: the enclosed letter which I give you the trouble of forwarding contains my acknowledgement of their obliging attention to me on this occasion.”

The partially illegible letter from Lafayette is reproduced in a note by Jackson and Twohig: "French Hounds are not now very easily got because the King Makes use of english dogs, as Being more swift than those of Normandy. I However Have got seven from a Normand Gentleman Called Monsieur le Comte doilliamson. The Handsomest Bitch Among them was a favourite with his lady who Makes a present of Her to You."

This was followed by a letter from Washington to the Comte d’Oilliamson in France:

Washington's letter to Comte d'Oilliamson (Letterbox 12, 187)

“Sir: I have just received seven very fine Hounds [three dogs, four bitches], for which, the Marqs. de la Fayette informs me, I am indebted to your goodness. I know not in what terms to acknowledge my gratitude for the obligation, but pray you to be assured that I have a due sense of the honor; and feel in a particular manner the force of the goodness of Madame la Comptesse, to whom the Marqs. adds, I am beholden for a favorite hound. I pray you to offer my best respects, and to make my acknowledgment of this favor, acceptable to her: at the sametime I beg you to assure her that her favorite shall not suffer under my care, but become the object of my particular attention. I have the honor, etc.”

A diary entry for September 19, 1785, describes Washington familiarizing his new batch of dogs with his estate: “Took my French Hounds with me for the purpose of Airing them & giving them a knowledge of the grounds round about this place.” One of the French hound bitches had apparently gotten pregnant in transit and had a litter on September 30: “One of the Hound Bitches wch. was sent to me from France brought forth 15 puppies this day; 7 of which (the rest being as many as I thought she could rear) I had drowned.”

Washington enlisted dogs from neighbors to help the French dogs learn the American habits of the chase, as indicated in an entry from November 1785:

“Went out after Breakfast with my hounds from France, & two which were lent me, yesterday, by young Mr. Mason. Found a Fox which was run tolerably well by two of the Frh. Bitches & one of Mason's Dogs. The other French Dogs shewed but little disposition to follow and with the second Dog of Mason's got upon another Fox which was followed slow and indifferently by some & not at all by the rest until the sent became so cold that it cd. not be followed at all.”

Some progress was made with the French hounds by December 1785, according to a diary entry:

“It being a good scenting morning I went out with the Hounds (carrying the two had from Colo. McCarty). Run at different two foxes but caught neither. My French Hounds performed better to day; and have afforded hopes of their performing well, when they come to be a little more used to Hunting, and understand more fully the kind of game they are intended to run.”

Irving believes that Washington was never fully satisfied with the French hounds:

“The passion for hunting had revived with Washington on returning to his old hunting-grounds; but he had no hounds. His kennel had been broken up when he went to the wars, and the dogs given away, and it was not easy to replace them. After a time he received several hounds from France, sent out by Lafayette and other of the French officers, and once more sallied forth to renew his ancient sport. The French hounds, however, proved indifferent; he was out with them repeatedly, putting other hounds with them borrowed from gentlemen of the neighbourhood. They improved after a while, but were never stanch, and caused him frequent disappointments. Probably he was not as stanch himself as formerly; an interval of several years may have blunted his keenness, if we may judge from the following entry in his diary: ‘Out after breakfast with my hounds ; found a fox and ran him sometimes hard, and sometimes at cold hunting, from 11 till near 2—when I came home and left the huntsmen with them, who followed in the same manner two hours or more, and then took the dogs off without killing.’”

Brissot's interview with Washington, 1788 (published 1797)

When Jacques Pierre Brissot visited Mount Vernon in 1788, he did not discuss Washinton’s dogs, but a plate in the book of his travels published in 1797 shows Brissot and Washington with one of the hounds.

Curiously, Washington may have gotten rid of his dogs in order to preserve the few deer he had left at Mount Vernon. In a letter to Richard Chichester of August 1792, he writes:

“I have about a dozen deer (some of which are of the common sort) which are no longer confined in the Paddock which was made for them, but range in all my woods, and often pass my exterior fence. It is true I have scarcely a hope of preserving them long, although they come up almost every day, but I am unwilling by any act of my own to facilitate their destruction; for being as much afraid of Hounds (on which acct. I parted with all mine) as the wild deer are, and no man living being able, (as they have no collars on) to distinguish them whilst they are running from the wild deer, I might, and assuredly should have them killed by this means. For this reason as it can be no object since Mr. Fairfax, I am informed, is unwilling to have his Woods at Belvoir hunted, I am desirous of preserving mine. I am, etc.”

Irving recounts that for a time Washington appears to have considered stocking his estate with deer, and that he wrote to England in hopes of getting some deer sent to him. This proved to be unnecessary as a Mr. Ogle of Maryland presented him with “six fawns from his park of English deer at Bellair.”

In late 1793, Washington was informed that a neighbor may have killed one of his deer, though he was perhaps not convinced there was any blame. He wrote to Richard Chichester as follows:

“There must have been some misconception on the part of Colo. Burgess Ball if he understood that I had been informed it was you, who had killed my English Buck; for no such information that I can recollect ever was given to me. I had heard before the rect. of your letter but how, is more like a dream than reality, that that particular Deer was killed on Ravensworth. Nor did I ever suppose that you would have been so unneighbourly as to kill any of my Deer knowing them to be such; but as they had broke out the Paddock in which they had been confined and were going at large, and besides consisted as well of Country as English Deer. I wished to protect them as much as I was able and upon that principle, and that alone, declined giving the permission you asked to hunt some of my Woods adjoining to yours, knowing that they did not confine themselves within my exterior fences, and moreover that, when Hounds are in pursuit, no person could distinguish them from the wild Deer of the Forest.”

A letter of December 1792 refers to the estate’s hound kennel having burned down. I am advised by a current excavator of Mount Vernon that no evidence of a kennel on Mount Vernon has been found in excavations of the site.

Washington may have regretted getting rid of all the hounds, as he realized in time that there could be too many deer on his property. In a letter of January 1797 to James Anderson of Philadelphia, he writes:

“The Gardener complains heavily of the injury which he sustains from my half wild, half tame Deer; and I do not well know what course to take, especially as the hard weather, if it continues, will make them grow more and more bold and mischievous. Two methods have occurred, one or both combined, may, possibly, keep them out of the Gardens and Lawns; namely, to get a couple of hounds, and whenever they are seen in, or near those places, to fire at them with shot of a small kind that would make them smart, but neither kill or maim them. If this will not keep them at a distance, I must kill them in good earnest, as the lesser evil of the two.”

He repeats the idea of getting a few hounds to chase off the deer only a few weeks later in another letter.

Irish Wolf Hounds

In a letter to Lafayette of May 1786, Washington expressed interest in obtaining Irish wolf hounds. Almost two years later, Washington received a letter from Sir Edward Newenham, who described the difficulty in finding such dogs:

“I have just received a letter from your noble and virtuous friend, the Marquis de la Fayette, in which he communicates your wish to obtain a breed of the true Irish wolf dog, and desires me to procure it. I have been these several years endeavoring to get that breed without success; it is nearly annihilated. I have heard of a bitch in the north of Ireland, but not of a couple anywhere. I am also told that the Earl of Altamont has a breed that is nearly genuine; if he has I will procure two from him. The Marquis also wants some at his domain, where he is troubled by the wolves. If mastiffs would be of any service I could send you some large ones, which are our guard dogs; you will honor me with your commands about them. They are very fierce, faithful, and long-lived.”

Writing to Charles Carter, Washington explains his interest in the Irish dog:

“Mastiffs, I conceive, will not answer the purposes for which the wolf dog is wanted. They will guard a pen, which pen may be secured by its situation, by our dogs, and various other ways; but your object, if I have a right conception of it, is to hunt and destroy wolves by pursuit, for which the mastiff is altogether unfit. If the proper kind can be had I have no doubt of their being sent by Sir Edward, who has sought all occasions to be obliging to me. I am etc.”

There is no indication in Washington’s correspondence that he ever got any dogs of this breed. Nor is it clear that he had any actual need to repel wolves. In a letter to Arthur Young in June 1792, he states: “Sheep thrive very well in the middle States, though they are not exempt from deseases, and are often injured by dogs; and more so as you approach the Mountains, by wolves.” Mount Vernon hardly qualifies. Perhaps Washington thought that the wolfhounds could catch the dogs that he imagined slaves were using to rob his flocks.

