A weekend retreat was part for training in a controlled environment, and part a bit of playtime — for both man and beast.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s K-9 units from around the state came to train at the ranch of Keith Stehling northwest of Fredericksburg on Jan. 17-18. The weekend offered a time for serious exercises for the K-9 pups and a small chance to relax and enjoy camaraderie for the TPWD Game Wardens.
For Stehling, a local insurance agent, the gathering is a chance to support law enforcement and support them by offering a private piece of land where they can both work and relax. He and girlfriend Amanda Newman hosted the group, cooked briskets and bought pizzas the following day, keeping officers fed as they performed different exercises around his acreage.
And the trainings varied from live search using other officers to a more ominous one using a piece of human remains.
Tim Tokash, the newest of the K-9 officers, led his dog “Roux” to find a missing person — actually State Parks Officer Tara Bayliss — in a wooded area. He tracked, went astray, got back on the scent, and found her inside of five minutes. Then he barked his find.
Roux was rewarded with lots of “good boys” and games of fetch to run off the extra energy.
Statewide duties
Captain Christy Vales said a human can smell odors like a fire up to 100 yards away, but a dog’s sense of smell can be 10,000 up to 100,000 times stronger than that of a person. While a human could smell a small fire nearby, a dog can track a scent to the West Coast.
The K-9 Wardens meet quarterly to train somewhere around Texas. Each dog specializes in either: Police search and rescue, involving live person search; ca- daver on both land and water searches, such as a drowning; K-9s can help triangulate and get a tighter grid so the sonar can get closer; narcotics; and wildlife detection, which can involve anything from deer poaching to illegal harvesting of shark fin, popular in some Asian cultures where it is considered an aphrodisiac.
All K-9 Game Warden trucks are equipped to house and handle the dogs. New smartphone apps let the officers control the temperature. Vales can get an alert saying the truck temperature is too high, even while she may be on the other side of the state. In that case, the fan kicks on, the windows go down and the horn begins honking. Other equipment includes first-aid packs, hydration supplies and a GPS tracking collar to record where they have been. They can keep track of the dog no matter where the pup is.
Every handler has a bedroll, a pillow and a cot, plus MREs, a cooking stove and other equipment. Many times the K-9 officers stay in state parks to be frugal and save funds.
TPWD’s K-9 unit has 10 positions around the state, but with one recently having retired, there were nine in attendance and one vacancy. As the dogs specialize in different scentfinding areas, they can be deployed all over the state’s 254 counties.
“We have spots we go all over the state,” Vales said. “Sometimes we stay at different state parks all over the state. But it’s important for us to train in different climates all over the state because the handlers are not assigned to a county. They’re a statewide resource.”
A nose for search
When searching for a human, anything with the human odor can be used to help the dog track. That can range from a set of keys to a piece of Chapstick, Vales said.
“This is going to be a cadaver search by one of our handlers who has forensic (evidence),” Vales said.
All the officers are sergeants, except Tokash, who is only two years into his K-9 training.
“This is a realistic scenario,” said Gillespie County’s K-9 Sergeant Dustin Fleming. “This is a car potentially used in a crime scene. They use these human remains dogs to find blood splatter or blood evidence to find any particular human remains.”
Game Warden Joni Owen takes her lab “Cam” around the vehicle. The dog surrounds the car, then gets still and “points” to the spot. The lab then gets to play.
“In this scenario, we use what’s called a scent box or scent tray. It’s a magnetic box (attached to the frame) right in front of that wheel well. Dogs are odor detectors and they utilize the wind to their advantage.”
“Cam” creeped and pinpointed the odor quickly.; “It could have been just blood on the vehicle,” he said. The dog could also tell the difference between if someone had hit a deer and had animal blood in the car grill, versus human blood in or around the vehicle.
“In the training, we create diversions and purposely try to trip our dogs up,” Fleming said. “We load it up with distractors, like deer or narcotics, and the dog would have to pass all those things up (if looking for human remains evidence).”
Gillespie County’s other Game Warden, Josh Sako, followed the dog from the air with a drone, giving an additional tool for searches. The drone can follow the dog as it searches for people alive or dead, narcotics or wildlife.
Stehling said he enjoys providing a spot for the officers to train and relax out of the spotlight.
“These people give up so much time and dedicate themselves to keeping us safe and solving crime,” Stehling said. “I’m happy I can offer them a place to both train and enjoy each other’s company.”
SUPPORT
Persons who want to support Game Wardens or the K-9 Department in particular can donate equipment through the TPWD Foundation a program called “Gear Up for Game Wardens,” a tax-deductible way to donate equipment. Visit www.gearupforgamewardens. org for more information.
