Expanding K-9 Capabilities: Human Remains Detection Dogs

Hey everybody, back after taking one week off for the holiday. Hope everybody had a safe and a good 4th of July, but we're back today. I've got Kevin Sheldahl coming on here talking about doing some additional things you can do with your dog by maybe incorporating a human remains detection program. I think it's a good idea to always be looking for extra things we can do with our dogs right now. So that's why I brought him on.

Although he is a advertiser, the fact that he's an advertiser doesn't mean he He gets a free shot on the show, but I do appreciate Kevin being one of my advertisers. So if you listen to this show and you like what you hear from Kevin, he's easy to get a hold of. You can check out his website at canineservices.com or just give him a call at 505-250-4576. And you've heard me talk about Canine Services and Kevin Sheldahl the last few weeks.

And he can do a little of everything down in New Mexico where he's at, or he can come to you. but he does all types of patrol dog stuff and detection stuff. So give Kevin a call if you like what you hear on this show or if you just need another type of dog training he can help you with.

And then also in this show, you're going to hear us talk about how important record keeping is for human remains detection dogs. If you have any type of dog, you need record keeping, and I recommend using Katz Platinum. So Katz Platinum is the first company that started doing record keeping online, And Bob Eden runs that company. So check out catsplatinum.com. You can give Bob a call. He'll get you set up with a free trial subscription just to see what a great product it is.

It's highly flexible and you'll be very happy with it. So catsplatinum.com for all your record keeping needs. With that, let's get to the show. Music.

This is the Police Canine Training Podcast with Jeff Meyer. Join us for each episode to get real-world advice from canine professionals who have experience on the street. Each episode will focus on up-to-date information that you can use on the street. Spend about 30 minutes with us each week as part of your training day. Our goal at Police K-9 Training is to make every K-9 team be the best they can be. Welcome to the Police Canine Training Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Meyer.

Today I have Kevin Sheldahl. If the name sounds familiar, it's because you've been hearing me talk about Kevin. He's one of my advertisers, and you hear me talk about out of New Mexico, Kevin's doing a lot of good stuff down there. But I didn't bring him on because he's an advertiser. I brought him on because a while back we did a show, and Kevin mentioned in the show that he's trained a lot of human remains detection dogs for different police departments.

And for For some reason, that just clicked with me that that's just something that I haven't dealt with with any police departments. Now, I know a lot of agencies, including most ones here in my state, use volunteer groups to do human remains detection, which got me thinking, you know, that's taken, you know, probably a somewhat unvetted volunteer in some cases into a homicide scene, which we wouldn't do for any other tool.

So, you know, I have no reason that I could think of that we haven't encouraged more departments to go out and start maybe doing dual purpose dogs for human remains or at least a single purpose. And Kevin is, from what I can tell you, he's the expert in training. He's been doing it for a long time. And I want to bring him on today and just talk about, you know, if you don't have that capability in your agency, maybe you should really think

about adding it to your agency. Because this is a time that we need to have as many different cards to play. If they say we want to get rid of police dogs, we need to have as many different cards to play and show all their value. And I think, you know, solving some homicides obviously would be a very, you know, significant value.

So that's what I brought them on today. So we're going to talk about, you know, how to get a unit going, how you selection test dogs, some of the training, and just, you know, basically the ins and outs.

So you'll know today if you think there's something you want to do, the steps you need to take, and then you'll also have Kevin's contact reach out to him and talk to him some more. So with that, Kevin, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. I appreciate you coming on. We've been talking about doing this for a little while, so I think it'll be a great show. So let's just basically, let's just start at the beginning. I know you mentioned you've been doing this for a long time.

So when was the first dog you started doing human remains detection with and how did that come about? Well, I was asked to do it by a department who I had worked with in the past for other types of dogs.

And they felt the need for it. and they had a good big enough unit where they weren't hurting in other detection areas so we did a dog for human remains detection i think that was about 32 years ago it was a department in the southern part of new mexico and that program had some pretty good success you like everything else trials and tribulations when you start start a program that's relatively new and have

to cooperate with other entities sure but after that out of the blue my sheriff asked us to do, to do one. So that was a couple of years after that. So it's been over 30 years now that the, and the agency that I retired from, although I still contract with them, initiated a human remand detection program. And quite honestly, at the very beginning, I was stumbling around hoping I had it half right.

