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| Name: |
Oatmeal
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Age: |
Six and a half years old
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| Gender: |
Female
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Breed: |
Yellow Lab mix
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| Home: |
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
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This
is a picture of Oatmeal. She is a Yellow
Lab with a little Great Dane in her history. She is from Far
Fetched Kennels in Nappa Valley, California, at least that is where she
entered the Air Force from. She was purchased by the Department of
Defense to train as an explosive detection K-9. Once her training
was complete at Lackland Air Force Base she was assigned to me. We
both work at the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport for the
airport police. We have been a working team for two years now and
expect to make five more together.
Oatmeal is not only a working dog, she is a great pet. She
is very affectionate to everyone and has many friends at the
airport. If you are flying through Charlotte please stop in and say
hello, Oatmeal would love it.
We have never, in three years, found any illegal explosives
or devices in our tour of duty. We train every day, with live
explosives, so she does find explosives every day that we work. In
regards to finding drugs, it is impossible to train a dog, as far as
I know, to do both drugs and explosives. The dog has the ability to
find both and there is no problem training them to do so but, the
problem comes when the dog responds. Dogs are taught a response to
an odor, not a substance. When drug dogs are trained the response is
chosen more by the dog than the trainer. That is, if a dog wants to
tear into a package to indicate a find it is allowed. This is good
as it allows the dog to be more involved in its own training. But
there is only one response allowed with an explosive detection dog;
passive. We do not want a dog biting into an explosive device or
compound. The dog has to be taught a passive response and this
response can be somewhat chosen by the dog but it has to be
entirely passive. Most dogs sit but there are some dogs that lay
down beside the package. Any passive response is acceptable.
We have four more years to work together and we hope to never find an
active device. But, if we do we know that our response and reaction
will be passive, safe and proper. Here at the airport we have a
Drug Interdiction Unit composed of several agencies that use dogs to
detect drugs and we have one Agriculture Beagle to detect food items
in our international reception area. Our city fire department just
retired their arson detection dog and I am not sure their new dog is
on line yet. Oatmeal is owned by the Department of Defense on loan
to the Federal Aviation Administration assigned to our airport and
handled by me.
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