session 10: I'm not the newest anymore

The first dog to find me (and slobber all over my face)

A beautiful early winter’s day in the Catoctin Mountains, just North West of Frederick. Sunny, but in the 40’s up on the hills.

The first thing on schedule for me and Cino was the exercise in increasing his “pushiness”.  I gave hotdog and cheese to Bob, Alan and Julie (on her second session, but the first time I had met her) and they spread out and called Cino to them. He happily ran between them all getting food – I don’t feed him on the days I go search and rescue training, so he was very enthusiastic.

Bob was in charge today and he had printed out some detailed maps showing orienteering posts in the area. The task was to find as many of them as possible within a two-hour time period. Almost all of the leaves had fallen, but there were plenty of thorny bushes which made it harder to see anything from a distance. However, it was easier to see where the hills crested, which was not possible when all the trees were in full leaf.  I was partnered with Julie: even though she was a newby she has some map and compass skills from previous orienteering.  She had with her a five month old border collie, Quiver.  I was glad I was with her, because at first I could not remember how to use the compass to get a bearing.  Since the class I took two weeks ago, I had not gone over the notes, nor tried to do any work with maps, so I needed the gentle reminder. Anyway, we worked out that we needed to go west, following the road to our north, and going up about two contour lines, so about 40 ft rise. We found our first marker after about 10 minutes, and then by looking at the distance on the map decided it should take us about another 10 to find the next, which was south of us and near a narrow track. We did not find that one, so decided to find an easier one a little further on, right near a stream, just after the track crossed the stream. That was pretty easy to find and we could then locate ourselves precisely on the map again. After that we headed directly up hill, almost due south. The marker was supposed to be on the  outer edge of a small plateau, but we did not find it. At that point we needed to head back to base, so didn’t linger too long trying to pinpoint the location. The terrain was not that easy to walk on. What you could see were bits of rock jutting up through the leaves, some large jagged boulders, and lots of trees, including many which had fallen. What you couldn’t tell was whether there were rocks/ground under the leaves, or whether the leaf pile was very deep. At some points we sunk in up to our knees in leaves.  After about an hour of walking with my pack on my back I had fully warmed up! Julie is 15-20 years younger than me, I would guess, and in better shape, and even though the terrain was rough, it was a pretty good pace we went at.  Still, I’m glad I was orienteering with a partner, I’m not sure I would have been so successful alone.

By the time we got back to base Harry had arrived.  He said that it was about time that Cino had the K9 evaluation.  This involves things like seeing how he reacts to strange people and dogs when I am out of sight, and seeing what his prey drive is like with toys, both his own favorite ones and unfamiliar ones. Problem was that I did not have any of his toys with me, so the evaluation was postponed 'till the next time. That should also give me a bit of time to look through it, and see if there is anything I can do to encourage the desired behavior. However, this test is more to do with temperament than training, so I’m not sure there’s much I can do.

Next up it was time for me to be the subject. Bob “placed” me, but not because he thought I was likely to go to the wrong place, but because he had a very specific place in mind.  I was to hide beneath a wooden bridge Back at base Harry decided that Cino needed to do some more work, so he, Julie and Alan got handfuls of hotdog and went up a path, each stopping behind a tree just off the path. I held Cino till they were all in place then told him to go find. He went straight to Julie, then headed back towards me, so I told him to go find again. He ran off up the path, right past the tree Alan was behind and up to Harry. I had run to catch up, because the owner is supposed to be at the spot where he gets the treat and praise. We did this again, and this time he found everybody. By then I think his interest had waned so it was time for him to go back in the car.

We finished early, which was good, since the drive was about 75 mins for me, and I was still feeling a bit cold. I had the heat blasting for much of the drive home.  I know it’s going to get much colder, though. Not sure how many more layers I can put on.

My View from under the bridge

 which was part of a walkway for an environmental trail. There was not much space under the bridge, about 18”, but luckily for me it was not wet (although it does cross an ephemeral stream) just rather cold.  I lay out my mat and crawled under. The wind followed me, as it seemed to be funneled through it. Well, I had five layers of clothes on my upper body, but only one on my legs, which were cold. I pulled my hat down low, a rain-jacket hood over that and started to nap.  It was a challenge for all but one of the dogs. First, Bob's dog Yelta was up. She ran over the bridge a couple of times, and clearly could smell something, but it took her some time to get off the path and come around.  