And I guess one of the things I would think about is, you know, I'm picturing New Mexico and haven't been down there and anybody been through New Mexico knows there's a lot of barren land, a lot of open areas. So I assume it's not unusual that you're getting calls on a missing body and very large areas of land, either, you know, through a crime scene or, or just somebody wandered off. So that to me seems like it would be a good match, but what has now after 30 years, what is the call load?

And the reason I ask is some guys might think, well, I work for a big city and we don't have these big open areas, so we don't need a a dog that does that. So can you break down now, you know, what's the call load on, on these dogs? Ooh, I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head. I'd have to go back and research. I can tell you that our human remains detector dogs have had more deployments than our bomb dogs have had call-outs on bomb threats.

So, and some of those are obviously, I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, just because you work for a big city doesn't mean you don't need this. I mean, it's not all rural area searches is what I'm going with. Oh, no, no. Here's what really has struck me about human remains detection after I got started. I was under the presumption we were going to go look for a few dead hikers. Yeah. That we might, might look for some, you know, suicidal subject that,

that, that off themselves and maybe a few clandestine graves. Yeah. And it has been so varied and the remains we've discovered have been so, have had so many treatments intentionally or unintentionally that it is, well, really mind boggling really. Yeah. We've, and I think that's the most important part about when you start training this stuff is you've got to keep a really open mind as to what you're going to be doing, because it's probably not going to be what you think. Yeah.

Yeah. We have done everything from look for human remains scattered by, by the railroad. We have looked for remains that were burned and buried in the sixties. We've looked at remains that were recently burned and scattered. We've looked for clandestine graves, It's a kind of a typical thing. Yeah. And we've looked for, for, uh, parts that were animal scattered all over. Yeah. We've looked for stuff that was mechanically scattered in, uh, in an, in an industrial accident.

Oh, wow. And spread all over, uh, spread all over a dump. Wow. So these are the biggest problems. And one thing I will say is that the challenge to this is that you will never finish your dog training. Oh yeah. Yeah. I can imagine the very. It will never be over. Varied areas you're working in. and the problems you're facing. Yeah. You know, like with a drug dog, once your dog is up and running, he's showing himself to be able to do the work in various environments.

It's now just a matter of not letting it pick up bad habits. Yeah. Yeah. And for the human remains dog, it's always like, oh, this is a new thing. Yeah. This is a new environment. This is a new treatment for what we're looking for. Wow. You know, you're all over the place. And that's the challenge.

That's the real challenge. So it takes a handler who likes to train and loves the challenge of something of that nature and is willing to take the responsibility for dealing with things that are as important as maybe testifying in a homicide.

So now that you've done it for quite a while, and I think you and I probably agree that it's not a real common thing across the rest of the country, if somebody said, you know, I don't think we need one, your answer would be you probably need one more than you realize. Just because you haven't provided the service before doesn't mean that need's not there, is it? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that, you know, when you're looking at HRD dogs, you know, we've used them to go find rape scenes.

Sure. That would make sense. Yeah. We've used them to find homicide scenes when the body wasn't there. Yeah. Just the blood or whatever is left over from it. Yeah. And so I think that there are so many uses. Homicide investigator might have a situation in which, hey, I got a CI telling me that this body was rolled up in a tarp and the tarp's still in somebody's backyard and I got a paper to go check that backyard. Can you bring the dog?

We don't know which tarp it is. We know that there's a bunch of stuff back here. How about you come out and help us out? Now, so there's a lot of avenues and you have to make sure you educate your investigators and your field and, you know, other entities that might call you that are within your jurisdiction as to the use of these dogs. Sure. Sure. And, and that's a real, that's a kind of a struggle because often people don't treat this in the way that it might need to be treated.

And I'll give you an example. And this isn't my jurisdiction. Sure. Thankfully. but I had a dog trained in HRD. In New Mexico, we have these things called arroyos, and they're just washes, but they're very transient, whether they have water in them or not. Most of the time, they don't. Flash floods knock sand down in them. Walls cave in, and so they're always changing.

