The First Rule of Bounder Club
The First Rule of Bounder Club
The first rule of becoming a bounder is, trust your dog. We rely on the millions of receptors in our dogs’ noses to lead us into new discoveries & data on rare species, but you'd be surprised by how often our human selves like to bumble things up.
Alli is a tough cookie & suffers no fools. She knew her job and did it so well & efficiently, that sometimes, with new bounders, she would literally leave them in her dust. "Keep up!" she'd all but bark at the newbies (second rule of Bounder Club is to keep up with your dog).
Alli could work into an odor from over 200 meters away. She's sniffed for endangered Pacific pocket mice whose scat is as tiny as a grain of sand. Then, to outdo herself, she went on to pinpoint endangered Oregon spotted frogs underwater & Silverspot caterpillar who's frass (scat) is the size of pepper flakes.
This is all to say that Alli knows her sh*t, so marten? Psht. Easy peasy. Enter new bounder, Jennifer to the scene. It was only her second project and most bounders don't "graduate" (if there ever is such a thing in our field since we are constantly learning from our dogs) until at least their second year. And this is why...Alli was working fast like she always did and Jennifer was just glad that on this day, at least, she was keeping up. All of a sudden Alli stopped, turned, alerted, and waited as Jennifer came over to inspect.
Jennifer was excited. More marten!! She loved collecting scats because, since everything was still so new to her, collecting scats meant that she was keeping up with her more experienced teammate. Nothing says, "you're doing great" then coming back with scat, right? Actually, that's wrong but that a story for another day.
Anyways, back to Alli... there was nothing, nada, no scat, no data. Jennifer was perplexed. Alli was typically so spot on and there was always a perfect curly mustelid scat waiting to be collected. In fact, Jennifer had already started to get her ball out in anticipation to reward (the third rule of Bounder Club, never get your ball out until you are sure of a reward because you can inadvertently reward a dog by even just going for the ball).
Jennifer tried again, got down, and searched the dirt but still nothing. She knew she was supposed to listen to Alli but what was Alli telling her by stopping at nothing?
She then did what no bounder should ever, ever do unless absolutely certain... She called Alli away (forth rule of Bounder Club, never pull your dog off of an odor). Alli hesitated & Jennifer more firmly called Alli away from her perfect alert. Walking away, Jennifer was plagued with doubt. Who did she think she was, to call Alli off an odor. Alli was so reliable & Jennifer was so new. What did she really know about marten, anyways? Everything she knew she'd learned from Alli. And that's when it hit her.
She doubled back, Alli picking up on the energy & running excitedly to the same exact spot. Jennifer got down on the ground & started digging. A couple of seconds later her hand punched through a layer of duff and to her shock, there was an underground cavity. She got out her headlamp and tried to see inside but couldn't so she got out a sterile collection glove - reached into a dark hole, trusting the whole while that Alli better not have found a snake den when all of a sudden her hand brushed up against not just one something, but several something's.
Pulling her hand out, her glove was grasping not one, not two, but 12 marten scats!! Alli had somehow sniffed the odor from above ground and even though there was not an exit that Jennifer could observe, the smell must have been strong enough she pinpointed the EXACT location of ALL THAT DATA.
From that day forward, Jennifer was a believer. Sure she had seen dogs alert to scats above ground before. It was obvious to her human senses: A+B= C. But what Alli had shown her was that the world our dogs "see" is so much richer in its details and if our dogs are telling us there's something there, we gotta get down on the ground and inspect every inch because we KNOW they're right.
Amazing work as usual, Alli! Thank you for always schooling us, keeping us humble, always learning, and like the popular show, "Do you know more than a 7th grader?", we can say with confidence, no, we do not know more than Alli, or any of our dogs!