Dogs of Slaves

Washington expressed his concern about slaves using dogs to steal sheep in a letter to Anthony Whiting of December 1792:

“I am not less concerned to find that I am, forever, sustaining loss in my Stock of Sheep (particularly). I not only approve of your killing those Dogs which have been the occasion of the late loss, and of thinning the Plantations of others, but give it as a positive order, that after saying what dog, or dogs shall remain, if any negro presumes under any pretence whatsoever, to preserve, or bring one into the family, that he shall be severely punished, and the dog hanged. I was obliged to adopt this practice whilst I resided at home, and from the same motives, that is, for the preservation of my Sheep and Hogs; but I observed when I was at home last that a new set of dogs was rearing up, and I intended to have spoke about them, but one thing or another always prevented it. It is not for any good purpose Negros raise, or keep dogs; but to aid them in their night robberies; for it is astonishing to see the command under which their dogs are. I would no more allow the Overseers than I would the Negros, to keep Dogs. One, or at most two on a Plantation is enough. The pretences for keeping more will be various, and urgent, but I will not allow more than the above notwithstanding.”

There is no census of the slaves’ dogs, though at Brissot’s visit in 1788 the slaves numbered 300, “distributed in different log houses, in different parts of the plantation.” Hanging dogs seems to have been a way of shocking slaves into acceptance of the restrictions on their ownership of dogs. This one-dog policy for slaves comes in a letter written while Washington was president. A letter of January 1793 indicates that he may have doubted whether sheep theft could actually be stopped:

“Let Mr. Crow [Hiland Crow, overseer at Ferry and French’s farms] know, that I view with a very evil eye the frequent reports made by him of Sheep dying. When they are destroyed by Dogs it is more to be regretted than avoided perhaps, but frequent natural deaths is a very strong evidence to my mind of the want of care, or something worse, as the sheep are culled every year, and the old ones drawn out.”

It is quite possible that the slaves were active with their dogs at night. This was the only time they had to themselves. John James Audobon, as noted in a prior blog, described his slaves using their own dogs to hunt wildcat, raccoon, opossum, and such other nocturnal animals as might cross their paths.

It is to be noted that Washington had given orders in the French and Indian War, during a silent march, that all dogs with the army were to be tied up and muzzled or sent back to post. Any dog that remained loose was to be hanged on the spot. Randall, in his biography of Washington, also notes that Washington ordered that any man who discharged a rifle on the march would receive 200 lashes on his bare back on the spot. (It was for his stealthy night marches that Washington came to be known during the American Revolution as the Old Fox.)

Rabies

A diary entry for July 1769 states: “A Dog coming here which I suspected to be Mad, I shot him. Several of the Hounds running upon him may have got bit. Note the consequences.” One of the French dogs Washington got in 1785 was suspected of becoming rabid in 1786. A diary entry for November of that year states:

“A Hound bitch which like most of my other hounds appearing to be going Mad and had been shut up getting out, my Servant Will in attempting to get her in again was snapped at by her at the arm. The Teeth penetrated through his Coat and Shirt and contused the Flesh but he says did not penetrate the skin nor draw any blood. This happened on Monday forenoon. The part affected appeared to swell a little to day.”

In 1797, he sent one of his slaves to Dr. William Stoy in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in hopes of having him treated before rabies developed from a dog bite:

“Sir: On Monday last, the bearer was Bit by a Small Dog belonging to a Lady in my house, then as was supposed a little diseased. And Yesternight died (I do think) in a State of madness. As soon as the Boy (Christopher) was Bit application was made to a medical Gentleman in Alexandria who has cut out so far as He could, the place Bit, applyed Ointment to keep it open, And put the Boy under a Course of Mercury But being informed of Your success in performing cures on [mutilated] And worse cases, has induced me to send Him to You, and put Him under Your care. Trusting You will do everything in Your Power, to prevent any bad consequences from the Bite, And have at the same time Wrote to Mr. Slough in Lancaster to pay whatever is Your charge, And whenever the Boy arrives do Write me, And Your Opinion of Him, for besides the call of Humanity, I am particularly anxious for His cure. He being my own Body servant. The Mercury will be mostly discontinued upon His leaving this place, and untill He reaches You. And am Sir Yours etc.”

Washington was pleased with the result, as indicated in a letter from March 1798 to Dr. Stoy:

“As I think your charge for the prescription application to Christopher (my servant), who was supposed to be bitten by a mad dog, is a very reasonable one, I send you enclosed a five dollar bank note of Alexandria (having no other paper money by me); without enquiring whether your not having received four dollars before, proceeded from the neglect of the Servant, or any other person. Christopher continues to do well, and I believe is now free from apprehension of any bad consequences from the bite. I shall beg to be informed of your receipt of this letter, being unwilling that you should go unpaid. I am etc.”

In 1794, one of Washington’s aides wrote to Dr. James Measeof Philadelphia:

“Sir: The President of the U States has reed, your Letter together with a copy of your essay on the disease produced by the bite of a mad-dog. The President has directed me to assure you that his sincere wishes are offered for the useful effects of a work calculated to throw light on a subject so interesting; and to make his acknowledgements for your politeness in presenting it to him. I am etc.”

Mease’s theories concerning the nature of rabies proved superior to those of Benjamin Rush, according to Wasik and Murphy’s recent book on the history of the disease.

Last Dogs

Washington had long been familiar with terriers, which he always spelled “tarriers.” Correspondence for 1796 indicates he had become concerned with breeding them, and wanted to keep this line pure as had been a concern with the hounds:

“I hope Frank has taken particular care of the Tarriers. I directed him to observe when the female was getting into heat, and let her be immediately shut up; and no other than the male Tarrier get to her. I wish you well, and am etc.”

Perhaps, like most people getting old, he began preferring smaller dogs, though in a letter of December 1797 from Mount Vernon, he mentions taking care of a pointer for Thomas Law until Law could send for the dog.

Conclusion

Washington’s English ancestors included avid hunters who understood that hunting in royal forests and on large estates was an activity not open to all, and to various degrees they benefited by being of sufficient rank to enjoy the privilege of taking game. They would have understood that commoners, such as peasants living on their lands, and those of the lords they served, were precluded from hunting deer and sometimes other game, both by place and by season, and something of these attitudes likely arrived with them in Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century. It would go too far to suggest that Washington’s orders regarding the number of dogs his slaves could own was a vestige of the forest law that allowed killing and maiming dogs that might disturb the peace of the king’s game, but the incident fits within the broader concept that those who owned the land, or had rights to hunt it, could restrict the use of dogs by those of lesser rank who lived on or near such land.

It is not fair to judge our first president by modern concepts of humaneness, nor to expect that he should keep alive dogs for which an estate such as Mount Vernon had no use. Neither can it be expected that a slave owner would overlook the activities of slaves of which he disapproved, and it is arguable that hanging dogs before their masters was a way of frightening the slaves sufficiently that no punishment would be needed for the owners of the animals. Nevertheless, it is not appropriate to overlook such facts in an effort to make the first president into a precursor of later cooing pet lovers in the White House. He lived in an age when dogs were expected to be useful, and likely more than any of his successors in office knew how to make them so.

Note on art: Most depictions of Washington hunting or standing with his hounds date from after his death. As for what Washington himself thought artistic treatment of the chase should show, Jackson and Twohig refer to a print found in Washington's collection at his death, which these authors label, "The Death of the Fox." I am advised by a curator of Mount Vernon that this was part of a series of fox-hunting prints Washington purchased while serving as president in Philadelphia, likely to furnish the executive residence. The print was made from a painting by John Wootton, now in the Tate Gallery, painted between 1733 and 1736 as part of a series called "Viscount Weymouth's Hunt." This particular painting is specifically entitled: Thomas, 2nd Viscount Weymouth, with a Black Page and Other Huntsmen at the Kill. The figure in the center holds the limp body of the fox above the heads of the still-eager dogs. (I could find no copy in Wikimedia commons and the Tate would charge me £64 for posting.)