And a homicide had occurred, and the information was that there was a body in this arroyo, And dog alerted to an area and they poked around a little bit, poked around a little bit. And the the net result was that they couldn't find anything. Yeah. They went back again a couple of days later, same results. Finally, a frustrated administrator said, you know what? Get a front loader out there and dig the place up. And yeah,

they did find the body, but they've kind of destroyed some evidence. Sure. Sure. And so sometimes you're cooperate cooperating with people that may not be high on the professional side. And perfect, particularly when you start talking about some of these bodies are dumped, that might be killed in my jurisdiction. And then they're dumped in another jurisdiction and they don't have much for resources. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there, We have sheriff's departments out here that you can count the

number of deputies on one hand. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, you can't blame them for doing the best they can with the lack of resources that they have. Yeah. And so you end up in that sort of a situation. Yeah. I can imagine there's a lot of that. So let's kind of talk about, you know, somebody's listening to this and they're thinking this is a good idea. Some of my first questions would be, do you usually do as a single purpose dog or have you done dual purpose patrol HRD dogs?

Most of mine have been dual purpose, which is now because you have to really make sure your selection testing is on point. Sure, sure. Because you're going to be working with a dog ranging and hunting that has to be social. Yeah. So he takes a dog with a very clear head, very steady nerves to do both patrol and human remains. But I like a patrol dog that is social and people think that's counterintuitive, but I like a patrol dog that you could run around in a mall by themselves.

They don't bite anybody. And then when you put them to work, they will. And I mean, you've seen that. I've seen it. And so I think that's a, some people are going to hear that and think, oh, you can't do both.

But I think absolutely you can. can you know you absolutely can you know there's no doubt about it but with when you're selection testing you really have to make sure that that's one and two their default behavior in life has to be hunting yeah if they're not if they're not if they're sitting or down and or putting a crate they're hunting yeah and because you can't you can't build a dog's desire to hunt up to a point where you can do large landscapes with a,

with a dog that just isn't, it just isn't natural. You can't just, you can't just condition the dog. It's not going to work. Yeah. So, and with the dual purpose, have you had any, I mean, any, any drawbacks that, you know, most time a dual purpose dog is a little bit better at one or the other, but is there anything, you know, if the dog is selected well. Is there anything that, that you see as it could be a drawback or an argument against it? Time. Yeah. Just training time.

You know, we, we keep adding onto the, onto these dog handlers and I don't know about other jurisdictions, but when I started, I had two jobs. I was supposed to go out and find dope and find bad guys and that's it. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it was, all right, you find it, you find it, you find a dope, you find a bad guys, but now you have to support SWAT.

Yeah. And, you know, and you keep adding responsibilities on and as liability issues continue to mount, you, you have to make sure that you're maintaining your dog appropriately. And then now you add this, which is to me, the largest, most difficult of all detection things to do. Excuse me. And you put that on a handler on top of all that other stuff. You better give them time to train. And we're in an environment right now where

I don't see people getting more time. I see time being taken away or they're robbing Peter to pay Paul. But that might be, again, you know, I'm really interested in expanding our capabilities. And that might be one of the arguments, you know, when they go to take time away, it's like, well, actually, you know, we need more time because this is how many HRD deployments we've had. And we got to keep this part, you know, up and trained and everything.

So it might be, might be a reason to, to not cut training days. You know, if you're, if you can, if you can bribe the stats and the, the argument for it. Yeah. I did the, there's a bit of a trend that says, I don't know, somewhere somebody pulled 16 hours a month out. And I will tell you, you need, if you're going to have a dog that's going to do human remains or bombs and dope and do patrol and tracking 16 hours isn't enough. No, no.

It just isn't. And, you know, but somewhere down the line, administrators have have found this number. Yeah, I like it.

And they said, well, this is what I understand. You know, that's the kind of answer I get. This is what I understand. This is the minimum. Yeah. And we're doing at least the minimum. Yeah. And I've heard, yeah, well, okay. Then, you know, do the minimum, everything else. Yeah. If you don't want to be good at any of it. So that brings to mind a question there on the dual purpose. You know, I'm thinking patrol and human remains. Did you mention something about bombs and human remains?

No, I would never. Okay. I didn't, I didn't think so. I didn't think so, but the way you said that, I was, I want to make that real clear. So it's, if it's a detection dog, it's a single, that's a single, single type of detection dog, right? You're not going to have a, you're not going to have a patrol dope human remains dog. It's going to be. The only place that might overlap in detection for me is guns and bombs. Yeah. But, but when we're talking about. And that would also depend.

And when, but when we're talking about human remains, that's, that's its own odor, just like any other. Yeah. And I don't even teach, I don't even teach the HRD dogs, uh, evidence search. I think that, yeah, I w I could see that being a conflict for him. So yeah. Human odor, you know, if I, I think that at least early on in the work, it could become a conflict later on. You know, if the work is being done diligently, maybe not. Yeah.

