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"PAWS FOR THOUGHT ...Even Dogs Need Hope"
The following story was originally printed in the American Chronicle of Higher Education in October 2001. It concerns a case taken on by Dr Lawrence Myers, a professor of veterinary medicine who specialises in working with detector dogs (used for finding drugs and explosives, search and rescue etc.) :
Search and rescue dogs were used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City
bombing. Teams searching for survivors were only finding bodies for removal from
the wreckage. After a few days, all the dogs quit working. They just would not
function and were pulling away from the site. Dr. Myers was called in to find
out why they would no longer work and he came to the conclusion the dogs were
depressed. They were trained to find living people and all they were finding was
bodies. Myers' solution was to ask some of the volunteers to hide in the
wreckage so the dogs could find some people alive. Subsequently all the dogs
were able to resume the body search, although with more frequent breaks and some
further opportunities to experience success. In these difficult circumstances, a
single moment of hope and joy enabled the dogs to do the job that had to be done
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