Sources:

Andrews, E. Benjamin (1894) History of the United States (4 vols.) New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Brissot, J.P. (1797). Travels in the United States of America, performed in 1788. In Historical Account of the Most Celebrated Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries from the Time of Columbus to the Present Period (Mavor, Wm., ed.) London: E. Newbery.

Coren, Stanley (2009). George Washington: President, General and Dog Breeder. Psychology Today, January 2, 2009 (describing Washington’s use of the Gloucester Hunting Club in New Jersey).

Ekirch, A. Roger (2005). At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past. New York. W.W. Norton & Co. (describing how slaves were owned by their masters in the day, but sought to conduct their own affairs through the night).

Ellet, Elizabeth (1819). The Women of the American Revolution. New York: Baker & Scribner (mentioning a Newfoundland dog starting a fire in a house by pushing over a lamp, during the advance of the army to Fort Edward).

Fiske, John (1891). The American Revolution, vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co.

Fitzpatrick, John C. (ed.) (1931-1944). The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, in 39 volumes. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (also available online in searchable format at a University of Virginia website).

Irving, Washington (1856-1859). Life of George Washington (4 vols.). New York: G.P. Putnam.

Jackson, Donald, and Twohig, Dorothy (1976). The Diaries of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press.

Nash, Gary B. (2006). The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. New York: Viking Press (mentioning, at xxiv, the only possible instance of a dog in battle during the Revolutionary War that I have so far encountered: “[George] Lippard often dissolve the line between fiction and history in his revolutionary tales…. The story of the muscular Black Sampson of the ‘Oath-Bound Five,’ who avenged the British murder of his white mistress by plunging into the Battle of Brandywine against the redcoats with Debbil, his ferocious dog, was pure fiction.”).

Page, William (ed., 1905). The Victoria History of the County of Durham, vol. 1. London: Archibald Constable & Co. (Quoting the Boldon Book specifically as to William of Hertburn: “William of Hertburn holds WESSINGTON except the church and the land belonging to the church, in exchange for the vill of Hertburn which he quitclaimed for this, and he renders 4 pounds and goes on the great hunt with two hunting-dogs, and when the general aid comes he ought to give in addition 1 mark of the aid.” This source states that the Wessyngtons owed a kind of service called drengage, describing this as follows: “Probably the incidents most characteristic of drengage were the duty of taking part in the bishop's hunt, the 'magna caza,' including the provision of a horse and a dog, which had to be cared for throughout the year, and the obligation of carrying the bishop's messages. “Drengus pascit canem et equum, et vadit in magna caza cum ii leporariis et v cordis . . . et vadit in legationibus' is a characteristic entry that frequently recurs….” This source notes that a dog-kennel (Latin: canillum) was constructed specifically for the great hunt. In addition to providing two dogs, the Wessyngtons were to provide five ropes.)

Randall, Willard Sterne (1997). George Washington: A Life. New York: Henry Holt & Co. (describing, at 101, how the French, in the French and Indian War, had killed shot dogs near Washington's encampment lest the British forces be able to eat them during a siege).

Thacher, James (1812). Observations on Hydrophobia Produced by the Bite of a Mad Dog, or Other Rabid Animal. Plymouth, Mass.: Joseph Avery (quoting extensively from the writings of Dr. James Mease).

Tiger, Caroline (2005). General Howe’s Dog: George Washington, the Battle for Germantown and the Dog Who Crosse Enemy Lines. London: Chamberlain Bros.

Wasik, Bill, and Murphy, Monica (2012). Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus. New York: Viking Books (noting that Mease believed that hydrophobia was a disease of the nervous system, in contradiction to Rush, who categorized it as an inflammatory fever).

Wilstach, Paul (1916). Mount Vernon: Washington's Home and the Nation's Shrine. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co.

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The Dogs of India: Travel Notes

March 24, 2014, 5:31 am

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In the Mahabharata a traveler enters a strange village:

"One day he came upon a hamlet, in the midst of a forest, inhabited by cruel hunters addicted to the slaughter of living creatures. The little hamlet abounded with broken jars and pots made of earth. Dog-skins were strewn about everywhere. Bones and skulls of boars and asses were gathered in heaps in different places. Cloths stripped from the dead lay about, and the huts were adorned with garlands of used-up flowers. Many of the habitations were embellished with sloughs cast off by snakes. The place resounded with the loud crowing of cocks and hens and the dissonant bray of asses. Here and there the inhabitants disputed with one another, uttering harsh words in shrill voices. There were temples of gods bearing devices of owls and other birds. Resounding with the tinkle of iron bells, the hamlet abounded with canine packs standing or lying on every side." (Canti Parva § 141, Ray VI)

Puppies on Varanasi Street

The hapless traveler can find nothing to eat in the village except the flesh of a recently slain dog, and he must decide whether he can partake of this, which he must first steal, to avoid starvation. The passage is dreamlike, even nightmarish, but the large numbers of dogs in and around a village are as familiar today as they were when the great epic was written.

Even on the drive from the airport into New Delhi we saw dozens of them—mostly light tan, some brown and black—beside the road and sometimes crossing before us in traffic. Variously called pi-dogs, pariahs, INdogs, street dogs, village dogs, native dogs, parries, pyes, and other terms, here I will call them pi-dogs for brevity. They live in the streets and alleys, beside the roads, mostly near people but sometimes in small isolated groups on the edges of parks and forests. One estimate put their numbers in a section of West Bengal as from 156 to 214 per square kilometer, 404 to 554 per square mile. I have seen no census but, even assuming that only a portion of the country holds sufficient foraging opportunities to support breeding populations, their numbers could well be over 100 million and perhaps more.

Boy with Pi-Dog, Udaipur (Joan Ensminger)

Outside our first hotel, the Imperial in New Delhi, they were on the streets, mostly ignoring us, though curious when I started taking pictures. One I saw several times over three days slept beside the door but under the low roof of a small shop, where the owner occasionally put food on the ground and water in a small cup. The dog had no collar and I do not know if the shop proprietor, who did not speak English, would have said the dog was his. These relationships are often temporary, and some specialists believe that male dogs are more successful at making friendships with humans than females. At least one scientist who has studied India’s pi-dogs in West Bengal for decades, Sunil Kumar Pal, has found that the ratio of males to females is around 1.37 to 1, though this has not been confirmed in other areas.

Rabies

Anne de Courcy, in her wonderful book about the brides brought from England to India to find husbands during the British occupation (The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj), writes that “most cantonments were haunted by pi-dongs,” and the “fear of rabies was ever-present.”Yet a British effort to exterminate street dogs in Bombay in 1832 led to riots (Palsetia, 2001). More recently, laws have protected the dogs from euthanasia, but sterilization programs have had some success in cities such as Delhi and Jaipur.

Dr. M.K. Sudarshan of the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangalore has estimated that each year in India about 20,000 people contract rabies, mostly males in rural areas, over 90% of whom are bitten by dogs. The incubation period lasts from two weeks to six months. Almost half the victims do not seek medical attention and may resort to indigenous healing practices. Although I had thought that oral rabies vaccines for animals, such as announced by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, might be a partial answer, I am advised that at present there are environmental, as well as cultural limitations, that may make this approach impractical in India.

Animal Behavior Studies

Puppies are born from October to March, with most in November through January. The average litter is just under six puppies. Mothers milk-feed for ten to 11 weeks, but may remain in contact with litters for as little as 13 weeks. Milk feeding sessions last as long as 27 minutes during the first week of life, going down to around two minutes in the 11^th week. Mothers also feed puppies by regurgitation. Puppies’ eyes are completely open by day 17 of life, and they soon become mobile. They begin searching for food independently at ten to 11 weeks. The mortality rate for puppies is high. Two-thirds die within four months and one study found that only 18% survive the first year. Since so many live near the roads, they are easily run over as we saw happen several cars ahead of us the day we drove into Ranthambhore. The squeals of the dying puppy haunted us for days.

