From the dog’s mouth — How do you become a police dog?:

NZ Police gets all manner of questions on its recruitment facebook page. One potential recruit even asked “how do you become a police dog?” We decided to speak to a police dog and find out.

It’s not always easy to locate our precious native animals like geckos so we can conserve and protect them. So that’s where the services of a lizard dog come in handy:

Gecko watch.

Border collie-cross Manu joined her owner, lizard expert Marieke Lettink, at the Denniston BioBlitz on March 2-4 to track down skinks and geckos. Manu reveals how she copes as a canine superstar. …

Q: why are geckos so hard to find/so few and far between?

A: There are heaps more geckos out there than the humans know about! They are hard to find because geckos have excellent camouflage and like to hide themselves away in tight spaces to avoid being eaten by predators. This fools the humans, but not my nose with its 220 million smell cells (a dog sense of smell is a thousand times better than a human’s). But even my nose doesn’t help in some places — I can’t find geckos in places where there are lots of predators that eat them (cats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, possums, rats, mice, and some birds like magpies and kingfishers).

[Via Forest & Bird » Blog Archive » My life as a lizard dog.]

In airports around the world dogs are helping to keep their countries safe from biohazards such as insects being carried in food. Izzy is a Beagle who works in New York sniffing out food in baggage:

Her nose never fails to spot a trace of food, sometimes even picking up the scent of a snack that was removed from a bag hours before. During one lap around a carousel, as they wove in and out of startled passengers, Izzy paused before a pile of bags, tail wagging.

Caffery looked around and called out: “Whose bags are these?”
The young man who claimed them acknowledged, upon further questioning, that there were indeed an apple and a banana inside. Caffery marked down the items on a blue Customs declaration form.

Izzy stayed put, waiting for a piece of food to emerge from Caffery’s pocket: Her reward for a successful find.

[Via Airport dog finds illegal food stowed in luggage - USATODAY.com.]

It’s hard to beat the sensitive nose of a dog.

What do you do when your guide dog loses its sight? You get your faithful companion and helper a guide dog, that’s what:

Edward and Opal.

A Suffolk man was devastated when his faithful guide dog lost his sight — so he got a new dog to act as eyes for both of them.

Edward had given Graham Waspe, 60, six years of loyal service until he had to have both eyes removed after developing inoperable cataracts.

Mr Waspe, from Stowmarket, couldn’t bear to be parted from his canine companion — so he got a new guide dog to look after them both.

[Via Guide dog gets a guide dog | Orange UK.]

[Photo from original article.]

The US Military is hard at work looking for ways to detect roadside bombs. They’ve thrown billions of dollars at the problem and come up with aircraft, robots, hi-tech sensors. But ultimately they rely on dogs:

Pip the Arms and Explosives Search (AES) dog.

But in the war against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, no weapon is as effective as well-trained soldiers and their bomb-sniffing dogs, said Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.

“Dogs are the best detectors,” Oates said at an Oct. 20 news conference at JIEDDO headquarters in Arlington, Va.When dogs are teamed with small dismounted teams of U.S. and Afghan troops, they are capable of detecting 80 percent of IEDs, he said. “That combo presents the best detection system we currently have.”

[Via Technology Falls Short in the War Against IEDs - Blog.]

Try as we might, we still can’t match Nature.

Photo by Defence Images — http://flic.kr/p/8xvN79

I recently listened to a very interesting radio interview about New Zealand Kiwi birds, dogs and the work of the Save the Kiwi Trust:

Tahi, the one-legged Kiwi at Wellington Zoo.

Feature Guest – Hugh Robertson
Our national bird is under threat from predators, cars, dogs, environmental destruction, from poachers, you name it. (duration: 24′45″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis, MP3

Hugh Robertson, coordinator of the Kiwi Recovery Programme. What does the future hold for our national bird? Hugh is joined by his dog Kara, who’s in training to sniff out kiwi.

[Via Radio New Zealand National : Programmes A-Z : Nine to Noon : 2010 09 23.]

One stunning moment in the interview was when Hugh told the story of how one farm dog massacred 500 Kiwi in the space of 6 weeks a while back.

