On the prowl with the secret bomb dogs

Ruff life? These dogs love their duties!

By Amy Standen

March 4, 2002 | Smell works the same in both dogs and people: Molecules of odor are inhaled, and then dissolved in mucus. Traveling upwards, they are picked up by olfactory receptor cells, which then send the message on to olfactory bulbs which communicate directly with the part of the brain that stores emotions and memories. Dogs have 20 to 40 times more receptor cells than we do.

This is not news, but it's why, since Sept. 11, dogs have lolled in the spotlight more than any time in recent memory. It was a miniature poodle that took home this year's Westminster Best in Show but the part of the ceremony that everyone remembers best is the tribute to the NYPD search and rescue dogs that sniffed through the rubble at ground zero. Then there's Sirius, perhaps the most famous bomb dog of all, and the only one to die in the Sept. 11 attack.

Sept. 11 forced on us the realization that despite our cleverness with technology, there are certain things that are best left to dogs. What's more, those dogs actually enjoy their work: There is no greater demonstration of vocational happiness than a bomb dog on the scent of something explosive. And it's lucky for us that they love it like they do.

I wanted to visit some bomb dogs on the job, so I called Detection Support Services, a bomb-dog trainer and supplier in Sacramento, Calif. Unfortunately, the bomb-sniffing dog industry guards its secrets closely. Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, the government's primary center for bomb-dog training, used to talk to reporters about its training program, for example, but since Sept. 11, officials there have been under orders from the Pentagon to keep all bomb-dog information classified. The closest they'll come to actual data is saying that the number of dogs being trained there has "increased." The Federal Aviation Administration, which gets many of its dogs from Lackland, plans to have 300 bomb-dog teams at 80 airports by 2003, but officials there won't say what, exactly, those dogs will be doing, how many will be at each airport or how the dogs have been trained.

Tony Lavelle, the co-founder of Detection Support Services and a former captain in the Air Force Security Police, takes his cues from the Pentagon: He's tight-lipped on the bomb-dog issue. Here are some of the questions he won't answer: How many dogs work here? How are they trained? Have they ever actually found anything? Lavelle won't answer these questions because of "Opsec," or Operational Security, a term he translates roughly as "why help the terrorists?"

Showing off the dogs, however, is not helpful to terrorists, and so Lavelle was willing to let me come along on a routine training session at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, in Livermore, Calif., where Luka, Amy, Vader and Buddy (the dogs) were working the delivery lot with help from Tony, Herb, Greg and Ryan (the handlers). Since Sept. 11, no delivery to the laboratory makes it inside without a once-over from a bomb dog, and so DSS comes down regularly to make inspections.

Luka, a black lab, had been charged with the task of scanning a big white tent, the kind people often rent for wedding receptions. Inside this tent were boxes of things like printer cartridges and paper towels, and on one of these boxes was a test. Since bomb dogs rarely find actual bombs, Lavelle likes to keep them focused with drills like this one. He planted a trace of a chemical similar to the explosive stuff his dogs are trained to sniff out, and set Luka on the hunt.

Luka found the scent after less than 10 minutes of tail wagging, leash straining and frenzied sniffing, and then looked up at his handler, Herb Schwieger. Luka knew what was next. "Good dog!" shouted Schwieger, who left a job in corporate security after Sept. 11 to work for DSS. (This meant taking a pay cut, but it's made him a happier guy, overall, and as a result, he says, "my wife likes me more.") Schwieger drew a red rubber ball from his pocket and threw it to Luka. "Good dog!"

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