Yelta Searching with partner Bob, and newbie Julie

She was pretty happy when she found me, and I got plenty of licks right on the mouth when she came under the bridge. It was hard to avoid, I was rather jammed in!  Then Harry came along with Soho who seemed thoroughly confused and even though I was eye-level with her a couple of times when she came off the path, she did not find me.  Finally Zed rushed over the path and immediately jumped off and came straight to me, with Alan coming up shortly after. I got another licking, but luckily none of the dogs could actually jump on me since there simply was not enough room.  I was pretty glad to climb out, though.

Session 9: Clandestine Graves

This week, instead of a foray into the wild we attended a lecture, one of the most fascinating I have ever heard. For a start, it was held in the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, so there were lots of flags, pictures of people in uniform and officialdom.  The lecturer, Dr. William Rodriguez, (real name) started out as a primatologist in Africa, then moved to working with odors – how animals interpret smells. He also worked on war crimes in Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq, so an impressive resume.

It turns out that odor was first used to diagnose crime in 13^th century China, where flies were used to discover a murder weapon. Even though the weapon had been wiped clean, the flies could still smell the traces of blood.

We were informed that certain animals can cause injuries which look like weapon injuries. For instance, there is a mollusk which makes perfectly round holes in skulls which looks like a gunshot entry wound.  Then there are snapping  turtles which can crush the frontal skull which makes it looks as if the person was bludgeoned to death.  When dogs try to pick up skulls they typically try to pick it up from the back and leave striations which look like knife marks. To carry the skull they have to pick it up from the front which tends to fracture it.

The lecture continued with stories about decomposition. Its predictable sequence leads to visible (to those in the know) bio-environmental evidence.  A dead body disrupts the ecology of the area, as it is a food source for animals and plants.  When a body is buried, it first bloats up. As the body off-gases, the area directly above the grave caves in and the surrounding area cracks somewhat.  Often vegetation nearby will die-off, since roots may have been cut while digging the grave.  When burying a body, it is difficult to avoid mixing the soil around, and under-soil gets dumped on top on the body.   In this case, a bare patch may be a tell-tale sign, since seedlings will not grow so well on soil devoid of nutrients. When soil is dug up it becomes more porous and water accumulates there better than surrounding areas, so the area will be darker.  Also, different types of plants grow, often those with dark green leaves which favor the liquids from decomposing bodies.  This can be very obvious if a body has been buried in a field or agricultural area, and the difference in color can be seen from the air.

Plants and insects can often help determine when the body was buried: when seeds start to grow in disturbed ground, forensic ecologists can tell by looking at the plant how long it has been growing.  Our lecturer said that this, and other, evidence was destroyed by the DC police in the case of Chandra Levy.  He and his team went to the area when they heard a skull had been discovered. The DC police department used leaf-blowers and threw soil down a hill, destroying all of the ecological and biological evidence.  Soon after they released the crime scene and all manner of people, reporters and private investigators, crawled all over the area. One of the private investigators hired by the family found a leg bone, so once again, the police sealed off the area. They never found her hair, but  Dr. Rodriguez said if you know where to look, hair can often be found.

Many little critters like using hair as nesting material, both birds and rodents, and nests are often close to the site, in nearby trees either in the branches, for birds’ nests, or near the base of the tree for rodents. They also find teeth and small bones. In one case there was a wedding ring in a field mouse’s nest. In another amazing case, a yellow warbler had plucked not only hair from the skull of a victim, but had a little piece of paper built into the nest. This piece of paper had a telephone number on it, which turned out to be the phone number of the murderer!

If a skull and a body have been separated, it is possible to tell which way up the face was, by “soil stain” on the bones. One can even tell if the skull has been moved several times.  The bone which is least often recovered is that of the hyoid bone, and this is unfortunate because it is a clear indicator in the case of strangulation.  It is often eaten by buzzards or vultures.  Which brings us to another useful tool in toolbox: poop.  Dr. Rodriguez collects all fecal samples nearby then x-rays them. Quite often there will be not only bone shards, but also bullet shards.

Wild canids (foxes, cayotes) usually eat close to the death site, therefore bones, and the bones in the poop, are nearby. However, domestic dogs will carry bones long distances, so investigators will go to nearby homes with dogs and look in the yard and kennels – not infrequently they have found human skulls in dog-houses.

 When the death occurs in winter, the graves are often extremely shallow, since it is difficult to dig through the frozen ground. The human killers will often mark the area of the burial with pieces of fallen wood, so that they can find it more easily in the spring, when they intend coming back to bury it deeper. Frequently, killers who leave their victims in the woods know the area very well.

