Know Your Pooch
VK Joshi
The writer is former director, GSI, and an avid animal lover. His understanding of man's best friend comes from over six decades of dedicated association with it
Dogs can indeed detect bugs. Of course, by bugs, I don’t mean the bugs in the computer. I mean the bedbugs and a lot many things with their nose. With a smelling power 80% more than ours, they can do unimaginable things with that. Most of the time they see through their noses. When you appear near the door of the house, your pooch starts sniffing furiously at the bottom of the shut door, because from the tiny gap at the bottom, he can sniff you out. If a stranger is at the door, he will sniff and growl and bark aloud. But when you approach the door he sniffs, scratches the door, and runs in the house out of sheer happiness.
So, what else can they do? The list is endless, I will try to explain my point through some examples. Long ago in 1978, a public meeting was going on at Hyde Park, London. Despite the political and ideological differences between the IRA and the Government, the speaker, an ex-member of the IRA was a big crowd-puller. To avoid an untoward situation, he was given protection by the British Govt. The Britishers are very conscious about their privacy and don’t want a police ‘bandobast’ openly around and or surrounded by commandos in weird outfits. Neither do they like to be frisked while listening to a speaker at Hyde Park. But The police had to do their job. On such occasions, there is always a possibility of a terrorist smuggling a pistol in his/her pocket and creating a ruckus. Hence, they tried an innovative technique!
A lady constable in Mufti, impeccably dressed like a rich woman wearing diamonds and gently spreading the aroma of Christian Dior J'Adore Eau De Parfum around, in her stiletto heels was mingling with the crowd, carrying her sniffer Chihuahua, Ophidia, in her large Gucci handbag. The dog’s head was popping out, a common sight there. The constable was equipped with a concealed collar mic, through which she could communicate with her equally well-attired mates in mufti, present in the crowd. As she passed one young man in jeans and a jacket, her Chi nudged the back of her hand with his moist nose and gave a feeble bark. She changed her position and drifted slightly away; the dog kept on growling but stopped hitting the palm. Once again, she went back towards the suspect and the moment, she stood next to him the dog almost went berserk with his nudges. She alerted her counterparts and in seconds the suspect was whisked away behind the bushes. A search revealed a Beretta pistol in his possession.
How could the tiny Chihuahua sniff a small pistol tucked in the deep pocket of the culprit’s trousers? The secret is that any firearm if fired upon once carries the smell of the gunpowder forever- of course, the quantity is in parts per billion, but good enough for a dog to detect. We have a notion that only certain breeds are capable of doing that. To some extent it is right, but a majority of dogs, when trained can sniff out many things.
How do they do so? Like humans, dogs perceive different scents or odours through scent receptors. You will be amazed to know that as compared to the 5 to 6 million receptors in our nose, dogs have 100 to 300 million receptors. Moreover, the part of the brain that senses and analyses the scent is 40 times larger than ours. Dogs have nasal turbinate, a sponge-like substance and a part of the inhaled air goes through them, which has the scent receptors. Animals communicate their state of mind/body/sexuality to each other through pheromones. Dogs have a vomeronasal organ located between the roof of the mouth and the nasal cavity, which helps dogs to detect pheromones in the air, exuded by other animals including humans.
Armed with such a powerful mechanism, dogs naturally have a much superior ability to sniff a scent than us or many other animals. The pigs are known to have more powerful noses than the dogs, however, they are difficult to train.
You may be wondering why I had started the narrative with bedbugs. They hardly emit any scent. Maybe to you, their scent is neutral, but the researchers in Florida, USA found that dogs can detect the pheromones emitted by bedbugs, up to an accuracy of 97.5%. Not only bedbugs, they can detect German cockroaches and white ants, and during COVID-19 they were able to detect the virus from the nasal swabs of the patients.
I have been training dogs for ages but never trained them to detect bugs or things like that. However, an interesting anecdote will explain their ability to do so, even if not trained. In December 1973, I was undergoing a training course and was camping in a forested area near Maldevta mines. All of us, except one were without any family. There was no restriction on taking the families but since the job involved long hours of trekking, we preferred to go alone, except for one newly married couple. One fine morning we were asked to shift to a spot at Yamuna Pul on the way to Chakrata. This spot turned out to be a cremation ground on the bank of Yamuna. Anyway, we are talking about bugs, and I would like to restrict to them only. The couple left their camp cots in the tent and instead hired a wooden bed from a furniture dealer on Rajpur Road.
I had my fully trained Sydney Silky Terrier bitch, Sofy with me. She was used to spend long hours alone in the tent. She was friendly with others too. The lady in the camp, one day sought my permission, to play with Sofy when her husband was away with us. I said yes, no problem. Sofy became her pal in no time. One evening when I returned, I found Sofy in my tent, in her box. I asked that lady what happened? She said, ‘Sofy was fine as long as I played with her in the open. The day before yesterday I took her inside my tent and made her comfortable on the bed. After a while she began to behave awkwardly, digging at the bed and growling. I took her outside and she became normal. Yesterday again the same thing happened. Hence today I did spend time with her, but she was frequently going inside your tent, hence I left her alone.’
That evening during the dinner the couple informed that they both have got itchy rashes since the day they reached this camp. It was all attributed to the change of place/water and or the food. Finally, the day arrived to wind up the camp and return to our camp at Doon. Our trailers were overloaded with our stuff. My friend’s trailer was much more loaded because there were two of them. Their wooden bed was tied atop their stuff on the top with legs pointing skywards. As the luck would have been the rope of their trailer gave way on the rough road and the bed fell down, fortunately, towards the hillside. Our convoy halted and we all rushed to the spot. Sofy followed me and began barking at the cot and lo, there was a swarm of bedbugs all over. No wonder, she had sniffed them and behaved erratically! So beware, if your dog starts barking while comfortably perched on your bed. There could be bugs…
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