Pi-Dog Puppies in Delhi Cloth Market

Pi-dogs live on garbage and human generosity. They are often found beside food stalls, and are sometimes fed by shop owners, as was true of a group of puppies in this picture taken at a cloth market in Delhi. Srejani Sen Majumder, Anindita Bhadra, and their colleagues at the Behaviour and Ecology Lab of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata have studied the relationships of free-ranging dogs with humans. The researchers found that during daylight dogs spend about half the time resting and about 16% of the time walking. Of their interactions, about 85% were with other dogs. These researchers say that calves are occasionally chased by dogs, though in Varinasi we once saw a cow lower her head and chase a dog for several feet. Aggression towards humans is rare, and we never saw any, but submission is evident in about half of interactions with humans, usually demonstrated by tail wagging or begging. Humans, on the other hand, are frequently aggressive towards pi-dogs, and we saw people throwing stones at them more than a few times. A local newspaper article from a century ago (Amrita Bazar Patrika, July 13, 1899) suggests that there may be social limits on how much effort one should put into chasing away a dog:

“We saw the other day a European pursuing a pariah dog with a stick in his hand, because the dog, finding him a stranger strangely dressed, had barked at him. Of course, he had no fear of being bitten; its barks irritated him, and he, therefore, sought to give the animal a lesson…. By following the pariah dog in anger, the European lowered his dignity.”

Dogs in Ancient India

Dogs were present in India from before any historical record and their bones have been excavated at ancient cultural sites (Kharakwal et al. 2011). More than a century ago, Edward Washburn Hopkins wrote:

“[I]n the Rig-Veda the dog is the companion and ally of man; the protector and probably the inmate of his house; a friend so near that he pokes his too familiar head into the dish, and has to be struck aside as a selfish creature. He may have been employed as a steed—the chariot of the Maruts is pictured as one drawn by dogs; but he is, at any rate, used for hunting, and the gift of a kennel of one hundred dogs is gratefully acknowledged.”

Hopkins describes tales of evil spirits taking the form of a dog, and lists dog-ghost references in ancient literature. Dogs could also have magical qualities. In the Upanishads (Chand. Up. 1.12), dogs walk in a line, each dog keeping the tail of the preceding dog in his mouth, “as the priests do when they are going to sing praises with the Vahishpavamana hymn,” each priest holding an end of the robe of the priest before him.

The Uncleanness of Dogs

Battered and Infested Street Dog, Varanasi

Dogs were perceived as unclean in early literature. The Satapatha-Brahmana states: “But, surely there are three unclean animals, a vicious boar, a vicious ram, and a dog….” (SBE XLIV, 178) A person who was touched by a dog was to bathe with his clothes on (SBE II, 56; XIV, 121, 183), though another passage says no more than that the limb the dog touched must be washed (SBE II, 253). A pot touched by a dog was to be heated until it was the color of fire (SBE XIV, 160). (SBE references in this blog are to the volume and page number of The Sacred Books of the East, published a century ago by the Clarendon Press at Oxford. For more detail on this 50-volume set, see under Muller, the overall editor, under “Sources” below.)

The poor kept poles to drive away dogs, though a Jain Sutras say that even thus armed one might not avoid being bitten by one of them (SBE XXII, 84). (Jain writings often emphasize the danger of dog bites; see SBE XLV, 94, 262).

Yet dogs were not permitted everywhere. They were not to be allowed to watch the performance of a funeral sacrifice (SBE II, 145, also II, 259; XXV, 119). If a dog, a frog or a cat ran between a teacher of the Vedas and a pupil, a three days’ fast with residence in some place besides the teacher’s home was required of the student (SBE II, 184; SBE XIV, 121; also, teaching must stop for a day and a night, SBE XXV, 149). Brahmanas were not to recite the Veda while dogs barked (SBE XXV, 147). Dogs “must not look at the Brahmanas while they eat” (SBE XXV, 119).

A herdsman was liable for the loss of an animal in the herd if it was killed by dogs and the herdsman did not duly exert himself to prevent this (SBE XXV, 295; XXXIII, 142). The owner of the dog, if there was one, was apparently not liable for such a loss unless he had set the dog to kill the animal (SBE XXXIII, 212).

Obligation to Feed

Yet a householder was obligated to "throw (some food) on the ground for dogs Kandalas [low-caste persons], outcasts, and crows." (SBE II, 122, SBE XI, 9, SBE XIV, 50, SBE XXV, 92). According to the Institutes of Vishnu, one who intentionally killed a dog must fast for three days (SBE VII, 160; see SBE XIV, 114, requiring 12 days of penance). The Gryhia Sutras, giving rules for domestic ceremonies, say that food is not only to be given to dogs, but also to dog-butchers (SBE XXIX, 87). It was considered wise to throw food down into a pit for the dogs, obviously to keep them from getting close enough to bite (Sobti, 1995). As in the Book of Proverbs (26:11), dogs were described as prone to eating their own vomit (SBE VIII, 160).

Dogs in the Home

Dogs on Palettes, Varanasi

Some ancient sources discourage keeping dogs, at least inside a house. The Sacred Laws of the Aryas state that the “gods do not eat (the offerings) of a man who keeps dogs, … nor of him who lives in subjection to his wife, nor of (a husband) who (permits) a paramour (of his wife to reside) in his house.” In the Ramayana (Dutt, UttaraKandam § 70), a talking dog explains why he cannot enter a palace to speak to the king: “We cannot enter into the houses of divinities, kings or Brahmanas, nor can we go there where is fire, Indra, the sun or the wind, for we are the vilest born; so I cannot enter here.” Nevertheless, the king directs that the dog be brought before him.

Those of certain lower castes did apparently own dogs, as “their wealth (shall be) dogs and donkeys” (SBE XXV, 414; XLII, 106 suggests that the dog is sleeping near the family). The Mahabharata speaks of a dog that became exceedingly attached to a scribe in consequence of the affection with which the scribe treated the dog (Canti Parva § 96, Ray V).

A passage in the Ramayana (Dutt, Ayodhya Kandam § 70), describes a king giving gifts of elephants, woolen sheets, deerskins, and dogs. The dogs were “brought up in the inner apartment, resembling tigers in strength and prowess, furnished with teeth representing weapons, and large of body.”

Hunting Dogs in Antiquity

Harappan Period Burial Vase, Delhi Museum

A burial jar from the Harappan period (c. 1900 BC), on display in the Delhi Museum, shows a dog (the width of the neck may suggest a collar), or conceivably a wolf, attacking a deer. Ancient references to deer hunting seldom add any detail as to how dogs were deployed, though the Ramayana (Dutt, Aranya Kandam §55) describes a doe separated by dogs from a herd before being attacked by them.

Although dogs could defile human food by eating it, this did not occur when a hunting dog or a huntsman caught a deer (SBE VII, 103, 104, XIV, 133, 170, XXV, 192). Breeders of sporting dogs are mentioned (XXX, 106), and reverence is said to be due to dogs, dog-keepers, and huntsmen (XLIII, 152).

Boar Hunting, Khajuraho, 11th Century

Boar hunting is mentioned in the Mahabharata (Drona Parva § 183) but most specific references to prey in the ancient sources concern deer. By the 11^th century AD, a boar hunt on the wall of a temple at Khajuraho could look very similar to what one would see on Roman and Greek sarcophagi going back to classical antiquity. Dogs were also used to hunt hare, and a Santal folk tale tells of a dog that caught five in one day (Campbell, 1891).

Dogs in Criminal Punishment

Dogs were known to eat slain enemies after the battle (SBE XLII, 129), but this was true of all battlefields and sometimes still is (Iliad 8:379-80). One who sinned might expect that after he died, his body might be eaten by dogs and vultures (SBE VII, 216), as was true of Jezebel at Jezreel (2 Kings 9:10). Dogs could be used in punishments:

“A woman who commits adultery with a man of lower caste, the king shall cause to be devoured by dogs in a public place.” (SBE II, 289) The Laws of Manu (SBE XXV, 318-9; see also XXXIII, 367) speaks even more generally:

“If a wife, proud of the greatness of her relatives or (her own) excellence, violates the duty which she owes to her lord, the king shall cause her to be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many.”

Dogs were agents of punishment even in the afterlife where, in the hells to which they are consigned, the wicked will be devoured by dogs and jackals and other beasts (SBE VII, 142). On transmigration, a sinner might become a dog (SBE VII, 145; XXV, 496; XXXVIII, 114). Some sins could even bring punishment to one’s ancestors:

“If he applies sesamum to any other purpose, but food, anointing, and charitable gifts, he will be born again as a worm and, together with his ancestors, be plunged into the ordure of dogs.” (SBE XIV, 221, XXV, 422)

A brand in the shape of a dog’s foot was put on the forehead of a person convicted of stealing gold (SBE VII, 26; XXV, 383). This type of branding was also recommended for those who violated the rules of an order of religious ascetics (SBE XXXIII, 265).

