Superman and Batman Have Nothing On These Real Heroes!

Oh Boy! What a week!  I live with my Mom and Dad in Western Massachusetts, not in Boston, but lots of our human friends and family members are athletes and run in the Boston Marathon so when we heard about the bombs we were very scared.

Mom stayed at her computer, following Face Book and Twitter and Dad watched the TV news.  So much happened so fast.  Boston Police, Massachusetts State Police and so many other law enforcement agencies ran to Boston.  Not much was said on the news, but some of those who responded and who where there doing their jobs were Explosive Detector Dogs, otherwise known as Bomb Sniffing Dogs.

These dogs are my heroes. My human grandmother lives near a State Police Barracks where they have a K-9 agility course built by the members of a local Boy Scout Troop as the project for one of the Scouts to earn his Eagle Scout ranking.

Sometimes when Mom visits, I can watch the dogs run the course.  I would love to try but I know you need special training to do agility and even more to be a real Bomb Sniffing Dog.

Bomb Sniffing Dogs start their training like all of us dogs in Obedience Training.  They have to learn all the normal stuff like sit and stay.  The only difference is that they can be trained in different languages.  Where I learned to “sit”, “stay” and “come, a Bomb Sniffing Dog might learn to Sitzen Sie, bleiben Sie, kommen Sie or sente-se, permaneça, venha.

How cool is that?!  Bomb Sniffing Dogs speak several languages.

After regular Obedience Training, they get special training so they can focus under distraction.  These dogs have to work in big crowds, where there are lots of noises and smells and they even have to work when there is gun fire.  I have trouble focusing when I see a bird or a squirrel.

Bomb Searching Dogs learn how to sniff out all kinds of scents like dynamite, plastic explosives, TNT, detonation cords, ammonium nitrate and a whole bunch more nasty stuff that can be used to make bombs.

They learn how to search buildings as well as cars and packages.  The different types of searches required different types of training.

I think the Bomb Sniffing Dogs that patrolled the race route before the race and those who went back in after the explosions, when there was a real danger of more bombs, were very brave, as were their human partners.  I read that four dogs from Rhode Island came to help the Massachusetts dogs.

This was a very bad thing that happened and it was wonderful that so many humans, including non law enforcement humans, helped in so many ways.  I am especially proud that some of those who helped were canine.  Dogs Rule!

Zeva

P.S.  Shameless self promotion.  If anyone deserves one of our To The Rescue Gift Basket, it's a dog who is on the job.