Bomb Detection Dog - Taking a Chance on an American Bulldog

The facts were these: a man had 5 dogs, all of whom had escaped his yard. A few of these dogs killed other neighbors’ chickens. Several witnesses claimed they saw the two darker dogs (the other three dogs being lighter in color) attack the chickens. Because these dogs had unfortunately gotten out before, and this was the second time that chickens had been killed as a result, it was decided during the hearing that all 5 dogs were to be destroyed.

During the hearing, the dogs were all housed at the shelter that I managed. One particular dog, an all-white American Bulldog who I will call “Chance,” stood out to all of us. I don’t like to anthropomorphize, but I will say this, if ever there were an astute dog, it was Chance. He was very polite and took all commands from us very seriously. When we told him to “sit” as we entered his kennel, he did so right away and looked at us with very large, serious, brown eyes, waiting on our next command. When we took him for a walk, he gently walked on the lead, sniffing along the way, just long enough to take in his surroundings but not too long that he lingered. If we stopped walking, Chance would stop and patiently sit and watch us, waiting for his next cue. I had a very hard time believing that this dog was a savage chicken-killer.

One day, on a whim, one of my employees and I took Chance out to the shelter’s barnyard area, which housed about 10 chickens, all free-roaming, in a large, enclosed, area. As I cautiously approached that area with Chance, I watched him very closely, waiting for any change in his demeanor that would suggest he was ready for a chicken dinner. As we got to the fence, Chance noticed the chickens, lifting his head and sniffing in their general direction. Then, because I had stopped, he sat down and stared at me - as usual. Feeling a little more emboldened, I slowly opened up the door to the barnyard area and led him within a few feet of a very leery-looking hen. Again, Chance sniffed in her direction and then went about sniffing the ground and exploring the area around him. Finally, after doing this with him for about 20 minutes, I put down his leash and slowly walked away from him, just on the off chance that he was some evil doggy-genius fooling me with disinterest so that I would get overly-confident and give him the opportunity to pick-off a feathered morsel. Again, he could not have cared less that there were chickens anywhere near him. Even when a group of three rapidly clucking hens hurried past him at full-speed, no prey drive kicked in. Chance was not a chicken-killer in the least.

While this was a small victory to discover, I knew that this would not change the decision. To make matters worse, word had gotten back to the outside animal control agency that was responsible for this case that the employees at my shelter were hesitant to euthanize Chance, and the head officer demanded that one of her officers take a Polaroid picture of Chance’s body once he was dead to prove that we had gone through with it. I resigned myself to the reality that Chance would be yet another victim of a careless owner and went about my work.

In the meantime, a few police officers from a bomb squad unit for a particularly large city had come to our shelter to see if they could find any dogs that would be suited for their program. This is not an uncommon practice as we have many different police departments, and other agencies that use service dogs, that will occasionally come through our facility to see if we have any dogs that test well for police work. Our percentage of incoming purebreed dogs was anywhere from 20-30%, and a lot of them had their lives spared through this program.

One of the officers from the bomb squad zeroed in on Chance and asked if they could test him. I told her “no” and explained the situation. She was quiet for a second while she stared at him and asked if she could take him out anyways. While it was against shelter policy for a dog deemed “dangerous” to be taken out and walked by anyone other than shelter personnel, I decided to let her do this, figuring it would at least give Chance the opportunity to run around and get some human interaction before he was put to sleep. The officer entered his kennel and, as always, he politely sat down, alert and ready for her next command. She slowly led him out to our enclosed play area to begin testing him, and I went back to work.

About 45 minutes later, she found me to talk about Chance.

“You know,” she started, “He tested better than most of the shelter dogs that we see. I think he would be a perfect addition to the program.”

That broke my heart even more. I knew he would test well. He was obedient, eager to please, and listened very well. The fact that he tested well also meant that he had what we call “ball drive.” This meant that he was very motivated to play with a tennis ball, a big component in service dog training. This also meant that he could distinguish between chasing a ball and chasing small animals. This was another huge plus in his favor. I took her card and told her I would call her in the morning with information on the other dogs that they were interested in.

After she left, I was talking to one of my employees, Jim, who had been at the shelter for much longer than I had been and was lamenting at how unfair it was that Chance could have an amazing life as a bomb squad dog, saving lives and working to protect people, and yet he had to die over a technicality. Jim was quiet for a minute and then said, “Well, you know, there is always the “Witness Protection Program” method.” With that, I burst out laughing and asked him what in the world he was talking about. He went on to tell me about a similar situation with a German Shepherd dog and how they faked his euthanasia paperwork and secretly handed him over to a police department that wanted him. It just so happened that this particular dog was also handled by the same agency that was handling Chance, and he speculated that this was the reason that the head officer wanted a picture of Chance after he died; they had apparently heard rumors of the German Shepherd going to the police department and did not want to take a chance that we would do the same thing this time.

