detector dogs

A few of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) affiliated canines are showing off their “sniffs” and talents to the world in the Disney+ weekly series, “It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer”. The 10-episode series that began airing on Friday, May 15 will feature APHIS operated Hawaiian Geese canine teams, APHIS trained brown tree snake canine teams and APHIS trained Beagle Brigade teams. The canine teams will be featured in the season’s final two episodes.

Odin is a Labrador retriever/border collie mix. By watching his wagging tail and alert expression, Colorado State University researcher Dr. Glen Golden can sense he is eager to begin his training.

Odin is one of five dogs recently adopted from shelters and animal rescue centers to become detector dogs for wildlife disease surveillance. The dogs are housed and trained at the USDA-APHIS National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) in Fort Collins, Colorado. They are part of a collaborative 12-month program to evaluate the effectiveness of training and using dogs to detect and identify waterfowl feces or carcasses infected with avian influenza (AI). If successful, this collaboration may be extended an additional 12 months.

The National Feral Swine Damage Management Program, within the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services (WS) program, has unleashed detector dogs as a new tool to help stop the spread of feral swine, one of the United States’ most destructive and ravenous invasive creatures.

Mya, Hektor and Cain are seated on the floor, next to their handlers and partners, waiting for their names to be called. It’s a big day for the three shelter dogs and their handlers.  You may be surprised to learn that many of the dogs trained at APHIS’ National Detector Dog Training Center are rescues.  Mya and Cain are from Maryland’s Montgomery County Animal Services & Adoption Center and Hektor is from the Fulton County Animal Shelter in Atlanta.  They are all officially graduating from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) detector dog training program, and will join two other rescue dogs trained last year and currently part of other detector dog teams as part of the effort to find and eliminate the last of the nutria from the Delmarva Peninsula.

Nutria are invasive, semi-aquatic rodents that live in marshes throughout the country. They weigh between 12 and 20 pounds and were brought to Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore from South America for their fur in 1943. However, their dark brown pelts were not profitable, and they were either released or escaped from fur farms. With no natural predators, the nutria population at Maryland’s Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge exploded.

My name is Thunder.  Not too many months ago, I was homeless and waiting for someone to take me home from the Houston Beagle Rescue in Houston, Texas.  Then, a nice lady from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s National Detector Dog Training Center (NDDTC) in Newnan, Georgia came to visit.  From that day on, my life changed.