But I also, again, it's like something's got to give these guys got to have the time to train. So it's probably not, in your experience, probably not the best idea for a brand new handler to be saddled with. Maybe somebody who's been handling for a while and added in just to get the patrol side down. Or is that correct? Or is that how you? That is definitely my preference. And I'm fortunate enough to be able to do that. And within my agency that I work for, I was always able to do that.

And most of the people that are attracted to this already have some experience in some field related to dogs, whether that was search and rescue or whether that was patrol work or detection work of another type. They're the ones that jump up and want to do it. And most of them have figured out that it's going to be a tough job. Yeah.

But they're looking for that challenge and that work. work so so because i hear from the the uninitiated things like well i could ever stuff must be easy because well that smells and that's really far yes i can yeah you know and you know i've certainly been on scenes where you know you show up and the ravens yeah fly off 100 yards from you and And you just walk over there and smell it halfway there. That's not really the normal human remains detection search.

Yeah. It's usually after a failure of field troops or investigators to find you. Yeah. Like everything, they think of the dog afterwards. Yep. So you've picked the dog. He's obviously obsessive compulsive about hunting, social dog. And, you know, we'll skip over the patrol dog part.

But which would you, would you train one discipline before the other? If it's a dual-purpose dog? I do it all at the same time. Okay. And I find that, for me, I like that because the dogs, we could show them, this is this and this is that. Yeah, I agree. The two are totally different, and you don't have to mix things. Yeah. And I also, detection for the dog is a lot of fun, particularly the foundations. And when I'm doing things that sometimes Sometimes aren't a lot of fun.

I might be putting some pressure on a, on a patrol dog in the, in the control and obedience. And sometimes just going and training. Yeah. Detector side is. It breaks up the training. It's like when I'm playing ball with a dog. Breaks up the training day and let's have some, a little release. Yeah. I, I agree. I just didn't know if you would separate those things.

So now my next question is training needs, you know, what, what are, what do you do with them and how do you find them? What are they? Well, that's a, you know, and here, this is a big, this is a big deal. Yeah. I'd like to tell you a few, a few answers that I have for you. Okay. One is I have had deputies and officers who have given birth, give me placentas. It's no big deal for them to ask to be able to take them after birth.

And so I've had several of them frozen free gear. Okay. And that's, that's a big, good starting point. Now, just, I'm ignorant of this, so you have a frozen placenta, you're going to imprint a dog with that item the same way you would imprint any other detection dog? Absolutely. You're going to thaw it out and just put it in a container or something and just reward that source? Okay. Yeah, and we're going to do different treatments too. Yeah. You know, we're going to take it, take it out.

Some is going to be, some's going to be, you know, put in the sun. Some's going to be put someplace where it can putrefy. So we have a variety of different treatments for that. Yeah. And that took, placenta is easy with dogs. And, you know, it's, it's obviously not enough to do everything with the, with the dogs. So I also, since I follow the PSP approach to qualifications, the dog also has to do blood splatter.

So I'll have, I'll have one of our paramedics or I'll have our, our tactical dog draw a bunch of blood from guys. So I have a bunch of vials of blood and I have them do that without any, not adding, using vials that are sterile, that don't have any additives to it.

Yeah so no heparin nothing yeah and so and i'll use those in the beginning training and then we have to venture out and of course large quantities of human remains are often controversial in many places and often aren't supported by the local laws so you have to know your local laws yeah new mexico doesn't address it and so and attempts to get them to address it have fallen on deaf ears.

So what we're doing now is, and this is all new to me, so I'm not saying yes, this is what you should go out and do, but we have recently got our Office of Medical Investigators. Forensic anthropologists, to utilize get-scent tubes in scenting for human remains. And so that will have a varying, it will vary over time depending on what they have available. Yeah.

They have a variety of remains that nobody's claimed and that they can utilize putting a GetSent tube adjoining the remains. Yeah. So if anybody's not familiar with GetSent tubes, they're a tube that have, is it a membrane inside that it'll absorb whatever odor it's with, correct? Yeah. And so I'll give you my understanding. I've tried to research this the best I can.

And I've even talked to the person who invented it. and so what it is it's a it's a polymer and the person who invented it's not a dog guy he's a polymer scientist and so he came up with a polymer that could actually increase its size by a factor of four as it absorbs odor from the environment and so you could take it put it in and you can use it for other things too you know like thp and hmtd are probably good good examples of a good use and let it absorb as much as it can.

