Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 13, 1978)
Davy Crockett: A scent-sniffing crook-catching Bloo £7 Drawing by Jim Payne By JULIE MORTON Of the Emerald Davy Crockett is six years old, weighs about 147 pounds and gets in on a lot of action. He recently came to Lane County join the search for Rex Larsen, a suspect in the Springfield cab driver homicide. Davy is one of Oregon’s best detec tives. He's a registered bloodhound search dog. The Oregon Sheriffs Association owns Davy and his kennelmate Re becca Boone. They are Oregon’s only search dogs. And since Rebecca is not yet fully trained, Davy does most of the work, according to the dogs’ handler, Sergeant Mike Cook of the Coos County Sheriff Department. ‘ Rebecca will work well with Davy but he won’t work with her," Cook says. Although they live in Coos County, Cook takes Davy to assist in search ef forts all over the state and occasional ly Northern California. “We usually search for lost or injured people — also for escapees, but that isn’t a priority,” Cook says. A prerequisite for search is a scent ar ticle. The problem Cook often encoun ters is finding an article that only the mis sing person has touched. “It’s especially hard with little kids be cause their parents touch so much of their stuff,” Cook says. As a result he often uses the child's bedding. Once Davy has the scent article he needs a place to begin searching, a place where he can catch the scent. "As the body builds new cells, it sluffs off the old ones. The bacteria that works on the dead cells creates the scent that my dogs go on,” Cook says. “I’ve seen him lick a rock with his ton gue to bring the scent out,” he says. Davy finds what he's looking for about 50 percent of the time. Extreme temper atures are hard on the bacteria and pavement is a notorious killer. But the strength of human scent is often surpris ing. Davy has successfully tracked a week-old scent on a hot summer’s day, according to Cook. Another search he remembers involved iooking for a little boy who was lost in the Bend area. “He lived by a canal and his trail led to it and then down it for about for about four miles. At that time I told them I thought he must have fallen in about four miles back. A search plane found his body,” Cook says. Search dogs have located people buried under land slides, snow and water. If a scent is fresh, Davy will run, ac cording to Cook. And contrary to the typi cal television bloodhound, Davy does not bark wildly while on a trail; he is silent. Cook's and Davy’s most recent call was the search for Rex Larsen. They tracked him up a bank and into the brush, where they found a lot of evi dence, according to Cook. The scent then took them to the highway where their part in the search temporarily ended A few days after Larsen was spotted on a back porch of a house. Cook and Davy were called back and they tracked Larsen down a rail road track for about nine miles. "He had gone ahead and given himeif up. I don’t know if he knew about us or not,” Cook says. If Davy had found Larsen, he would have protected him, according to Cook. “If he finds it, he figures it belongs to him.” Davy began his training by playing hide-and-seek with children. “You have the children hide and the pups will natur ally follow,” Cook says. Once the pup has that down, the chil dren are told to go farther and a scent article is introduced. “If he finds the right one, you praise him,” Cook says. The training intensifies with time and adults take over and purposely lay a track for the dog. “Thee days later, you have the dog follow it,” Cook says. A dog wants to please his master , ac cording to Cook. Although Davy gets plenty of affection when he does it right, there is something he likes better. “Bloodhounds are loving animals but they like food more than anything else,” Cook says. The number of calls for Davy’s help varies. Cook estimates they go out a bout six to ten times a year. “The biggest factor that’s helped our program is having the Coast Guard Air Station close to us,” Cook says. The Coast Guard will fly them just about anywhere, as quickly as they need to get there, according to Cook. Davy originally cost about $350. Cook says he isn’t sure what Davy would sell for now. Sergeant Dave Robinson, also of the Coos County Sheriff Department says a fully trained police attack dog goes for about $1,800. Is a search dog worth as much? “This is an animal that saves lives,” Cook says. I Cancer researcher elaborates on rat use By KATHLEEN MONJE Of the Emerald Ever wondered why feeding rats the equivalent of 800 bottles of diet drink a day proves that sac charin causes cancer in humans? Richard Bates, physician and associate director for car cinogenesis research at the Na tional Cancer Institute recently told the FDA “Consumer” why animals are used for testing sul> stances which might be harmful to people. Ethics and practical impos sibilities make it much simpler to test food additives in animal sub jects, Bates said. “Testing any chemical in hu mans involves some risk, he said, and any benefit from additive use is seldom significant enough to justify those risks. From a practical aspect, the controls possible with animal ex perimentation ensure sounder re sults than tests with humans could, according to Bates. The animals’ air, water, food and bedding can be kep uniform and sterile, so researchers can be sure the experiment’s results are connected with the substance being tested. “Obviously, you can’t subject humans to this kind of control," Bates said. "It is simply impossi ble to conduct highly controlled experiments for 20 years or more on human volunteers." Tests with rats and other ani mals accurately reflect human re sponses, Bates said, because we share basic biological mech anisms. “Insects get cancer, fish get cancer...and cancers in laboratory animals are essentially the same as cancers in human be ings." Even bacteria have genetic mechanisms so similar to humans that they are being used in a new test for chemicals, according to Bate. "If a chemical causes the bac teria to mutate, there appears to be a strong possibility that the chemical may be cancer causing.” The enormous doses of sus pected additives given to test animals is necessary, Bates said. “You see, if we assume that low doses of a chemical might cause cancer in one out of every 100,000 humans or animals, then a test to detect this one cancer ccuid take as many as 100.000 animals." Noting that this would be im practical, Bates said the solution is to use smaller number of ani mals and increase the dose of the chemical being tested. He said the method works be cause the rat has a shorter life span — about two years — and the little rodents metabolize and excrete substances much faster than man. Though Bates acknowledges there is no way of exactly predict ing how many humans will con tract cancer from a given product on the basis of animal tests, he said scientific estimates are accu rate. He also pointed out that only healthy, well-fed animals are used in experiments, in a protected en vironment. “Most humans, on the other hand, do not live in sheltered environments...our population in cludes the ill and the weak — peo ple who would be comparatively more susceptible to cancer than 1 r \ PSYCHIC Advises on business, love & personal direction Jamil PO Box 10154 Eugene, Oregon 97401 Phone anytime: 842 2210 484 2441 V y VW’S MERCEDES BMW’S DATSUN TOYOTA 2025 Franklin Blvd Eugene Ore 97403 Home Ph. 746-1207 GUENTER SCHOENER Bus Ph 342-2912 test animals.” Bates said there isn’t a relation ship between dosage of a chemi cal and its ability to cause cancer. If people are exposed to a smal ler dose of a cancer-causing agent, fewer will get cancer. “The rub is we can’t guarantee that even if we keep lowering the dose no one will get cancer," he said. -1 A rich, important novel" “Anya is a remarkable picture of what has come to be known as ‘modern woman While she may be more appealing — because she knows what she is doing—she is more ruthless than most feminist heroines... .Yet Mac is an admirable charac ter, a new kind of hero.” Meet Mac and Anya. Two people who dare to try for trust and love in a society that opts for the safety of the casual affair. .JKKAN /OHS QlStS' “An extraordinary novel ’ ’— The National Observer L A times The New York Times l 81870 S2 25 Now in paperback from SOCKET BOOKS
