Boundaries
by Jack Nisbet

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage, Visible Bones and The Collector.

Scat Dogs
November 2009

Last fall (in August and September 2008), Boundaries explored the ancient relationship between dogs and people in the New World. Certain stories seem to emphasize odd turns in that relationship, and it's hard not to think about the movement from wild wolves to cuddly pets when the naturalist David Douglas passed through our region in 1826. Instead of looking on dogs as a convenient meal, like many of the fur trade agents of the time, Douglas left behind journal entries that describe always sleeping with both a faithful dog and a musket beside his bedroll. But the dog-human relationship continues to evolve, and at least one modern researcher has rediscovered the finely-tuned sensory skills of certain canines on a level that probably reflects back to the reason tribal people of old adapted them in the first place.

Sam Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, is an endocrinologist who teases far-reaching information about animal populations by reading basic hormone levels of certain individuals. One of the best sources of such data lies in the excrement of any given beast. As Wasser puts it, in this age of threatened and endangered wildlife, the endocrinology of scat can provide a "fairly comprehensive picture of the distribution, health, and well-being of many species without ever having to see the animals." And as anyone who has ever lived with a mischievous mutt knows all too well, there are no better poop-finders anywhere than man's best friend.

In 1997, Wasser, intrigued by a presentation he heard on hunting with hounds, approached a drug-sniffing dog trainer from the Washington State Department of Corrections. Over the next couple of years the pair screened dozens of humane society pound dogs and developed a method of training certain talented individuals to search for grizzly bear scat. They learned to pick the skinniest, most energetic animals in the shelter, especially ones that would focus obsessively on chasing a tennis ball as a reward for carrying out simple tasks. Less than 1% of the dogs could meet all their requirements, but in 1999, Wasser's first scat-scenting team set to work examining bear populations in the vast Yellowhead Ecosystem of western Alberta.

Long-time Pend Oreille county resident and biological field assistant John Stuart served as a member of Wasser's pilot study in the Yellowhead during the 2001 and Œ02 seasons.

"There were three members of each dog team," Stuart recalls. "The most important member was the dog."

The scat dogs had learned to recognize the poop of grizzly bears while ignoring droppings from all the other animals in the forest. Bounding cross-country through aspen parkland or thick stands of lodgepole pine and spruce, they could detect their target from up to a third of a mile away. Once on a scent they would speed up excitedly, heading directly for the origin of the smell.

The handler's job was to keep sight of the dog during the search, particularly in the melee that followed a discovery. If the dog lost a scent and settled back down, it was the handler's job to figure out why and get his charge back on the proper trail. In a world braided by numerous fast rivers flowing off the east front of the Rocky Mountains, along a forest floor covered with sphagnum moss, this was not always easy.

Stuart served as the third member of one team: an orienteer who kept both dog and handler in range, and recorded any bear scat locations on a GPS unit. He also bagged all the poop samples discovered during the day (up to 25 after a productive run) and lugged them back to the base camp.

Established techniques for monitoring animal populations, then as now, included human biologists searching on foot, tracking radio collars attached to captured animals that had been put to sleep and released back into the wild, and checking scent posts, hair-catch traps, and laser-tripped cameras set along established paths. Compared to these methods, experts soon had to admit that the scat dogs had far less location bias, created much less disturbance among wild populations, sampled a broader spectrum of individuals, and accrued none of the expenses or breakdowns of fancy technology.

The hormones Wasser wanted to measure begin to decompose quickly in warm temperatures, so the scat had to be carried to the nearest freezer, then shipped as fast as possible to the lab in Seattle for analysis. Efficient transportation from such a remote area proved to be a drawback in the study, but no one faulted the dogs for that ­ their work was fast, efficient, and invariably correct.

Finding grizzly bear scat turns out to be child's play for the incredibly refined instrument of a dog's sensing organs, and today the Center for Conservation Biology is conducting studies all over the western hemisphere. In the muskek of Canada's far north, scat dogs are monitoring the long-term effects of tar sand oil exploration on caribou, moose, and wolves. While Wasser's laboratory team ponders the fluctuations of cortisol and thyroid hormones present in the scat, the dogs work year-around to provide a complete picture of the animals' nutritional and emotional standards.

In the tropical savannah of Brazil's Cerrado region, pups selectively point to the scats of difficult-to-follow threatened species including puma, jaguar, giant anteater, and giant armadillo. In the Northwest's old growth forests, scat dogs have been trained to find spotted owl pellets, and to differentiate spotted droppings from those of the closely related barred owl.

John Stuart continues to follow their progress from his home near Newport, and is always delighted to read the names of certain veteran dogs he worked with in the Yellowhead. Gator, a blue healer with a ninja turtle's macho smile, appeared in an article in Natural History magazine last October. And a large Rottweiler who was helpless in the woods -- "he'd run for a little while, then have to lay down and pant," Stuart says -- has made a name for himself as a champion whale poop sniffer, leaning out over the bow of a power boat to detect the aromatic orange scat of northern right whales in the Bay of Fundy off Nova Scotia.

At least the right whale scat floats. The greasy green droppings of Puget Sound orcas sink soon after being deposited. Understanding the dramatic fluctuations of orca populations in the region demands the kind of precise data that modern endocrinology can provide, and fresh scat is essential for accurate readings. It takes a particularly attuned dog to find them, but some members of the Center for Conservation Biology's scat dog team are up to the task. And all they want after performing such high-level scientific research is a session with their favorite tennis ball or rubber Kong toy. Their job combines cutting-edge laboratory techniques with the kind of fun that every pet can experience in its own back yard.

Illustration by Emily Nisbet.

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