Dog Trainer, Orchha Palace, 16th Century

The autobiography of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1569-1609) describes sentencing a man to have his tongue cut out, after which he was to be confined with only the company of dog-keepers, apparently a type of person that no one would associate with if he could avoid it. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1889) describes the cruel use of dogs in an execution of a murderer in the 19^th century:

“The enormity of the deed justified that the guilty one should be condemned to a very severe sentence, and the judgment provided that he should be hung to a gallows, head downwards, between two large dogs, suspended close to him, so that in their rage they should eat out his vitals, and so make him suffer more than one death by the protraction of the torment.”

Eating Dog Meat

Some passages would suggest that the flesh of the dog is forbidden (SBE II, 75, VII, 166). If one ate dog flesh without knowing it, one was must fast for seven days (SBE XIV, 121; see also SBE VII, 166). Nevertheless, dog meat might be acceptable to avoid dying from starvation, as was true for the traveler described in the passage from the Mahabarata with which this blog opened. The Laws of Manu state: “Vamadeva, who well knew right and wrong, did not sully himself when, tormented (by hunger), he desired to eat the flesh of a dog in order to save his life” (SBE XXV, 424; see also XXV, 425, and Mahabharata, Canti Parva §96) specifically mentioning eating the haunch of a dog).

Dog Copulating with Woman (left) as Run Away in Horror or Shield Their Eyes, Khajuraho, 11th Century

A passage from a minor law book called one tribe, tasked with performing public executions, the dog-cookers (SBE XXXIII, 209, n.11; see also Dutt, Ramayana, BalaKandam §§ 60, 72: “always feeding on dogs’ flesh”). A passage in the Vedanta Sutras suggests that one who eats dog flesh is no better than a dog (SBE XLVIII, 96): “In the dog and the low man eating dog’s flesh the wise see the same.” The Kama Sutra states that dog’s meat was thought to increase virile power, and was effective against certain diseases (Danielou, pp. 194, 324). During a famine in the 1630s, it was recorded that shopkeepers began selling dog flesh (Jaffar, 1936).

Cleansing after a Dog Bite

After being bitten by a dog (or a jackal, tame pig, an ass, an ape, a crow, or a public prostitute), one was to stand in a river and “stop his breath sixteen times.” (SBE VII, 176; SBE XXV, 471) A Brahmana bitten by a dog was to go to a river that flows into the ocean, bathe, suppress his breath one hundred times, and eat clarified butter (SBE XIV, 121, 183). In the Mughal empire there were physicians who specialized in treating dog bites (Rezavi, 2012).

Dog saliva was regarded as medicinal (SBE XLII, 472, 504), a belief that may explain dogs licking the sores of Lazarus (Luke 16:21). Epilepsy was said to be due to a dog-demon (SBE XXX, 219, 286, XXXIII, 230), though the demon was not presumed to have entered through a bite.

Dog Leather

Dog skin was a poor quality leather, but nevertheless had its uses. Part of the penance of one who killed a learned man or a priest was to put on the skin of a dog or an ass with the hair turned outside, and take a human skull for a drinking vessel (SBE II, 90). As mentioned above, a poor village might have to use dog hides for various purposes. (Dog hides were used to make shoes in the American colonial period, something that George Washington complained to his shoemaker about.)

A Dog at the Entrance to Heaven

Perhaps the most widely known story from India of a dog’s loyalty to a master, and a master’s loyalty to a dog, concerns a mythological king. Yudhisthira was accompanied by his dog after all other companions had fallen, a story in the Mahabharata (Maraprasthanika Parva §3, Ray translation, vol. 9). When he comes to the entrance to heaven, Indra, the god of heaven, tells Yudhisthira that he can live with his brothers and may enter with his own body. Yudhisthira says that his dog should come with him. Indra denies this request, saying:


Yudhisthira and Dog at Entrance to Heaven

“Immortality and a condition equal to mine, O king, prosperity extending in all directions, and high success, and all the felicities of Heaven, thou has won today! Do thou cast off this dog. In this there will be no cruelty.”

Yudhisthira persists, as does Indra, saying that there is no place in heaven for persons with dogs. Yudhisthira says that abandoning one who has been faithful is infinitely sinful. He insists that he will not abandon the dog, even for his own happiness. The solution is not to admit the dog, however, but rather for the dog to be transformed into the deity of righteousness.

Such respect for dogs was not just mythological. The King of Assam was buried with an elephant, 12 camels, six horses, and “numerous sporting dogs … it being believed that all these animals will come to life again, after they are dead, in order to serve the King” (Tavernier, 1889). Nevertheless, Tavernier also records that the flesh of the dog is especially esteemed in Assam and is a favorite at feasts. Every “month, in each town in the Kingdom, the people hold markets where they only sell dogs, which are brought thither from all directions.” It is perhaps to be noted that Assam is close to Burma, where dog meat is still eaten.

Shiva’s Dogs

Shiva Holding Head for Dog, Udaipur, 17th Century

Wolf-Dieter Storl explains that in “his most terrifying form as Bhairava, Shiva is referred to as the one whose mount is a dog. It is a black dog, befitting the archetypal image of a god of shamans, hunters, and the shades.” The association of a dog with a god of destruction is not without its positive side, Storl argues, as “if one regards it in a meditative way, putting all preconceived, programmed notions aside, one is awed by the gentle, nearly loving way in which these gnawing animals cause the mortal remains to disappear.”

T.A. Gopinatha Rao (1916) says that in the depictions of Bhairava, the dog is the same color as his master. Nishipad Dev Choudhury (1999) states that Bhairava is an ugra form of Shiva, noting that he is often depicted with “big eyes, wide nostrils, a moustache, a beard and side tusks. His lips are parted in a horrible smile. His hair flies up like flames.” The black god on the black dog is a picture I took at a shrine in Varanasi with the help of Professor Rana P.B. Singh.

Shiva on Dog, Varanasi

While watching cremations on the shore of the Ganges, I saw one of the attendants driving a dog away from the pyre in which the body had been placed. I could not take a picture, being close enough to the cremation ground that a photograph would have been offensive to the mourners.

Shiva’s dog, probably not accidentally, is generally depicted as a sturdy guard dog, though a statue in the Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles has a dog next to Bharaiva that appears to be more of a greyhound. Shiva as a beggar, however, is generally depicted with greyhound-like dogs (Adiceam, 1965).

Dogs in the Mughal Period

Hunting reached the level of a high art during the Mughal period. Despite his Moslem beliefs, Akbar, the third Mughal emperor declared dogs to be clean (Malleson, 1896). In the siege of Golkonda in 1687, the assailants had gained the ramparts but a dog gave the alarm and the garrison on the wall threw down their ladders. The dog was rewarded with a golden collar (Lane-Poole, 1908).

Thomas Allsen explains that during the Mughal empire (1526-1858), “the royal hunt was a key element in the governance of the realm.” Court dinners included antelope, hare, peacock, and deer.Mughal rulers undertook long hunting trips.The Mughal emperor Jahangir (1605-1627) built a pleasure resort at his favorite hunting ground near Srinagar. Francois Bernier describes a parade of riches before the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan during his visit to Delhi in the mid-seventeenth century. Included in the parade were elephants, tame antelopes kept for the purpose of fighting each other, grey oxen, as well as—

“rhinoceroses; large Bengale buffaloes with prodigious horns which enable them to contend against lions and tigers, tame leopards, or panthers, employed in hunting antelopes; some of the fine sporting dogs from Usbec, of every kind, and each dog with a small red covering; lastly, every species of the birds of prey use in field sports for catching partridges, cranes, hares, and even, it is said, for hunting antelopes, on which they pounce with violence beating their heads and blinding them with their wings and claws.”

The Emperor Jahangir states in his autobiography that the times for running dogs are in the morning and at the end of the day, and describes Arabian dogs (perhaps salukis, as Brian Duggan has suggested to me) as having become exhausted because they were run when the air was too hot for them. The dogs may have actually come from Arabia or at least Afghanistan as the emperor describes having received a gift of dogs from the governor of Qandahar.

