Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010
In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Susannah Charleson clipped a newspaper photo of an exhausted canine handler, face buried in the fur of his search-and-rescue dog. Susannah, an airline pilot with search experience herself, was so moved by the image she decided to volunteer with a local canine team and adopted Puzzle, a Golden Retriever puppy who exhibited unique aptitudes as a working dog but minimal interest in the role of compliant house pet. Scent of the Missing is the story of Susannah and Puzzle’s adventures.
Susannah Charleson’s portrait of life with a search-and-rescue dog is heart-warming, educational, and intriguing. Charleson is transparently honest about the long hours of training, the physical demands of working through a search, and the emotional highs and lows of being on call to save people. Charleson also brings readers into the sweet moments of connection, triumph, and love.
The book is a great resource for general dog lovers to begin understanding the specialized cross-training and work of search-and-rescue dogs. For instance, Charleson explains the nuances between dogs that work “head down” or “head up.” Air-scent dogs are trained to use a scent article and then follow the scent, mostly nose up. Dogs trained in this way work best in unpopulated areas like wilderness or a disaster site, and these dogs can follow someone who has never touched the ground. Working from boats, air-scent dogs can even find a drowned person. Other dogs work mostly head down and do not need a scent article. They can follow a scent that is days or weeks old, even when the track has been disturbed.
Charleson also walks readers through the process of how dogs recover live humans or human remains. Some dogs can find human remains buried centuries before, and when human remains have been buried near the roots of a tree, a trained dog may signal at the tree, which is exuding human scent as it grows.
Fascinating, isn’t it?
Charleson is quick to point out that skeptics abound.
“And the dogs don’t necessarily make it easy to believe,” the author writes. “To the uninitiated, a dog in a sector that doesn’t have a workable scent can look suspiciously like a dog having a good time in the bushes. And a dog actually on a scent that’s wavering in conflicted air can look downright confused—checking empty corners, turning circles on a sidewalk, or snaking sideways for a moment to pick it up again … Every time we train, I learn some new pause or movement from dogs I’ve worked with for years.”
Reading this book intrigued me about the many facets of creation we still don’t understand. Now, when I see my dog follow her big nose, absorbing scents from ground and sky, I wonder about the unseen world she is interpreting. (Thinking of this, I patted my dog’s side and asked if she had ever thought of putting her ambitious nose to work. When she leaned in for a snuggle, I admitted she was already doing a good work.)
Reader, what good work is the dog you love doing today?
