By Kim O’Brien Root, The Associated Press
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - The big, slobbery red dog starts jumping around as soon as Tom Zeitler pulls on his tan and orange vest.
She knows there are treats in the pocket.
But Isabel - or Izzie, as she’s affectionately known - knows the vest also means it’s time to go to work. Once her own harness is strapped on, the word SEARCH standing out against a bright orange patch, she’s at attention, ready and waiting.
With a sniff of a cloth and the order “find” from Zeitler, the 105-pound bloodhound takes off across Riverview Farm Park, using a single scent to find a person hiding about a half-mile away. After less than 10 minutes of keeping her nose to the ground, leading the handler across the gently sloping terrain and along a tree line, Izzie finds her target hiding in some reeds.
She jumps up on the man and looks back at Zeitler, pride evident on her wrinkly, jowly face. And yes, she gets a treat.
Isabel, the Newport News Police Department’s first bloodhound in about 20 years, is putting a different doggy face on the Peninsula’s K-9 units, which traditionally have included mostly German shepherds. Since Izzie began training in October 2003, two more bloodhounds have joined the police ranks - a second dog in Newport News and one in Hampton.
Already, the dogs’ sensitive snouts are sniffing as they should.
Last month, the Hampton Police Division’s “Sarah” - a 5-year-old bloodhound donated in March by the Virginia Department of Corrections - trailed a scent from downtown Phoebus to a house where a bank-robbery suspect had been hiding. Once Sarah led police to that area, an officer noticed a suspicious car driving away.
Inside the car was the suspect.
“She played an integral part in the capture of the suspect,” Hampton police Cpl. James West said. “She’s already showing her worth.”
Police departments typically don’t use bloodhounds, but rather dogs that can be used as patrol dogs out on the streets. Out toward the central and western parts of the state - more rural areas - a number of sheriff’s offices have bloodhounds. The Newport News and Hampton police departments are the only law enforcement agencies in Hampton Roads known to have their own.
About 10 cities and counties in Virginia actively use bloodhounds for police work, with about a dozen working dogs - not counting those used by search and rescue groups or in prisons. TREK-9, one of several volunteer search and rescue groups in Hampton Roads, has bloodhounds as well as other dogs available for search and recovery missions, including cadaver-sniffing dogs.
Most police departments tend to use German shepherds, Rottweilers, Belgian Malinois’ and Labrador retrievers. Dogs can be trained to sniff out drugs and explosives as well as go after a fleeing suspect or provide back up for an officer.
“The poor bloodhound, he’s so simple-minded, he can just do one thing,” said Buck Garner, vice president of the Virginia Bloodhound Search and Rescue Association and a detective with the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office. “They can smell.”
Bloodhounds aren’t particularly bright dogs, trainers say, but their uniquely shaped heads and olfactory glands make them good sniffers. Their large noses easily pick up a scent. Their jowls hold that scent in their folds and their long, floppy ears stir up odors on the ground. Even their slobber comes in handy - the spit wets and activates smells.
What makes them different is that they can single out one scent - even if it’s days or months old - and stay with it for miles. They can pick scents off soda cans, cigarette butts or even the general smell of a prison, which is why they’re often used by correctional facilities.
“If trained correctly, you can’t beat them,” Garner said. “It takes a good department to take a chance on one.”
Newport News took a chance on a bloodhound in the early 1980s, but the dog didn’t work out, said Zeitler, a retired police sergeant who now serves as the department’s dog trainer. However, 16-month-old Isabel, who was certified as a tracking dog in October, has already been called to several scenes.
In June, she trailed a missing man with Alzheimer’s in the East End until it started to rain hard and she lost the scent. The man ended up showing up on his own. Izzie also once started trailing a lost juvenile until the child - who turned out to be a runaway - was located 12 miles away by a police officer before the dog got too far into the process.
“She does great,” Zeitler said. “She still a little immature, but she’s doing very well. I’m the one who has a lot to learn.”
While Newport News intends to use its second bloodhound, Dakota, for police work, Izzie will be used solely as a search-and-rescue dog - which was the reason for getting her. Last year, a group of doctors from the Peninsula pooled their money to buy a bloodhound and train one for search and rescue because they thought that resource was missing.
Hampton’s dog will also be used for mostly search and rescue, although she rides with a police officer and will be used as needed.
“The more tools you have available, the better it is,” Zeitler said. “If there’s just one person who can be saved, that makes it all worthwhile.”