Rabies Passed from a Dog to Two Elephants

Arabian Dog (Saluki?) in Procession, Udaipur

Emperor Jahangir describes how he came to understand that a dog could pass rabies to elephants:

“I knew that every animal or living thing bitten by a mad dog died, but this had not been ascertained in the case of an elephant. In my time it so happened that one night a mad dog came into the place where was tied one of my private elephants, Gajpati by name, and bit the foot of a female elephant that was with mine. She at once cried out. The elephant-keepers at once ran in, and the dog fled away into a thorn-brake that is there. After a little while it came in again and bit my private elephant's fore-foot as well. The elephant killed it. When a month and five days had passed after this event, one day when it was cloudy the growling of thunder came to the ear of the female elephant, that was in the act of eating, and it of a sudden raised a cry and its limbs began to tremble. It threw itself on the ground, but rose again. For seven days water ran out of its mouth, then suddenly it uttered a cry and showed distress. The remedies the drivers gave it had no effect, and on the eighth day it fell and died. A month after the death of the female elephant they took the large elephant to the edge of the river in the plain. It was cloudy and thundery in the same way. The said elephant in the height of excitement all at once began to tremble and sat down on the ground. With a thousand difficulties the drivers took it to its own place. After the same interval and in the same way that had happened to the female elephant this elephant also died.”

J. Ovington, a chaplain, visiting Surat in 1689, reported that there was a veterinary hospital near the city in which cows, horses, goats, and dogs were treated.

Pets and Professional Dogs in the Modern Era

Explosives Detection Dog, Varanasi Airport

Although I heard of cases of pi-dogs becoming house pets, the only pet dogs I actually saw were purebreds, mostly Labradors, a German Shepherd, a Doberman, an Akita, a Beagle, a Yorkie, and a St. Bernard. We encountered explosives detection dogs with military handlers at the Varanasi and Udaipur airports, both overweight Labradors.

An article in the India Times in February 2014 describes India’s first “petathalon,” in which “200 pet dogs of various breeds will run along with their human companions.” The article says that the breeds participating included Labradors, German shepherds, beagles, rottweilers, pugs, Tibetan Mastiffs, bull mastiffs, and others. A picture accompanying the article shows a boy with a German shepherd. There was also to be talks by veterinarians, groomers, and others. The event was a fundraiser for animal welfare programs. Nowhere does the article mention pi-dogs.

Conclusion

From Vedic times there have been two classes of dogs in India, the pi-dogs and those that were bred to the chase or to guard the palace. They have always been separated and still are.India is too big a country for me to claim to understand after a short visit, and I am in no position to judge.Nevertheless, I feel that the rapid industrialization and modernization that is taking hold in much of the country is going to force change for the pi-dogs.Roads are getting more dangerous, less forgiving. If more than two-thirds of pi-dogs die in the first months of life now, the carnage seems likely to increase. These are generally gentle and I think attractive dogs.They are grateful for food and attention.Yet many that I saw were diseased—almost all over two or three years old, with obvious lesions on the skin and significant balding where fleas and flies constantly worried them. They should not be allowed to continue to breed indiscriminately, and to navigate a generally indifferent and often unfriendly world. Sexual reproduction should be limited, as has been implemented in some areas.

I would close with mention of someone I did not meet, but wish I had.Sandip Karan of Kolkata, described in an article by Kaushik Sengupta as a “street dog doctor,” takes care of thousands of street dogs every year, and gives many a home. May there be more of his saintly kind! (Click on this link for a remarkable series of photographs.)

Notes of Appreciation

First I must thank my wife, Joan, who took most of the pictures reproduced here. Thanks to Professor Rana P.B. Singh for showing us many of the interesting shrines of Varanasi, including Shiva riding the dog. Many of our drivers and tour guides displayed considerable skill in finding art that included dogs. These include: Shailendra Singh Rathorewhose knowledge of Jaipur made him the best guide we could imagine, and who found palace depictions of hunts that I have not seen published before. Attar Singh, a skillful and patient driver navigated the difficult streets of Delhi and made good time on the long roads between stops; if we return to India, my first priority will be to assure that he drives us once again. Devesh Kumar Agarwal got us down to the Ganges twice, and helped us navigate that wonderful and frightening city. H.K. Lavania in Agra not only showed us the great wonder of the world, the Taj Mahal, but spoke French to my wife throughout the visit. In Udaipur, our guide, Arun Bhate showed us the Shiva with the blood dripping into the dog’s mouth on the wall of the temple.

Joan with Shop Owner's St. Bernard, Udaipur

I must also thank Dr. Savita Yadav of Khemvillas in Ranthambhore, who made vegetarian Indian food a healthy and delightful cuisine. The atmosphere of this hotel was such that we ended up making friends at meals, rather than always going to a separate table as seemed to be true in many other hotels.

I also want to thank Kavita N. Ramdas, Representative of the Ford Foundation, who gave us a tour of the Foundation, which my uncle, Douglas Ensminger, worked at for several decades after WWII and who is still remembered in Foundation halls as the Maharajah Ensminger. (I first learned of this sobriquet from A. Gridley Hall, a friend who once worked for the Ford Foundation in South America, but who died young, and long ago. Grid, as I blogged about a year ago, was no stranger to pariahs.)

Finally, I wish to express my deep appreciation for Dr. J.D. Agarwal and Dr. Aman Agarwal, who asked me to speak on money laundering at the Indian Institute of Finance, but had the good humor to allow me also to give a seminar on the social and economic history of dogs. Although I have no influence in such matters, I be so bold as to suggest that the Nobel economics committee should take note of the important work this institution, and particularly Dr. J.D. Agarwal, have done for developing sophisticated financial markets research and education in India.

Sources:

Adiceam, Marguerite E. (1965). Les Images de Siva dans l’Inde du Sud, III et IV (Bhikaanamurti et Kakalamurti). Arts Asiatiques, 12, 83-112 (showing south Indian depictions of Bhikshatana, the mendicant or beggar aspect of Shiva, which often include a small hunting dog with the appearance of a sighthound).

Agarwal, Yamini (2013). Capital Structure Decisions under Multiple Objectives: A Study of Indian Corporates. Delhi: IIF Publications (an analysis of how capital structure decisions are becoming very sophisticated for Indian corporations).

Allsen, Thomas T. (2006). The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

The Amrita Bazar Patrika 31(53), p. 3, Calcutta, July 13, 1899. “The Sedition Trials.”

Bernier, Francois (1916). Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656-1668. London: Oxford University Press.

Campbell, A. (1891). Santal Folk Tales. Pokhuria: Santal Mission Press (stories of hunting dogs, wild dogs, and others).

Chilli, Shaikh (1913). Folk-Tales of Hindustan. Bahadurganj, Allahabad: Abinah Chandra Sarkar, Brahmo Mission Press (with stories of people been changed into dogs).

Choudhury, Nishipad Dev (1999). Lord Siva and Siva Icons in Assam. In Studies in Hindu and Buddhist Art (Mishra, P.K., ed). New Delhi: Abhinav Publications.

Danielou, Alain (1994). The Complete Kama Sutra. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.

Dog Begging at Sarnath

Day, Lal Behari (1912). Folk-Tales of Bengal. London: Macmillan & Co. (stories of dogs transforming into other animals).

de Courcy, Anne (2014). The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj. New York: Harper.

Derr, Mark (2012). What is the Indian Pariah? Psychology Today, August 9, 2012 (Taking issue with Gardiner Harris’s article in the New York Times and stating that “the view of Indian dogs as little more than dump-diving, teeth-gnashing threats to public health and safety is deeply flawed.” I agree with him on this.).

Dutt, Manmatha Nath (1891). The Ramayana. Calcutta: Girish Chandra Chackravarti. The depiction of Yudhishthira at the entrance of heaven is from a Hindi version of the Mahabharata published by Gorakhpur Geeta Press.

Financial Action Task Force (2010). Mutual Evaluation Report on India: Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (describing India as often the victim of terrorism from various internal and external terrorist cells).

Gubernatis, Angelo de (1872). Zoological Mythology, or The Legends of Animals. London: Trubner & Co. (finding parallels between Hindu and western mythology and folk stories).