On the other hand, properly trained dogs can help sniff out Kiwi so researchers can protect and study them.

Listen to the interview (links above) to find out more.

What a great idea! In Japan there are public displays of what guide dogs, hearing dogs and assistance dogs can do. For a country with 127 million people, it doesn’t have many such dogs. Building public awareness should help everyone.

Guide Dog in Harness.

Apart from Japan’s 51 service dogs, it has 19 hearing dogs who can help deaf or hearing impaired people by alerting their handler to important sounds such as doorbells, smoke alarms, ringing telephones or alarm clocks. They may also work outside the home, alerting to sounds such as sirens, cars and a person calling the handler’s name.

Japan also has 1,045 guide dogs …

“In Japan, there are special associations for the three types of dogs and they will hold 200 to 300 promotional activities a year in public places, … to help people better understand the animals and their works.

“They also provide brochures about assistance dogs or channel information through the Internet,” he added.

[Via Dogs with a care factor.]

For more information about service dogs in Japan see:

• Japan Guide Dog Association
• Japan
  Hearing Dogs For Deaf People

Guide dogs bring new freedoms to visually impaired people in many Western countries, but it’s not so easy in China:

Despite the convenience guide dogs bring to the blind, there is no regulations in China at present that guarantee a legal identity to the dogs.

Guide Dog in Harness.

Currently, ownership of big dogs like Golden Retriever and Labrador Retriever in Beijing is restricted, and big dogs are barred from public places. Since guide dogs are a new phenomenon in the country, they are not an exception under the law.

Ping said that her dog Lucky, a 1.4-meter-long Golden Retriever, was barred from public places quite a few times. …

The current laws and regulations concerning guide dogs in China are ambiguous. According to Article 58 of the Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons, blind owners shall observe the relevant provisions of the country when entering a public place. But it does not name the exact provisions to follow. In practice, the guide dogs do not have a legal identity card and the blind owners need to ask for permission every time they appear in public.

[Via Global Times - Blind faith.]

Guide dogs are new in China — in 2010 there are about 15 graduated pairs of blind people and guide dogs in the whole of China. It could be a long while before people become accustomed to the dogs.

In this blog we like to celebrate working dogs — those who sniff out drugs, explosives or bodies, guard, guide or help people, draw loads, and retrieve objects. But some of those working dogs are taken into war.

Landmine Clearing Efforts of the UN Mine Action Centre

It’s amazing any of them cope with the experience, but some develop stress disorders, like Gunner:

Out of the 58 bomb-sniffing dogs the [US] Marines have in Afghanistan, only one — a brown-eyed, floppy-eared yellow Lab named Gunner — is suffering from such severe canine post-traumatic stress disorder that he had to sit out the ongoing offensive …

[Gunner] reacted so nervously to the rattle of gunfire and deep boom of artillery commonplace around military outposts that he never even got a chance to test his mettle on a real patrol. …

Gunner was sent to the main kennel at Camp Leatherneck, a rear base. There, bomb dogs recuperate from illness or injury …

For weeks after he arrived at Camp Leatherneck, Gunner refused to leave the kennel compound. Even now almost any sound sends him into a panic.

[Via : Even His Red Squeak Toy Can't Get First Sgt. Gunner, USMC, to Fight - WSJ.com.]

It’s very sobering, and I feel sorry for both Gunner and all other dogs taken into danger.

Photo by United Nations: Landmine Clearing Efforts of the UN Mine Action Centre.

Update: please see the post about the 2012 appeal.

26 to 28 March 2010 is when the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind are raising funds to help with training Guide Dogs:

Red Puppy appeal.

It costs the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind over $22,500 to breed, then train a guide dog for a blind or partially sighted New Zealander. With no government funding for this essential service public support is truly valued. You can continue to support Guide Dog Services by donating today.

[Via : Whats the Red Pupply appeal?.]

Can you help?

Volunteers are vital to the work of the RNZFB’s Red Puppy Appeal, and in the course of a year over 10,000 people volunteer. This includes volunteers for both the Red Puppy Appeal (previously Guide Dog Appeal) and Blind Week. Volunteering provides a wonderful opportunity to meet people, learn new skills, share existing skills, and have fun and give something back to your community.