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Northern Chapter of the New Mexico Network for Women in Science and Engineering LUNCHTIME TALK SERIES sponsored by the Synergy Center , the Zocher Corporation and the Bradbury Science Museum Talk at 12:00, Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Bradbury Science Museum Auditorium 15th and Central, Los Alamos |
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Wendee Brunish, EES-11, LANL & Halley, Search Dog Search and Detection Dogs |
Dogs can be trained to locate, identify, and alert on a number of sources, including live humans, drugs, and explosives. In the search and rescue world, dogs are increasingly being used to locate human remains (known as human remains detection or HRD). This can range from a whole body (e.g., a deceased hiker in the wilderness) to tiny amounts of human flesh, fluids, teeth or bone (e.g., forensic evidence at a murder scene). For HRD, as for explosive and drug detection, dogs have several significant advantages over man-made detection devices. These advantages include the ability to localize, the ability to discount large background sources, and the ability to discriminate between similar scent sources. An additional advantage of dogs over machines is the ability to practice "intelligent disobedience", i.e., looking where the "operator" has told the dog not to look. I will discuss the attributes of a good search dog, the training of a search dog, and the specific training for an HRD dog. My search dog Halley and I will demonstrate some of the abilities described above, including localization, large background, and scent discrimination.
Biography:
Wendee Brunish is a dog handler
with 16 years experience working with government
and law enforcement agencies. She is also a Team Leader in the
Geophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory working on
issues related to underground nuclear test readiness, and a long time
LAWIS member.
Halley is a six-year-old golden retriever/labrador retriever mix.
Both of her parents had successful careers as search dogs. Her
mother Mona is credited with the only water cadaver find in New
Mexico. Halley is certified for both wilderness air scent search
and for cadaver search. She has participated in many searches
over the past 5 and half years, including a search on Laguna
Pueblo where she and her litter mate Sizzle helped redirect the
law enforcement effort by finding and identifying burnt human
remains.
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Members and Nonmembers Welcome! Open to the Public |  |
LunchTalks webpage: https://nmnwse.org/lawis/lunchtalks