Harris, Gardiner (2012). New Delhi Journal: Where Streets Are Thronged with Stays Baring Fangs. New York Times, August 6, 2012 (describing vicious attacks by stray dogs of children, students, old men).

Herman, Steven L. (2008). The Relationship between People and Dogs in Contemporary India. Harvard Extension School.

Hopkins, E.W. (1894). The Dog in the Rig-Veda. The American Journal of Philology, 15(2), 154-163.

International Monetary Fund (February 2014). India: 2014 Article IV Consultation (describing economic challenges for India in the years to come).

Jaffar, S.M. (1936). The Mughal Empire from Babar to Aurangzer. Kissa Khani, Peshawar: S. Muhammad Sadiq Khan.

Kharakwal, J.S., Rawat, Y.S., and Osada, T. (2011). Annual Report of Excavation at Hanmer 2007-08 and 2008-09. In Occasional Paper 10: Linguistics, Archaeology and the Human Past Osada, T., and Uesugi, A., eds.). Kyoto: Indus Project. 71-104.

Knowles, J. Hinton (1888). Folk-Tales of Kashmir. London: Trubner & Col. (describing a dog that tracked thieves who had stolen from his master’s shop, taking his master to the place where they had hidden the goods; also, stories: “The Clever Jackal” and “The Jackal-King”).

Lane-Poole, Stanley (1908). Aurangzib and the Decay of the Mughal Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Malleson, G.B. (1896). Rulers of India: Akbar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Majumder, S.S., Bhadra, A., Ghosh, A., et al. (2014). To Be or Not to Be Social: Foraging Associations of Free-Ranging Dogs in an Urban Ecosystem. Acta Ethologica, 17(1), 1-8.

Majumder, S.S., Chatterjee, A., and Bhadra, A. (2014). A Dog’s Day with Humans—Time Activity Budget of Free-Ranging Dogs in India. Current Science, 106.

Monier-Williams (1885). Religious Thought and Life in India. London: John Murray (describes worship of dogs, feeding dogs as a sacred duty, and how one of the 139 Mothers of Gujarat controls mad dog and prevents hydrophobia).

Tourist Trying to Give Commands to Pi-Dog at Bus Station

Muller, F. Max (1890). The Sacred Books of the East (50 vols). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Muller was the overall editor as well as a translator in some volumes. Twenty volumes were from Hindu religious sources, and two from Jain sources,making this one of the massive collections of scholarship of the early 20^th century. NOTE: Rather than having cumbersome citations for each reference in this blog, I have chosen to use the volume and page number where the reference was taken from (e.g., SBE II, 56). The volumes may be downloaded without cost from archive.org and Google Books.

Norton Simon Museum, Catalogue No. F.1975.17.27.S, 15^th century bronze statue of Bhairava from Tamil Nadu, south India.

Ovington, John (1696). A Voyage to Suratt in the Year 1689. London: Jacob Tonson.

Pal, S.K. (2001). Population Ecology of Free-Ranging Urban Dogs in West Bengal, India. Acta Theriologica, 46(1), 69-78.

Pal, S.K. (2003). Urine Marking by Free-Ranging Dogs (Canis familiarizes) in Relation to Sex, Season, Place and Posture. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 80, 45-49.

Pal, S.K. (2008). Maturation and Development of Social Behavior During Early Ontogeny in Free-Ranging Dog Puppies in West Bengal, India. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 111(1), 95-107.

Pal, S.K. (2010). Play Behaviour During Early Ontogeny in Free-Ranging Dogs (Canis familiaris). Applied Animal Bheaviour Science, 126(3-4), 140-153.

Pal, S.K. (2011). Mating System of Free-Ranging Dogs (Canis familiaris). International Journal of Zoology, 2011.

Pal, S.K., Ghosh, B., and Roy, S. (1998). Dispersal Behaviour of Free-Ranging Dogs (Canis familiaris) in Relation to Age, Sex, Season and Dispersal Distance. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 61(2), 123-132.

Pal, S.K., Ghosh, B., and Roy, S. (1999). Inter- and Intra-Sexual Behaviour of Free-Ranging Dogs (Canis familiaris). Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 62, 267-278.

Palsetia, Jesse S. (2001). Mad Dogs and Parsis: The Bombay Dog Riots of 1832. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 11(1), 13-30.

Rafy, Mrs. (1920). Folk-Tales of the Khasis. London: MacMillan & Co. (tales, including “How the Dog Came to Live with Man”).

Ragozin, Zenaide A. (1002). Vedic India. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Rezavi, Syed Ali Nadeem (2012). Medical Tehniques and Practices in Mughal India. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy (describing a doctor at Kalanaur to whom dog-bite patients were sometimes carried).

Rogers, Alexander, and Beveridge, Henry (1909). The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, or Memoirs of Jahangir. London: Royal Asiatic Society.

Sengupta, Kaushik (2014). Street Dog Doctor. Galli.In website (January 1, 2014) (describing Sandip Karan, who cares for hundreds of dogs in Kolkata).

Sobti, Manu P. (1993). Timurid Central Asia and Mughal India: Some Correlations regarding Urban Design Concepts and the Typology of the Muslim House. Master’s Thesis: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Storl, Wolf-Dieter (2004). Shiva: The Wild God of Power and Ecstasy. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions.

Sudarshan, M.K. (2007). Rabies Prevention: A Medical Guidbook. Pune: Serum Institute of India Ltd. This book has been posted online as a public service.

Sudarshan, M.K., Madhusudana, S.N., Mahendra, B.J. et al. (2007). Assessing the Burden of Human Rabies in India: Results of a National Multi-Center Epidemiological Survey. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 11, 29-35.

Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste (1889). Travels in India (2 vols). London: Macmillan & Co.

Tawney, C.H. (1884). The Katha Sarit Sagara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story, 2 vols. Calcutta: J.W. Thomas (11^th century collection of stories and fairy tales, many involving dogs).

Yule, Henry, and Burnell, A.C. (1903). Hobson-Johnson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases. London: John Murray (defining pariah-dog as the "common ownerless yellow dog, that frequents all inhabited places in the East, is universally so called by Europeans, no doubt from being a low-bred caste-less animal." The entry quotes a 1789 source as stating that the Indian common cur is called a "pariar-dog.").

All rights reserved as to photographs and original text.

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Detecting Fecal Contaminants on Produce, a New Industry for Sniffer Dogs

April 3, 2014, 5:30 am

≫ Next: Central Police Canine Training Unit in Poland Used for Large-Scale Study of Drug Dogs

≪ Previous: The Dogs of India: Travel Notes

My wife and I recently flew from Paris to Atlanta. While we were waiting to pick up our luggage to go through customs, a handler with a beagle began to walk beside the carousel, sniffing bags that had been removed from it by passengers. I assumed at first the beagle was a drug dog, then noticed the screen suspended above the carousel, which actually showed a short film about the beagle. There was no sound, but the film was subtitled, like a silent movie. “What is the beagle doing?” the screen asked. Then there were pictures of various food items—a head of lettuce, a bunch of radishes, a package of meat. Then X’s crossed out each item to let anyone watching know that these items were forbidden. The dog was shown sniffing a suitcase and sitting down in front of it and looking at the handler. The suitcase was then opened by the overly willing passenger (probably an ICE officer in civilian clothes), revealing a bunch of radishes. (Think twice before you try to smuggle radishes from France.)

Another agricultural use of dogs was recently described in the Journal of Food Protection, and quite likely foreshadows a new industry for dog trainers and handlers.

Fecal Contamination of Produce

Microbes, such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Listeria, can get onto fresh produce through feces of rodents, birds, and other animals. The feces can be put directly on the produce by the animals or can be brought into a field or factory through irrigation or processing water. A group of researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis and from various facilities of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have published a paper analyzing how effective dogs might be in detecting fecal contamination of produce.

The team had three dogs trained for the experiments, all mixed-breed females. Dog 1 and Dog 2 were given what was called “indirect detection training,” under which the target scent was a sterile gauze pad saturated with a mixture of feces and water. The feces were collected from vertebrate species commonly found in or near agricultural fields, specifically dog, cow, horse, black-tailed deer, feral pig, coyote, Canada goose, sheep, and human.Dog 1 and Dog 3 were given “direct detection training,” under which dogs were trained to recognize fecal contamination of romaine lettuce, spinach, cilantro, and whole Roma tomatoes placed in specimen storage containers. Thus, Dog 1 received both types of training, but Dogs 2 and 3 only received one or the other.