And then you can place that in the environment. And the polymer is one that the dogs cannot smell. The inventor told me that it took him five years to come up with a polymer that could do these things that the dog couldn't smell. And I guess if people question that, they can just put out a clean tube too. Yeah, but apparently there's no real reason to. He doesn't recommend it. And he said, I guess, you know, if I spent five years trying to come up with

an invention that you need to do that with, I'd be happy. Yeah. But I've, I've, I've seen that there's some local agencies. They're even using it on their dope dog training and it works quite well. It's a, it definitely holds odor. And it seems to me like that would be an excellent way for what we're talking about with the human remains. So if you're, your medical examiner is on board and they'll use it, they can put it with, you know, the unclaimed remains.

They're getting all kinds of different odors. it's not destroying any evidence it's not introducing any evidence to the unclaimed remains it's not it's not undignified for when the family comes to claim it you know i mean i think there's there's obviously a lot of sensitivities to to this type of training aid obviously you know absolutely and so our office of medical investigator was very is very sensitive to that, even though I accept that and understand it.

And so this was a nice way to get this done. I'm hoping. We've have done some work with the GetSent tubes with fentanyl and. Fentanyl is a real problem in our on our jails here. Yeah. And so they had, they wanted to address it. And so we've done that and they've been successful with in institution finds of fentanyl. And that was what triggered me to say, all right, let's try this with information. This way we can continue to have a stream of varied information.

Treatments of the remains over a long period of time yeah and so i set our medical investigators up with a kit so they can get everything done and directions on how to handle the the get zent tubes and they're quite on board with the whole thing yeah so that's my next venture yeah now there's been there's other ways to get some some types of remains you know some oral surgeons will will We'll ask their patients, hey, you know, you don't want this. Can I donate this to law enforcement entity?

We've had, I actually had a chief of police, I'm not going to mention the department, send me his knee. He had a knee replacement. That guy supports canine more than most. Yep. And so I actually wanted to do that. I had a knee replacement here 11, 11 and a half months ago. And I couldn't get them to do it. I was like, come on, it's my knee. It's my knee. This is a good reason.

And I just kept falling on no, no, no, no, no, no. And I said, well, if you ask the surgeon, we don't want to go talk to him about that. Oh, geez. Well, whatever.

All right. I need my knee done. I'm sitting in the hospital getting ready to get done. I can't argue. Yeah, yeah. At some point. It seemed like if it's your own knee that you'd have that option. And then there is a place called the Bone Room. We used to be able to import human remains for educational and scientific purposes from other countries. And I don't remember the year that it stopped. But this company has a bunch of like broken remains and things.

And these apparently, here's what I've been told. I don't know how true it is. These came from, like, mausoleums where families stopped wanting to pay rent. Oh. And so they were collected out of that. And so that is basically old, clean bone, and we've utilized that. There has been off and on companies which received donated bodies, and we had one here for a little while. Meanwhile, he got so many bodies donated that he ended up, he didn't have enough cooler space.

He couldn't maintain them. And some of these bodies were going bad, I guess is the way to put it. Yeah. And he ended up getting investigated. And I don't know what they, it was a civil process with him because he didn't commit any crimes. Yeah. And basically part of the settlement was I won't do this anymore. There was a place out of Oklahoma that was doing it, and some of our guys got it. And apparently, they're not responding to letters.

It used to be if you send a letter on letterhead, they're not responding at this point in time. So maybe another one will crop up at some point. I don't know. There may be more out there. Well, I guess – so the point is, though, is obviously you need varied things, and there's – everybody needs to kind of research their own local jurisdiction and understand there is a – there's obviously a sensitivity.

To it so you don't want to you don't want to be using grandma's you know remains when the family hasn't consented or whatever so but there i i think you've given a whole lot of ways that you can do workarounds and and at least start introducing the odor and and i i my my guess would be just from training detector dogs that once they start understanding these odors even if it's from the dentist office or whatever that then when they go out to do a real search

it's transferring over pretty, pretty solidly. Yeah. You know, we do a few other things too. So we occasionally, so bodies exude kind of a waxy substance as they start to decompose and it goes into the soil. And so often after we've recovered a body, then we will take in for a short period of time before the stuff starts to mold or, or mildew because we want, we don't want to do that.

That we'll use some of the the soil from around where the where the corpse was removed there's also other crime scene stuff that isn't a crime scene so we've managed to get like pieces of carpet after a person had passed and nobody had known about it for days and you know that that has to get cleaned out by a company that can take care of those types of hazardous materials Yeah.