Another sign suggesting something is not normal is when the wrong plants are growing in a particular area. What happens is that as a body is dragged from a car at the side of a road to a denser area of undergrowth it picks up seeds on the clothing. These seeds often germinate in spring. Now, roadside plants and trees are different from those found in the woods, and those in the know recognize plants growing in the wrong places.  In one case they found a buried body because tulip poplar seedlings were growing in a pine and oak forest.

When the body has been un-earthed by investigators, a variety of insect and plant s give clues to the season of death. Even if a body is 12-15 years old, season of death can be found by looking at insect bodies in bone crevices.  For instance, if a very thin yellow jacket is found, it is likely that the death occurred in September or October, because that is when the nest breaks up and when they are actively foraging for anything they can get. There is a branch of this science called forensic entomotoxicology where insects are analyzed to see what chemicals they contain. They can identify opiates and antibiotics, which can give useful clues to cause of death.

For very recent victims, time of death is an important detail. Generally fly larvae (maggots) are a good indicator, but not always. In certain areas ants will carry off the maggots and this slows decomposition, so that even though a body may look 24 hours old, it can be 48.  Another factor which alters apparent time of death is the size of the body. Small bodies mummify quite quickly which impairs the insect’s ability to feed.  Scarab beetles are the last to benefit from the death. They feed on vertebrate and invertebrate carrion – so often they are eating the dead insects which have eaten the dead person.

We will finish with odor, which is where this started. That is what the dogs are used for, since their sense of smell is prodigious. There are 24 main components of odor of human decomposition.  Currently a machine is being developed to detect these odors, but it involves a thin probe which has to be put into the ground at small intervals. That is only useful if you know where the body is, so really, it is not useful at all, compared with a dog.  Sometimes a dog indicates an area where there is absolutely no trace of a body, but that is usually because there are some plants which give off exactly the same odors. So, don’t blame the dog!

Session 8: When Nobody Comes to Training

Saturday evening, the time people like to relax, go to movies, go to dinner. What was I doing? Driving up the I-270 on a chilly evening, with 4 layers of clothes on, hat, gloves, two torches (OK, flashlights), spare batteries, water, snacks and Cino.  This time I decided I had everything I needed for lying in the cold and the dark for a few hours.

We were meeting in the parking lot of a defunct Lockheed Martin office building. When I got there, there was not another car in sight. Just a huge parking lot in front of the building. Strobe lights were flashing on the ground floor, and an alarm bell was ringing, but other than that (and the cars streaming north on the 270), it was strangely quiet. I was quite sure I was in the right place, so decided to do a little healing practice with Cino using his electronic collar. I walked towards the woods where there was a "Private, No Trespassing" sign. That did not seem too promising, but maybe we had a permit to go in there. I decided to take a tour of the lonely business park before calling to see if I had somehow got it wrong...

Just then, I saw headlights of a lone car slowly coming towards me. It turned out to be Isabel and her GSD Racer, who I had not trained with before.  Isabel told me that the other members had been called out on a search for a missing man earlier that afternoon, and most were still there. Those who had completed their area searches would not be coming to training, so it was just us two.  Strangely enough, I was disappointed! There was I, all ready to go, with everything I needed, and I did not want to be heading home so soon.

Racer is a tracking dog, rather than an air-scent dog.  Isabel gave me specific directions of where to walk: over the grass, onto the asphalt, hugging the building (lights still flashing), and at some point to hide right against it.  As I was doing that I saw some panes of broken glass, which I skirted, since I did not want Racer to walk over it.  I hid down a stairwell, which was filled with leaves. Nice camo!  It did not take Racer long to find me and I could see him exhibit the classic "neck snap" as he barreled past my location where the scent trail stopped. Down the steps he came, and lay down beside me. He was on a long leash with Isabel panting behind.  I mentioned the glass, and Isabel said it would not have bothered him since they were used to working in New York!  She also said that the Lockheed Martin building had been vacant for years and that the area we were in was also used by the police on training exercises. Apparently they were trying to get authorization to use the inside of the building, too. Maybe they would then find if there was somebody sleeping there who had set off the alarm? I found it a bit strange that so many lights were on in the building: was somebody still paying the electricity bill, and why would it not have been disconnected?

Isabel then did some runaways with Cino in the dark, using lots of treats and encouraging noises. Each time he went straight to her, having to use his nose for the last few meters since she was hiding behind trees, and it was totally dark by then. He did a good job. I think it's time for something a little more difficult, but I'm not sure what the next step is. I guess I'll find out in due course.  She encouraged me to make a "snack sac" out of pencil cases, to buy a cheap light-up collar and a bell from a hunting store: there's always more to buy, whatever activity or sport one does, but I like the idea of making do.

