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26 April 2001
Trained Dogs Greatly Increase Landmine Removal Productivity
By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Security Affairs Writer
Washington -- A single, well-trained dog used to locate landmines
embedded in the ground can do the job of six or seven human deminers.
Rosa, a Belgian Malonois, and her handler, Dan Hayter of the
Texas-based Global Training Academy, demonstrated to a young audience
at the State Department April 26 how a dog and human work as a team to
locate and remove landmines.
Eight year-old Rosa is three weeks into retirement from a life that
has taken her to the minefields of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,
and Africa. Now, she is a demonstration dog, and her skills were on
view for a crowd of 150 children aged 9 to 15, accompanied by their
parents, who were participating in "Take Your Child to Work Day."
Rosa was selected for her original mine-detection role because she is
highly intelligent, very social, and has a keen sense of playfulness.
Finding deadly anti-personnel landmines is a game for her, and Hayter
says her only reward is getting to play with her beloved blue rubber
ball and the attention and affection that comes with finding a mine
successfully.
After emerging from a large travel cage marked "Live Animal," Rosa was
brought out on a leash and hopped past a low retaining wall into a
large, sunny, garden plot in north State Department courtyard. There,
amidst growing Blue Rug Juniper and English Lavender, her owners had
already hidden some inert mines in the ground.
Briefly, she was shown her favorite ball and then sent out in a
straight line on her lead to sniff out the scent of TNT (dynamite) or
C-4 plastic explosives that are associated with metal or plastic
mines. On this breezy day, like any other, it is important that a mine
dog work into the wind to properly pick up the scent of a mine. She
rapidly found an area of ground concealing a mine, sat next to it, as
she has been taught, and looked back at her handler, pointing her
nose. Upon his command, she returned to him for her ball and an
affectionate scratch.
After this, a trained deminer carefully returned to the spot Rosa
identified with a piece of hand-held, mechanical minesweeping
equipment and confirmed the location. Then he used a hand-probe to
clear some space around the mine and check for booby-traps. In real
life, he would then defuse the mine or mark it to be blown up later.
Finally, during this demonstration, he rechecked the ground to make
sure that a second mine was not buried close to the first.
Three hundred eyeballs grew wide watching Rosa move through her paces.
She correctly identified a small, square, popular "shoe box" mine. The
children watching her were silent as Rosa demonstrated her prowess.
Then an adult broke the silence to say he wished he had a dog like
that to find missing tools at home.
But Rosa is too expensive for that. A dog with her training might be
valued on the open market at around $12,000, but she is invaluable in
the number of lives -- human and livestock -- that she has saved. And
Rosa is but one example of nearly 400 demining dogs working in some 50
nations around the world.
Hayter said mine dogs, as they are known, have been introduced as a
way to demine quicker and faster and have increased productivity six
or seven fold. They are trained to find mines in the ground to a depth
of about 10 to 12 centimeters across a path that is one to two meters
wide. U.S.-sponsored mine dogs, which are funded through the State
Department's Office of Global Humanitarian Demining Programs, are used
to teach indigenous demining. They are now working in three additional
countries: Oman, Eritrea and Lebanon.
Lebanon's almost 9,000 landmines date back to the 1975-1990 civil war.
Only some Lebanese minefields have been marked and fenced off. Others
can be found in villages as well as cities. Oman's landmine and
unexploded ordnance problem is small, but still deadly and dates back
to rebellion in the Dhofar region. Eritrea's landmine problem is
severe, stemming from 30 years of civil war.
While mine dogs are not the sole answer to the problem of demining,
Hayter says, they have made a difference in a difficult and dangerous
field. State Department official Richard Stickels says the dogs have
been "priceless" in terms of saved lives.
In some cases, the mine-sniffing dogs have an advantage over a person
because the dog can identify the newer plastic mines whereas a
deminer's detection equipment is only effective in finding older metal
ones. Stickels gave the example of the uselessness of mine detecting
equipment along a rail-line in Mozambique. The mine-detecting
equipment was unable to discriminate between the metal in the rails
and the metal in the mines; the mine dogs could.
The children observing Rosa knew the seriousness of her assignment
because the dog performed against a backdrop of educational materials
depicting the deadly nature of landmines and unexploded ordnance that
cause problems for almost one third of the world. The children, who
were visiting from elementary and secondary schools throughout the
metropolitan area, viewed photo displays of minefields around the
world including the Peru-Ecuador border and Namibia; posters of
various types of mines in Cambodia; deminers and mine dogs in action
in Mozambique and Bosnia; and examples of mine awareness campaigns in
countries such as Cambodia. There was also a static display of
facsimiles of mines designed to promote instant recognition of various
types of mines. As a reminder of their experience there were State
Department-produced comic books (in Spanish and English) and
pamphlets, such as "To Walk the Earth in Safety," as well as colorful
posters to carry back and share with classmates.
They also saw the rapport that develops between a dog and its handler.
Typically, a dog will have one or two handlers during a nine-year
career hunting mines. Even though she had only been working with
Hayter briefly, when his protective face helmet fell off during the
demonstration, Rosa stopped working and kissed his face.
Not everyone is cut out to be a dog handler. Hayter said his company
likes to select individuals who have had experience with dogs in the
military, if possible, but the most important thing is to identify
people who have a sincere desire to care for the animal long-term. "We
need somebody who is dedicated," he explained. Sometimes, he said, 50
to 80 people will be interviewed to work with mine dogs, before a
group of only eight emerge as suitable candidates.
Nothing harmful is done to the dogs during their 14 to 16 week
training period at the Global Training Academy
(http://www.globalcorp.com/trainingacademy/welcome.htm) in San
Antonio, Texas, Hayter said. The dogs do not wear protective vests in
the field because they are too heavy and, sometimes, too hot. Only 10
dogs have been lost due to explosions over 14 years. Another seven or
so have died from tropical diseases.
For more information on the Web about U.S. policy on landmines or
humanitarian demining see:
http://www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/mines/
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