And we've been managed to work hand in hand with some of those companies where we use it briefly, cuz again, those guys are gonna, you're gonna store them, they're gonna mold the milk. Yeah. So they get used for a very short period of time and then they have a process for disposing of that. And we work, you know, one of the things that anybody working with this stuff needs to have is they really need to have their, you know, bloodborne pathogens training and, you know, hazardous material stuff.

And that needs to be under their belt. It's one thing that I have all my guys go through. Yeah. So that they're remaining safe. Yeah. And both for storage and disposal. So besides being safe, then you, you're not getting in trouble for, for, you know, doing something where, where they're going to be mad about how you disposed of it. Even if you have the stuff that, you know, you've got a, you've documented what you have, which is going to be important later on.

If you ever end up being deposed or you end up in a suppression hearing, you're going to have your records and you know, Hey, where'd you get this from? Hey, where'd you get that from? You need to have all that documented. Yeah. So you don't look like a slipshot organization. Yeah. And that brings to mind then, you know, this is definitely, this is, this is, you know, going to be a very important investigation at some point.

So, you know, you're from the day one, you know, you're going to have really good, strong records showing your training aids and your training time, how you trained, who you trained with and everything. So it's not one of those, you know, if you're going to do it, do it correctly, I guess, not a half-assed kind of thing. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, that's one of the things that I like having law enforcement involved or at least a full-time professional.

Yeah. Yeah. Because there needs to be a degree of professionalism. I'm not, I'm not trying to bag on volunteers that go out on Saturday and work hard. You know, I don't want to bag on them, but it's just really difficult for somebody who doesn't have a real chain of command that are inspecting things, making things be correct and supporting their efforts and, you know, making sure the documentation is there. It's reviewed up the chain.

You know, all that stuff is really important when you get put in the hot seat. And, you know, I know you've been in a suppression hearing, depositions sold by, and you need to be prepared. And those people that are, like you say, you're not bagging on them, but they're out there for the love of the dog and the experience and all that.

And I've never had the experience of being in court like we have, you know, so that's one more reason why I agree with you that, you know, having law enforcement or at least a full-time first responder of some type is preferable when possible.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that, you know, we're looking for ways to support the canine programs within departments. And, you know, to me, this is one that's professionalizing something that's been often done in, I'm not going to say unprofessional, but maybe a less than controlled fashion. Yeah. And that's what really clicked with me when you and I did our last podcast is it was, that's just not an area that I've really ever delved into at all.

And I know that, you know, even our own agency used some volunteer organizations. Why it never clicked with me, I can't, I can't tell you, but it, to me, it makes total sense. And especially at a time when we're trying to, you know, really justify our existence, you know, because of the attacks we have on, on law enforcement, it's just one more excellent tool.

And I don't think there's, you know, if you had any other homicide crime scene, you know, it's, it's fenced off and we would, we don't let people into it, you know? So it's, it's interesting that, you know, a fairly unvetted person would be able to go into that scene, you know, to search for it and, and maybe be in the middle of it. So I think it's a, to me, hopefully people are listening to this and thinking, you know, that's probably a, an area that we want to expand our unit into.

Cause it's not, you know, my experience is not very common other than New Mexico. Are you seeing a lot of, uh, agencies, you know, police agencies are getting involved in this? No, not very many. Yeah. All of the dogs that I have done have all been dogs in New Mexico. Okay. And that's been some law enforcement, sheriff's deputies, PD officers, and also firemen. Yeah. And that over the years, it's, you know, it's been the least number of dogs.

I don't do as many of them as I do bomb dogs or dog dogs, of course. But it's been enough to, to where we've. And you've had success. Yeah. Yeah. We've had a lot of success, you know, lots of success. Yeah.

And that's really sad. had yeah in one way but from a dog training perspective it's exciting that we've had this success yeah yeah we've had we've had finds and i guess i'll get a little anecdotal here and i'll give you give you a we were asked by you know a multi-letter agency to look for a a human some human remains and around new mexico we have a lot of uh flood control stuff yeah because Because our moisture doesn't,

our moisture isn't held in the soil. It just runs. Yeah. It's down towards the Rio Grande. And so in the city, there's a bunch of great, big, huge, they look like dams, but there's no water in them most of the time, unless it's a flash flood. And apparently the body was disposed of there and they had received some information from probably the offender. Ultimately it was the offender, but he was trying to put it off on somebody else.