After this conversation, the wheels in my head were turning faster than ever. If only there were a way that I could get past the whole Polaroid issue, then we could sneak Chance into the bomb detection program! As I was mixing up a fresh bottle of euthanasia solution and getting the tranquilizers prepared for the day’s euthanasias, it hit me. The euthanasia solution that we use in shelter-work comes in powder form with a small blue tablet in it. This tablet is simply a dye that is used to turn the euthanasia solution blue so that it would be clearly marked as a bad substance. The powder is reconstituted with water, the tablet is dissolved, and then we have our blue euthanasia solution. What if I gave Chance a high dose of the tranquilizer, snipped off a bit of the tablet, mixed it with a little bit of the same kind of saline solution that is used for IV fluids, and injected Chance with this fake “euthanasia solution” in front of the officer? As I was getting more excited about this idea, the little voice in the back of my head was saying, “Are you crazy?!?! This is illegal on *so* many levels. You could lose your job or worse!” I decided to ignore the voice and snuck into my office to call the officer from the bomb detection squad.

Once I told her my idea, she was quiet for a minute, and then said, “You tell us when to be there with the truck, and we will be there.”

I went back to Jim and told him about my plan and that we had the agreement of the bomb squad to help us. We called the contracted animal control agency to tell them that they could send over an officer to not only take a picture of the body but to witness the euthanasia. We told them that Chance would be euthanized at 6pm after the shelter was closed. Not too long after this, the assistant Executive Director of my shelter, who also happened to be my boss, approached me. He told me he had some suspicions about what was going on. I stared at him for a minute, not saying a word, as I tried to figure what, if anything, I should tell him. We had butted heads on numerous occasions and I didn’t feel comfortable letting him in on what we were doing. After a minute he finally said, “Whatever you are doing or thinking of doing, I don’t want to know. Tell me what I should hear, and I will back you on that if it comes into question.”

I told him that Chance was being euthanized at 6pm sharp and that we had invited the officer on the case to witness it. He said, “Then that is all I need to know,” and left. I sighed with relief and quickly walked back to the euthanasia room to set up the “staging area.”

At approximately 5:45pm, I led Chance into the Euthanasia Room. Sadly, there is a common occurrence when a dog walks into a Euthanasia Room. I don’t know if it’s that “sixth sense” that animals have or if they can smell the common smells accompanying death, but many dogs become anxious when they walk into that room. Chance was no different. My normally composed and reserved Chance walked in, stopped, sniffed, and quickly tried to back out of the room, finally sitting down and looking up at me. Even though I know dogs cannot understand what you say to them, I pleaded out loud, “Please just trust me that everything will be ok!” I gave his leash a little yank, and he reluctantly followed.

We sat Chance down on a blanket. Jim put him in a common restraint hold and held off the vein in Chances front leg while I slid the needle of a syringe–full of tranquilizer–into it. After I got a flashback of blood, I slowly plunged down on the syringe, and Chance quickly fell to the ground. He was out cold. Jim and I gave each other a quick stare, and I nodded at him to bring in the animal control officer who was outside waiting to view and take pictures of Chance’s euthanasia.

The officer, Todd, came in with his Polaroid and plopped himself down in the chair at the work desk. As I spoke, I tried not to sound too rushed to get through it and made the best attempt at casual conversation that I could. I again had Jim hold-off Chance’s front-leg vein so that I could inject it with the fake “euthanasia solution” that was already prepared in the syringe. Todd at this point had gotten up from his chair and was standing right next to us. As I plunged the fake solution into Chance, I heard a snap and saw the flash of the Polaroid camera and thought to myself, “Ok, now just get him out of here before he sees that Chance is still breathing.” Luckily I had given Chance as high a dose of the tranquilizer as safely possible for him, so his breathing was fairly shallow.

I hurried Todd out of the shelter, telling him that I had dinner plans and needed to clean-up the Euthanasia Room before I left. Once he had driven away, I called the bomb squad officer who was waiting with one of the other officers in their truck at the far-end of the shelter parking lot. They quickly drove around and backed their truck up to the doors of the Euthanasia Room. We wrapped Chance up in the blanket on which he was laying, picked up his limp body, and put it in the back of the covered truck bed. Jim and I quickly gave Chance the reversal agent to the tranquilizer and covered him up with more blankets. I gave the bomb squad agents the instructions on watching Chance wake up from this particular tranquilizer, told them the signs to look for in case he needed to go to the veterinarians’ office, kissed Chance one last time, and sent them off into the night.

Chance is now a bomb detection dog for this particular bomb squad. I still think about him often. I wonder how he is doing in his role as protector and marvel at how well he was suited for such a role. I still have his shelter paperwork that I took when I left my position at that shelter. It’s his impound form with the snapshot we took of him when he first got to the shelter, looking dignified and studious as usual. I have to chuckle a little every time I get to the bottom of that form and see the big, red, stamped letters pronouncing “EUTHANIZED.”