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
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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