FLORIDA (14 July 2004) -- Lee County's 2,200 card-carrying lobster divers be advised: You won't be the only ones hoping to come up with a few lobsters when the season opens in two weeks. Cheyenne also will be down in the Keys, and shame on you if the friendly blonde finds one too many bugs in your boat. She's the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's newest lobster dog, trained specifically to sniff out what may be the most poached wildlife resource in Florida. Cheyenne is one of five new FWC dogs that recently have undergone 10 weeks of training in law enforcement at Charlotte County's Babcock/Webb Wildlife Management Area, with an eye and a nose toward protecting the state's natural resources and its citizens. In a demonstration with her handler, Officer Erik Steinmetz, Cheyenne showed her stuff Wednesday by boarding a boat in Charlotte Harbor, driven by FWC Officer Greg Mitchell. Mitchell's boat had "Law Enforcement" painted down the side in huge letters, but because Cheyenne's 400 hours of training didn't include reading, she didn't know Mitchell wasn't a real bad guy. Cheyenne hopped from her patrol boat to Mitchell's smaller skiff and hit the deck sniffing. She snuffled her way from the front deck to the stern, and back up the port side, re-sniffing the two forward holds with no luck. Then Steinmetz directed her to check the anchor locker, and bingo! Or perhaps Bongo! A scratch at the hatch and a telling look let Steinmetz know they'd scored. "Get it out," he said as he lifted the hatch slightly, and in went that nose, followed by the entire forward half of Cheyenne's lithe 47 pounds — a boat-friendly size that makes her ideal for assignment in the Keys. Out she came with an undersize lobster tail clinched between her jaws, which appeared for all the world to be fixed in a grin. Unlike many law enforcement dogs, FWC canines get no training at all in aggression. | | "When they find a bad guy, at the end they wag their tail," said Officer John Snow, who has been in the wildlife K-9 corps since it began in 1989. Since then the state's current roster of nine dogs — not counting Cheyenne and four other newbies — have earned national recognition that has inspired states including South Carolina, Indiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine and New York to send dogs to Florida for training with Snow. What FWC dogs do is find things, from wandering Alzheimer's patients to almost anything else a human may have touched. Demonstrator No. 2 Wednesday was Madison, a curly-haired Chesapeake retriever who knew exactly what her job was when she was let off her choke chain and given a snap collar, and the freedom to run. Her run ended seconds later in a cartoon-like skid as human scent molecules from something hidden in the grass snagged her nose. So sudden was the snap of Madison's head, in order to keep her nose aligned with the wind-borne scent, that you could almost hear the screeching as she changed directions and bounded straight to the shotgun, hidden in the grass a half-hour before. When she returns to Marion County with Officer Jeff Hargabus, Madison will be trained to differentiate the scents of venison, turkeys, doves, ducks and alligators from those of steaks, bologna or other items FWC officers couldn't care less about. So when a dog tells an officer something is fishy, or whatever, it's showtime. Their legal freedom to search boats notwithstanding, FWC dogs can be instrumental in searching other venues that require warrants. Whenever a dog is assigned to a district, local judges and state attorney's office are invited to see what they can do. So when an officer says his dog alerted on something suspicious, he's got evidence of probable cause for a search. Canine officers aren't perfect, but they are pretty doggone good. SOURCE - News-Press |
