“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?”
Maggie stared up at him and wagged her tail.
Scott scratched her ears, stroked her back, and gave her two pieces of baloney.
“You’re a good girl. A really good girl. I shouldn’t have taken you into that damned house.”
He drove to the training field, hoping the chemicals in the house hadn’t hurt Maggie’s nose. A dog man would know. A dog man would keep his dog safe.
20.
The sun beat down hot and hard on the training field, frying the grass and the men and the dogs.
Budress said, “No peeking.”
Sweat and sunblock dripped into Scott’s eyes.
“No one is peeking.”
Scott was crouched beside Maggie behind an orange nylon screen. The screen was pulled taut between two tent poles stuck into the ground. Its purpose was to prevent Maggie from seeing a K-9 officer named Bret Downing hide in one of four orange tents scattered at far points on the field. The tents were tall and narrow like folded beach umbrellas, and big enough to conceal a man. Once Downing was hidden, Maggie would have to use her nose to find him, and alert Scott by barking.
Scott was scratching her chest and praising her when a sharp explosion behind him caught them off guard. Budress had surprised them with the starter pistol.
Scott and Maggie cringed at the shot, but Maggie instantly recovered, licked her lips, and wagged.
Scott rewarded her with a chunk of baloney, squeaked what a good girl she was, and ruffled her fur.
Budress put away the gun.
“Somebody oughta feed you that baloney. You jump pretty good.”
“Could you step back a couple of feet next time? I’m going deaf.”
Budress surprised them three or four times during each session. He would fire the gun, and Scott would give Maggie a treat. They were trying to teach her to associate unexpected sounds with a positive experience.
Budress waved at Downing to continue.
“Stop whining and get her ready. I like to watch her hunt.”
They had already run the exercise eight times, with five different officers posing as “bad guys” to vary the scent. Maggie had been flawless. Scott was relieved to see Maggie’s sense of smell was unharmed by the chemical odors in Ishi’s house.
Earlier, Leland had watched for almost an hour, and was so impressed he took a turn playing the bad guy. Scott instantly saw why. Leland rubbed himself on all four tents, then climbed a tree at the end of the field. His trick confused her for all of twenty seconds, then she whiffed his track leading from the tents, and narrowed the cone until she found him.
Leland had trotted back from the tree without his usual scowl.
“That dog may be the best air dog I’ve seen. I do believe she could follow a fly fart in a hurricane.”
Air dogs excelled at tracking scent in the air. Ground dogs like bloodhounds and beagles worked best tracking scent particles close to or on the ground.
Scott was pleased with Leland’s enthusiasm, but relieved when Leland was called inside for a call. He worried Maggie’s limp would return with all the running, and Leland would see.
Now, with Leland gone, Scott felt more at ease, and enjoyed the work. Maggie knew what he expected of her, and Scott was confident with her performance.
When Downing disappeared inside the third tent, which was eighty yards across the field and slightly upwind, Budress gave Scott the nod.
“Turn her loose.”
Scott jiggled Downing’s old T-shirt in Maggie’s face, and released her.
“Smell it, girl. Smell it—seek, seek, seek!”
Maggie charged from behind the screen, head high, tail back, ears up. She slowed to test the air for Downing’s scent, then ran in a slow curve downwind of the tents. Thirty yards from the screen, Scott saw her catch the edge of Downing’s scent cone. She veered into the breeze, broke his ground scent, and powered hard for the third tent. Watching her dig in and stretch out when she accelerated was like watching a Top Fuel dragster explode off the line.
Scott smiled.
“Got him.”
Budress said, “She’s a hunter, all right.”
Maggie covered the distance to the tent in two seconds, jammed on the brakes, and barked. Downing eased out until he was in full view. Maggie stood her ground, barking, but did not approach him, as Scott and Budress had taught her.
Budress grunted his approval.
“Bring her in.”
“Out, Maggie. Out.”
Maggie broke away from the tent and loped back, pleased with herself. Her joy showed in her bouncy stride and happy, open-mouth grin. Scott rewarded her with another chunk of baloney and praised her in the high squeaky voice.
Budress shouted for Downing to take five, then turned to Scott.
“Tell you what, dog with her nose, she saved a lot of grunts finding IEDs. That’s a masterful fact. You can’t fool her.”
Scott ran his hand over Maggie’s back, and stood to ask Budress a question. Budress had worked with explosives-detection dogs in the Air Force, and knew almost as much about dogs as Leland.
“The house we were in reeked of crystal, that nasty chemical stink?”
Budress grunted, knowing the stink. Leland had the scowl, Budress the grunt.
“We go in, and right away she was whining and trying to search. You think she confused the ether with explosives?”
Budress spit.
“Smells don’t confuse these dogs. If she wanted a smell, it was a smell she knew.”
“When we were leaving, she alerted on this guy who lives there, same way.”
Budress thought for a moment.
“Were they making or using?”
“Does it matter?”
“We taught our dogs to alert to explosives like RDX and Semtex and whatnot, but we also taught’m the main components insurgents use for homemade explosives. Remember—the ‘I’ in IED stands for ‘improvised.’”
“These people were users. They weren’t cooking.”
Budress worked his lips as he thought about it some more, then shrugged and shook his head.
“Probably wouldn’t matter anyway. A couple of your typical meth lab components could be used to improvise an explosive, but the ingredients are too common. We never taught our dogs to alert to common materials. If we did, we’d have dogs alerting every time we passed a gas station or a hardware store.”
“So ether or starter fluid wouldn’t confuse her?”
Budress smiled at Maggie, and offered his hand. She sniffed, then lay down at Scott’s feet.
“Not this nose. If I asked you to point out the orange tents, would the green hedges or blue sky or the tree bark confuse you?”
“’Course not.”
“She smells like we see. Just laying here, she’s picking up thousands of scents, just like we’re seeing a thousand shades of green and blue and whatever. I say, show me the orange, you instantly spot the orange, and don’t think twice about all those other colors. It’s the same way for her with scents. If she was trained to alert to dynamite, you can wrap dynamite in plastic, bury it under two feet of horseshit, and douse the whole thing with
