Shelter dogs who couldn't find family homes get a second chance—and an opportunity to save endangered species—through the unique non-profit group Working Dogs for Conservation.
Most often, they’re the dogs no one wants: they’re discovered at animal shelters, running from wall to wall in their small crates, refusing to drop their toys. They probably lived with a family at one point, but were too hyperactive and difficult to keep.
Sometimes, life ends badly for dogs like these—but in some cases, formerly unlucky canines can rebound into a new, planet-saving role, thanks to a non-profit group called Working Dogs for Conservation.
The organization finds high-energy, toy-focused dogs—primarily in animal shelters—and trains them as detection dogs. Instead of training them to sniff for drugs or bombs, however, the animals are trained to identify scent markers of animals in the wild, such as scat, urine, and hair. The dogs are even trained to pick up animal scat and bring it to scientists without disturbing it, which helps researchers uncover clues about native species without ever having to handle or track down the animals themselves. As a reward for his good deed, a conservation dog will then be presented with a red ball.
If you’ve ever lived with a dog, you’ll know that “only a very special dog can be taught not to treat poop like poop,” Ilona Popper writes in The Bark. One of the non-profits founders, Alice Whitelaw, claims that the selection process is tough: “out of every 300 dogs we test, only one even looks like a candidate. And out of these, 60 percent fail.”
For those who pass the rigorous screening, though, the whole world awaits. Recently, the organization’s dogs have been sent to find endangered butterflies, fishers (rare forest predators), desert turtles, and moose.
One former shelter dog, a female named Wicket, recently completed a scent-finding assignment in Guam. The shelter where she used to live, Pintler Pets in Montana, proudly displays a framed photo of the dog on its wall.
“The dogs that they’ve taken, I mean, they’re more or less strays,” Pintler Pets’ owner, Pat Phillip, told the Missoula Independent. “And then to think here they have a job and they’re really doing something for mankind, it’s awesome.”