House and so he was acting like a ci and we went out and looked for this seven-year-old. Body that had been in it but flash floods destroy the landscape yeah they just tear it up yeah and then you also have coyotes and other other critters out in that part of the area all the time and so i was kind of like i don't think we're going to find anything and i went out and just tell you a little about you know the extra things you have to do i use a mapping gps when we go out so we We

know where we've been and where we haven't been. Makes sense, yeah. And so we went out with mapping GPS, and I was with the handler, with the dog we trained, and put a bunch of flags in my pocket. And we proceeded to work the place on a nice, cool morning. One thing that's nice about this is that you're not forced to do it right now, and so you can pick the best time of the day to do it.

And so we went out and we had i we had alerts in about three areas very spread out i was kind of surprised but then when you think about how much this the landscape had changed yeah flagged them let them know i found out a week later that they'd gone back out there with ground petting penetrating radar and found nothing but they did dig up the area around each one of those flags and they were able to find a finger bone. Oh, wow.

And the finger bone, they were able to get mitochondrial DNA and match it to the victim's mother. So, you know, it's interesting what you get into and that was not something I would have expected. We've also had some other, I will call semi successes. We had a homicide in a neighboring city in, I think it was 1967. It was a cold case and an investigator said, look, we've never really been able to go into this, the house where the, where the husband was. And his story was wife disappeared.

She went to the bar and never came back. They had an argument. She wanted to go to the bar. He didn't. So she left and never came back. And the kids reported that dad would never let them in the garage. And the garage was kind of a lean-to with a dirt floor and locked up like a shed. And they were never allowed in there. The house had been sold. And the investigator went to the person renting the house from the owners. And said, you know, can we run a human remains dog through your garage?

And he explained what was going on. It was a cold case. And so the suspect, who was the husband, had passed away a long time prior. And so they did. Dog alerted underneath a car. They never moved the guy's car out of this garage. They just said, look, we're not going to disturb you at all. And the dog alerted there. So they went and got a paper and dug it up.

And they were able to determine that they had charred bone and that under electron microscopy, they believed it was human, but they can't confirm a hundred percent. And so, you know, the speculation is, is that he dug a pit and, and, you know, kind of cremated her right there. Wow. And that, that's why the kids were never allowed in the garage. Yeah. So, interesting things that I never thought I'd be seeing.

Yeah. And, you know, it's been a, even though I was a trainer, not the handler, I always tried to go out with every single one of the calls that I could while I was on duty. Yeah, absolutely. And I still go out once in a while with the guys. I'm able to do that because I still maintain reserve credentials and go out with them whenever I can. So the. So, there's a lot of, I think that the message is here is you better have an open mind and expect the unexpected. Yeah.

But the message also is that, you know, if you're listening to this, it's something that maybe you should consider because, you know, again, it's just expanding our capabilities has always been a good thing. But for some reason, this is just an area that, you know, many of us, including myself, haven't really thought of. So, it's possible. It's, I think, the work's out there to do it. It's, I think, definitely, you know, something that agencies should start considering.

I think so. I think it's a tool that we, you know, we need to expand on, you know.

When people hear patrol dogs or police dogs, they think, most people think of bombs, drugs, and biting people. Yeah. And it's interesting to me is that, like, the biting people is such a small percentage of what we actually do. Yeah. And that gets the most attention, of course. Yeah. but there's so many positive things we can do out there. And it really dawned on me back in the nineties. I went over and spent some time at one of the police dog schools in Holland.

And I had a question of the director of the school. And I said, when you guys are out here working, what percentage of your deployments are basically evidence search, narcotics work or whatever, some type of scent versus patrol type deployments. And he said 80-20. Oh, yeah. And so 80% of the time they were doing additive searches or dope searches or bomb searches, or they had human remains dogs.

And you know, that, I think that is something that really needs to be pushed, that that's where we ought to be with this. And I'm not saying decrease our patrol dog deployments. No, just increase our. Find more things to do with the dog. Yeah. Increase, increase the detection capabilities of it. So yeah, I know I was in Holland and I saw Saw them, one of the police agencies working their human remains dogs.

And one of the big calls they had was they have so much water that it's not uncommon that people drown. And before they really started working it a lot, usually the answer would be, you know, in three or four days they'll pop up. And that's not acceptable to the family. So they were actually working on doing water deployments where, you know, as the person drowns, they're going to, you know, let out a lot of different fluids from their body and stuff.