Session 7: Navigation Issues

Forty miles north of Bethesda and the leaves had almost all fallen from the trees, especially up on the hills of Gambrill State Park.  I was late for training because Google maps had given me directions using a road which did not exist. I had to phone Bob, who was in charge of the day's training, otherwise I would never have found the place, so I was already feeling bad about my navigational skills. It was only going to get worse, unfortunately.

I missed the obedience part of the day, so Cino had to stay in the car. I was eager to make up for being late, so when Bob gave me directions as to where to go to be a subject, I did not listen as well as I should have done. This was the first time that I was to make my own way to a particular location without either being placed, or having walked the area with somebody else first.  I did not want to make Bob repeat the directions for a third time, so loaded up with all my gear, off I went. It seemed pretty simple: walk about five minutes down a clear path, following the electric transmission lines, then turn left (east), away from the road for about five minutes.  The instruction I took most note of was not to go too far east, where it would go downhill fairly steeply and be in a densely wooded area.  I assumed that five minutes was at Bob's walking speed, and since he is about a foot taller than me, I thought I should walk for about 7 minutes. Off I went, and after about five minutes the transmission lines themselves took a sharp bend to the east, but I did not think I had gone far enough, so I kept on walking. I then turned east and walked for another 7 minutes or so, until the ground started sloping downwards. The trees were not very dense, so it took a while to find somewhere I could be hidden on at least one side. I found a downed tree and put my ground mat down parallel to it. I used my bag as a pillow and covered myself from toe to head with the camouflage netting. It was quite comfortable, but very chilly. Alan had once again lent me some clothing, not because I needed something warmer (I'd got that covered) but because it was hunting season and we were supposed to wear blaze orange, something I did not have. So I had his overlarge fleece jacket, which kept me very warm.  I was tired, so I settled down to have a nap, and dozed on and off. I'm getting used to this!  Chris and Xenon were to find me first, then I was to stay in place for Alan and Zed to find me. After about an hour and a half I heard on the radio that Chris and Xenon were heading back to base, having not found me. I started wondering - was I in the right place? Bob called me on the radio, and asked whether I was on the right side of the transmission lines - as far as I could tell, I was on the RIGHT side, i.e., not the LEFT side. But what he meant was not that: he wanted to know if I was on the CORRECT side, which was the north, not the south. Actually, I was on the south side...  So then Alan and Zed set off to find me. Time passed and passed and passed. Eventually, they headed back to base too. By now, I had been in position for over three hours.  So Bob decided that Harry and Soho should come and find me, and Bob asked me to be specific about where I was. Well, I tried, but by this time I was pretty sure I was in the wrong place, so how could I explain where I was? Needless to say, Soho did not smell me out, and Harry asked me to come to the transmission lines.  Which I arrived at very quickly.  I knew where they were, I knew where I was, it was just not where I thought I was on the map.  I had gone more than twice as far south as I should have done.  I tried to remember exactly what Bob had said. Eventually I remembered that he had said the transmission lines were the boundary of the sector. Why did I not remember that during the four hours I was lying there?  I had effectively messed up the searches for two members that day, and I felt very bad about it. Even though everyone was very kind, and everyone said they had all placed themselves, or others, out of the correct sector, I still felt very embarrassed. I had been given several opportunities to correct my mistake, but I felt so sure I was in the right place. I really, really need to work on my navigational skills.

 By the time we got back to base, some people had already left, but those who were still there insisted it was time for Cino to do some work. I would not have minded just slinking off with my own tail between my legs, but there they were, thinking of my dog.  I passed out hot dog and other tasty treats to the five members there, and they each called to Cino, getting further and further away from him, and in Fiona's case, hiding partially in the woods. Thankfully Cino did a better job than me that day, and happily ran between each of them getting food and praise. He seemed happiest when going to Fiona, the only woman there, than the guys, but maybe that was because she called him more enthusiastically? Anyway, I think he felt he had a worthwhile time, even if he was stuck in the back of the car for four hours.

Just to top off my navigational failings of the day, I had to ask Fiona how to get back to the I270:  I really no idea where I was. I need to do better! 

Bob had mentioned that the outdoors store REI offered a variety of courses in navigation, so as soon as I got home, I logged onto the computer and found myself a course: the Fundamentals of Map & Compass.  I am hoping for a miracle.