The Latest In Scientific Field Equipment? Fido's Nose
Dave Vesely is busy training his dog, Sharpy. She isn't learning to sit or fetch or even herd sheep; Sharpy is learning to find the nests of western pond turtles.
These turtles are sneaky. After laying their eggs in a small hole, they knead together dirt, leaves and their own urine to plug the opening. Once this mud dries, the nest looks like an unremarkable patch of ground.
But that kind of stealth can't protect the turtles from urban development. The western pond turtle is disappearing from the Pacific Northwest as its native habitat is claimed by humans.
Vesely, who works at the , hopes to give the turtles a fighting chance. To keep foxes and raccoons away from their tasty eggs, he can place small metal cages over the nests. But first, he has to find them.
"It's almost impossible," Vesely says. "After just hours and hours of walking across fields looking for nests, it just occurred to me — I've got a dog at home that could probably do this better than I can."
Vesely and his wife own five — big, furry Belgian sheepdogs, jet black from nose to tail. Millions of years of evolution have shaped these dogs into excellent predators, with eyes that pick up movement in dim light, sensitive ears and an incredibly powerful nose.
(...)
The popularity of the dogs isn't hard to understand. They speed up a tedious process ... and they're the only piece of field equipment that can wag.
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