And they were working on training their dogs to find it on top of the water so they could pinpoint it easier to find bodies. You know, it was just one more, and they were having success with that. It was just one more capability. We actually have, you know, New Mexico is kind of a high desert, most of it, but all up and down the Rio Grande is a series of irrigation canals, the whole length of the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Ago and those branch off into smaller things called the saqueas, but it is not uncommon for people to drown in those things or bodies to be disposed of it. And that's a whole nother treatment of those remains because often these asequias and irrigation canals, they run water for a few days or weeks and then they're empty. Yeah. And then they do it again. And, you know, we've had multiple searches where we've had to shut down the water or that it was dry and we'd located remains.

Somebody located, usually by accident, somebody found, oh, I found somebody's skull. Wow. Yeah. Where's the rest of them? And that's just a treatment I don't know how to replicate, you know, dry, wet, dry, wet, dry, wet. You know, it's a little bit of a struggle for that. But we've had those kinds of deployments. I think there's definitely a lot of uses for it, you know, talking about.

Yeah, I was surprised. You know, my sheriff asked for it. I said, I'll do it because I never said no to the error. Yeah. And to this day, the program's still going. I mean, you still have, we had a lapse of about, Oh, about nine months. We just had a, we had a handler retire and you know, you know how to get new people on board. But overall, yeah. Yeah.

But basically we, we don't, that was the only break in 30 years. That's that's fantastic. So, so there'll probably be some questions on this. So if you have questions on this or you're thinking about it, send them to me, I'll get with Kevin and we'll certainly can do a follow-up on this show, you know, based on, on some questions or, you know, if you need to get ahold of Kevin, you know, put his contact information is in the show notes.

So, you know, contact me with questions for, for another show, or if you want to just talk to Kevin and get some more information, feel free to reach out to him. Cause again, I just think it's, it's something that we should be considering doing and adding to our repertoire of things that we do is police stock handlers. I appreciate the time, Kevin. You have anything else you want to follow up on? No. No, no. If anybody has questions, I'm happy to answer them. You know, I'm available.

So it might take me a day or two to get it done. Oh, yeah. And I guess my final one would be is, did your agency write a specific policy related to the human reins dogs? There's a few lines. A few lines. Very, very. Yeah, it's very little.

And so and i'm not sure that we need a whole lot more as long as our training is well documented well supported by the type of training we're doing i don't know that we need more other than what we already do for for all the other dogs yeah i think as we've touched on a few times i think the highlights would definitely be that obviously it's possible to do dual purpose, the training aids need to have some sensitivity to them both for the you know

disposal you know because it could be hazardous waste. And then also it's somebody's relative somewhere. And then the documentation. I think if you have all those things and you're setting yourself up for success and probably when it's all said and done, I look at all the bad guys I found over the years and I had some great times and found some real bad guys. But a couple of the guns and a couple of the shell casings I found are some

of my favorite times. So you could end up with some, you know, really cool cases that you're working on by doing this. Oh, I think so. They've been the most intriguing for me and I've just been the guy helping out. You know, the dog trainer that can't leave well enough alone, he's got to be out there. Oh yeah, I get that. I get that. Well, this is good information. So I appreciate it. And, you know, maybe we'll do a follow-up if we get enough questions.

So again, if you have questions, send them in. And, uh, Kevin, thanks for the time here. And also thanks for the support you give on my show here with, uh, you know, your advertising. So I appreciate it. Well, thank you. All right. And we'll talk to you soon, Kevin. All right. We'll see you, Jeff. All right. I hope you enjoyed this show. I think it's really good information and hopefully it gets some people thinking that maybe you want to institute a new program into your agency.

That's just only going to be, you know, beneficial to you and your agency in the long run. So give it some thought. And if you like what you hear, reach out to me. If you have questions, we'll do another question answer show if we get enough questions or contact Kevin directly. His His phone number is always on the ads at the beginning. So contact Kevin or me, and either one of us will be happy to help you get that kind of program going.

Finally, I want to wrap up with thanking a couple more sponsors. AceK9.com. AceK9 is a heat alarm and door popper system. Outstanding product. I used it myself when I was still working. I highly recommend AceK9.com. There's a lot of great features. The cell phone feature through the product is one of the best.

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they make please check it out rayellenk9.com and I thank them as always for all the support thanks everybody for listening if you have any questions as always just reach out to me my email is jeffmeyer1 at outlook.com have a safe week. Music.