The Winnipeg Free Press-The nose knows

 

The Winnipeg Free Press
Special Section 5, Saturday, April 12, 2008, p. f6

The nose knows

By Cheryl Binning

Anyone who has watched their pooch sniff out a bone it buried in the ground a year earlier is not surprised by a dog's amazing nose.

In fact, a canine's sense of smell is reported to be 1,000 times more sensitive than that of a human. While we have around five million olfactory receptors in our noses, a dog has more than 220 million. To give you a sense of how strong their sniffers really are, dogs can detect the scent of one drop of blood in five quarts of water. So no wonder your pup could spend half an hour sniffing the base of a single tree.

Dogs' snouts have been put to work in many ways. Canines are used by narcotics units to seek out illegal drugs and by search and rescue teams to find people buried in the wreckage of natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

Another important area where their incredible sense of smell is proving invaluable is in detecting landmines left buried in the ground years after conflicts have ceased in war-torn countries around the world. These hidden bombs kill or maim around 20,000 innocent victims every year, many of which are children, and make vast areas of land unsafe for development.

De-mining organizations are working in numerous countries to safely remove landmines and return land to nearby villages, but the work is dangerous and painstakingly slow. This is where dogs, trained to smell the explosives hidden in the ground, are speeding up the work greatly.

The University of Winnipeg has made a strong commitment to help eradicate landmines and has come up with a pet project of its own to aid in this effort.

The university is raising $15,360 toward the purchase and training of a mine-sniffing dog through the Canadian Landmines Foundation and the Canadian International Demining Corporation, (CIDC), a Nova Scotia-based non-profit charity that trains dogs to work on de-mining teams in Bosnia, where an estimated one million landmines remain after a civil war.

As part of the mine-sniffing dog program, the university gets to choose the dog's name, which will be called Wesley, after Wesley Hall, the heritage building on campus.

"We held a conference on campus last November where we heard from the Canadian Landmines Foundation that clearing landmines is 10 times more effective with dogs," says Naniece Ibrahim, communications and marketing officer at the U of W. "So purchasing the dog is our way of contributing to de-mining and keeping the issue of landmines alive."

Dogs are particularly important when de-miners first go to a village and try to determine where the landmines are located. Dogs can sniff out a large area quickly and efficiently.

As well, de-mining operations often use tank-like vehicles called Flails that have high-speed drums that beat the ground and detonate the mines.

"We can't rely on this equipment to be 100 per cent effective, so after the equipment goes through, we follow with dogs who sweep the area just to make sure we haven't missed any landmines," explains David Horton, executive director of the CIDC.

Metal detectors are often used to find the hidden explosives, but their sensors also pick up tin cans and other metal buried in the ground, which slows down the process. Dogs smell the actual explosives, so they speed up the process greatly. As well, some landmines are hidden in plastic, which the metal detectors won't find, so the canine nose is useful in those cases.

"We have trained over 80 mine-detection dogs and have not lost a single canine to an accident in a landmine field," says Horton.

Typically, German shepherds and black and yellow labs are purchased because they are intelligent, trainable, have strong hunting drives and are not too excitable. They also adapt well to various weather and terrain conditions.

Dogs begin their training at a year to 18 months of age and spend up to nine months learning obedience, scent recognition and search pattern skills with a single handler, who will be assigned to the dog throughout its working life so that the human and animal bond.

The dogs learn to recognize the smell of explosive material, then progressively to identify those scents first in hidden tubes and finally at various depths in the ground. They also learn to sniff the ground in metre-long lanes so that they don't miss a single spot of ground in a tract of land.

After training, the dogs are tested on a minefield containing buried explosives that have been defused.

"To pass, the dog has to find all the mines and not have any false indications of landmines," says Horton. "After they pass this test, they do an external test run by the Bosnia Mine Action Centre. Dogs have to be tested and re-accredited twice a year."

Out on a real landmine field, a tract of land is cordoned off in 100-square-metre grids that are then divided into one-metre-wide lanes running north to south. The handler stands outside the lane with the dog on a long leash. The dog runs up the lane with its nose to the ground. After all 10 lanes have been searched, another set of lanes is set up, this one running east to west, and the dog goes through the process again so that every blade of grass has been sniffed twice by the dog.

"If the dog smells an explosive, it is trained to sit down immediately," says Horton. "That is the signal to the handler to withdraw the dog from the danger area and a de-miner comes in with a mine detector to search for the landmine and safely dig it out of the ground."

Mine-sniffing dogs typically work for five to seven years and then retire, usually going to live with their handlers as pets. Or CIDC staff take them in.

"We would never sell or destroy these dogs," says Horton. "These dogs have helped save many lives."

Anyone interested in contributing to the U of W's purchase of Wesley can visit www.uwinnipegfoundation.ca/choose/index/20

cheryl.binning@freepress.mb.ca

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