Indirect Detection Trial Procedures

In the indirect detection trials, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, or tomatoes were put into 30 bags, and 8 of those bags were filed with either 0.025, 0.25, 2.5, or 25 grams of feces (two bags at each amount). Gauze pads were suspended were suspended by strings were suspended inside the bags but not in contact with the produce for 24 hours. The gauze pads, which were 4-ply cotton pads, were removed after a day and separated to create separate samples. The samples included gauze pads from bags in which there was no fecal contamination. Samples were placed in special holders in three rows of 10, with contaminated samples distributed randomly.Trials were double blind as the dogs, the handler, and the data recorder did not know which samples had pads with fecal contamination. The handler made sure the dog examined each holder. For each alert, the dog was rewarded with some time with a chew toy. Care was taken to remove secretions—at least obvious secretions—by dogs sniffing close to holders.

Direct Detection Trial Procedures

For direct detection trials, 8 of 30 bags of produce had feces added, but in amounts of 0.0025, 0.025, 0.25, or 2.5 grams. After the first trial, the largest amount was dropped and an even smaller amount, 0.00025 grams was added. Instead of three rows of ten, as in the indirect detection trials, there was one row of 12 containers, which were different than those used in the indirect detection trials and had holes drilled in the top shortly before a trial began. To avoid rewarding the dogs for an incorrect response (which had been possible in the indirect detection trials), the dog was praised verbally for an alert during the direct detection trials.

Indirect Detection Results

In the indirect detection trials, Dogs 1 and 2, the ones used in these trials, missed detecting fecal contamination in most samples where the gauze had been exposed to fecal contamination. Dog 1 was nearly twice as effective as Dog 2 in alerting to pads from samples that had fecal contamination, but also alerted more often to pads that had not been in bags with fecal contamination. Both dogs were more likely to detect fecal contamination on Roma tomatoes than on cilantro or spinach. When the produce in a bag was contaminated with 2.5 grams of feces, the highest possible amount, both were considerably more accurate. However, the results indicated that this procedure, as conducted in the experiment, was not effective.

Direct Detection Results

When dogs were able to sniff the produce itself, as opposed to a gauze pad that had been kept near the produce for 24 hours, they were much more accurate. This is not surprising as there was presumably a higher odor concentration using this approach. Here, each dog sniffed 720 containers, 156 of which contained some amount of feces. The researchers found that “Dogs 1 and 3 had 11.1 and 23.6 higher odds of alerting, respectively, when encountering treatment samples compared with control samples.” Dog 1 was significantly more likely to incorrectly alert in the presence of a control sample than was Dog 3.

The amount of fecal contamination proved to be crucial. When the amount of contamination was greater than 0.025 grams, the probability of detection achieved 75%, and reached almost 100% at 2.5 grams:

“In other words, for samples with ≥0.025 g fecal contamination, the probability of collecting samples of produce with fecal contamination is 5- to 30-fold higher (500 to 3,000%) when using a dog than when randomly selecting produce samples across a field, as is sometimes done during investigations.”

Implications for Agricultural Inspections

The advantage of the indirect detection approach was that vegetables were not exposed to the dog, which prevented cross-contamination between the dog and the sample. The researchers note that unfortunately this approach “did not result in acceptable levels of sensitivity for any but the highest levels of fecal contamination.” The direct approach was more successful, in that the dogs exhibited 76% and 86% sensitivity, respectively, in detecting more than 0.25 grams of fecal contamination. (For an explanation of the terms “sensitivity” and “specificity,” see a prior blog on the use of dogs to detect lung cancer.)

California Ground Squirrel

Ground squirrels, common in produce fields, defecate between 2% and 8% of their body weight per day. The researchers state that, based on their results, “scent detection dogs might be able to detect as little as 1% of a ground squirrel’s daily fecal load if deposited on, for example, spinach or cilantro or after foliar irrigation when feces or scat are deposited in furrows and along beds of leafy greens.”

The broader implication of this is stated as follows: “A protocol that uses a fecal scent detection dog to first screen all produce samples and then test only those to which the dog alerted can increase the probability of detecting contaminated produce by up to 3,000%, depending on the background prevalence of fecal contamination in the field.”

The researchers conclude that “the use of scent detection dogs will allow us to prioritize produce samples for analytical testing and thereby optimize the detection of both feces and the associated microbial pathogens that so often accompany fecal contamination.”

Conclusion

The results achieved with the dogs might be improved by different training regimens, or the use of different breeds, possibilities that the researchers concede may be true. Using dogs over longer periods than was the case with these experiments might also improve accuracy.

The dogs were not as accurate as some prior research found in other contexts, but context is important. Researchers looking to use dogs in cancer detection have insisted on consistently high success rates before this application can move into clinical environments, but the same levels of success should not be required for using dogs in detecting fecal contamination of produce. If it can be verified that a protocol involving canine screening of samples, in order to prioritize which truckloads or other units of vegetables should receive further testing, would increase the probability of detecting contaminated produce by up to 30 times over the present approach, this makes a strong case for implementation despite the fact that some contaminated lots would still be missed.

It is to be hoped, therefore, that if these results are verified, detection dogs may soon be put into service in real-world commercial agricultural operations. Another example of such a use of dogs might be in detecting oil in fish hauls after a spill. A new canine industry may be in the offing.

Partyka, Melissa L., Bond, Ronald F., Farrar, Jeff, Falco, Andy, Cassens, Barbara, Cruse, Alonza, and Atwill, Edward R. (2014). Quantifying the Sensitivity of Scent Detection Dogs to Identify Fecal Contamination on Raw Produce. Journal of Food Protection, 77(1), 6014.

This blog was written by John Ensminger and L.E. Papet.

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Central Police Canine Training Unit in Poland Used for Large-Scale Study of Drug Dogs

April 16, 2014, 3:07 am

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≪ Previous: Detecting Fecal Contaminants on Produce, a New Industry for Sniffer Dogs

Shepherd Working in Unfamiliar Location (courtesy T. Jezierski)

Scientific research is frequently constrained by a laboratory’s funding level and available personnel, as well as such factors as the time limit within which a graduate student must gather data for a thesis. This often means that the number of animals that can be evaluated is severely restricted to only a few, as can be noted in many studies involving the ability of dogs to detect chemicals, diseases, contaminants, wildlife, etc.

Instead of bringing a few dogs into the laboratory, Dr. Tadeusz Jezierski and colleagues at the Polish Academy of Sciences were given access to the central canine training unit of the Polish police and gathered an immense amount of data from tightly controlled trials of dogs that had already been deemed fit for field work. Statistics were gathered concerning 68 dogs and over 1,200 experimental searching tests (517 with Labrador retrievers, 440 with German shepherds, 203 with terriers, and 59 with English Cocker spaniels).

Vehicle Sniff (courtesy T. Jezierski)

This allowed an analysis of the relative effectiveness of specific breeds used by the Polish police (most effective to least: German shepherds, English Cocker spaniels, Labrador retrievers, terriers), and established which drugs are most accurately indicated by the dogs (in order from most easily detected to most difficult: marijuana, hashish, amphetamine, cocaine, heroin). The trials were run at training centers where the rooms were familiar to the dogs and in stables and storerooms that were not familiar to them.

Many new aspects of working canines came to light while others have been known for years. As an example, contrary to the belief of many police dog handlers, the dogs performed equally efficiently in both known and unknown locations. It was also possible to determine how long residual drug odors were detectible by dogs working at different types of sites. As contributors to the study, we are constrained by the Journal’s author agreement in how much we can say here, but the article is now posted on the website of Forensic Science International.

Jezierski, T., Adamkiewicz, E., Walczak, M., Sobczynska, M., Gorecka-Bruzda, A., Ensminger, J., and Papet, E. Efficacy of Drug Detection by Fully-Trained Police Dogs Varies by Breed, Training Level, Type of Drug, and Search Environment. Forensic Science International, 237, 112-118.

This blog was written by L.E. Papet and John Ensminger.

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