This Organization Saves “Unadoptable” Dogs And Trains Them Into Crime Fighters

Maybe you’ve seen one before: a shelter dog with a wild streak, jumping, spinning, barking, and swirling around with as much energy as the Tasmanian Devil. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to find a home for these kind of dogs that are nearly unmanageable.

However, these hyper hounds make the perfect candidates for Working Dogs For Conservation (WD4C), where their focused fixation and boundless energy are put to good use.

Described as “the world’s leading conservation detection dog organization” on their site, this group trains canines to sniff out clues that solve crimes, bust criminals, and enhance conservation.

These dogs can detect a multitude of scents: narcotics, cadavers, people who need rescuing, illegal snares, endangered animals and plants, noxious weeds, aquatic life, and more.

Because of the intensity of this work, with lives and species at stake, this organization seeks out to recruit the most strong-willed pups they can find- often, the “unadoptables.”

“Great conservation detection dogs have an obsessive play drive and an unrelenting toy focus. Their never-quit attitude makes them nearly impossible to keep in a family home, but perfect members of the WD4C family,” explains the website.

Partnering with International Fund for Animal Welfare, these two organizations formed the Rescues 2 the Rescue program, educating shelter staff to identify solid WD4C candidates, and helping to recruit the best pack possible.

This means that not only is wildlife saved, but the dogs who are trained to do the work are rescues as well, having faced the fate of almost certain euthanasia.

Ruger, a “bad dog”

One of the dogs on the WD4C team was named Ruger. He was the first anti-poaching dog in Zambia. He had been trained to find ivory and rhino horns, bush meat, guns and ammunition.

“I trained him and I found him to be a horrible dog,” said Megan Parker, PhD Director of Researching, in a TEDx Talk. “He bit and snapped at people. He was scary to approach. He was everything you fear in a dog.”

As it turned out, this dog’s bull-headed behavior led to his success. When road blocks were set up at the entrance of a national park, the destination of many illegal poachers, Ruger was able to “search” each vehicle in a matter of minutes, a task that could take the human scouts hours.

In the video below, Parker tells a story of Ruger checking out a loaded van. He sat and looked at his handler–demonstrating his “alert”–but after unpacking the cluttered vehicle, they found nothing.

Ruger gave his alert again, this time sitting next to a particular piece of luggage. As the scouts unpacked the suitcase, they finally found something: wrapped in clothes, within a plastic bag in a matchbox, was a primer cap, an illegal component to a handmade rifle.

With that, any doubts about Ruger’s amazing sensing abilities vanished.

We love how this organization sees the potential in these “bad dogs”–what a talented bunch of pups!

If you’d like to help the WD4C conserve wildlife and save lives, you can make a donation here.

Watch Megan Parker’s Tedx Talk: