Eco-Odorology (SCIENCE-SNIFFING DOGS) with Kayla Fratt

Summary

Eco-Odorology: The Science of Sniffing with Dogs Ologies with Alie Ward | Episode: Eco-Odorology (Science-Sniffing Dogs) with Kayla Fratt | Released on January 22, 2025

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Introduction to Eco-Odorology and Kayla Fratt

In this enlightening episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, host Alie Ward delves into the fascinating world of eco-odorology with guest Kayla Fratt. As a second-year PhD student at Oregon State University and the founder of the nonprofit organization Canine Conservationists, Kayla introduces listeners to the innovative field where science and conservation intertwine with the exceptional olfactory abilities of dogs.

Understanding Eco-Odorology

Eco-odorology, a term coined by Kayla Fratt, explores how dogs can detect various environmental elements that are crucial for conservation efforts. This includes identifying small plants, molds, invasive species, bat and bird fatalities at wind farms, and even tracking carnivore populations like cheetahs in Kenya and bobcats in the foothills. Kayla explains, “[We are] nose blind as far as, like, mammals go compared to dogs,” highlighting the unparalleled sense of smell that dogs possess (08:46).

Kayla's Research and Projects

Kayla's research primarily focuses on studying wolves in the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska. Utilizing detection dogs, her team collects scat samples to analyze wolf population dynamics, diet, and behavioral characteristics. She shares, “We take those scat samples back to the lab, and then we do a process called DNA meta barcoding... to figure out what is in that fecal sample” (05:59). This method allows for non-invasive monitoring of elusive wolf populations across the archipelago’s numerous islands.

Training Detection Dogs: Techniques and Challenges

Training dogs for eco-odorology is a meticulous process. Kayla emphasizes the importance of varied scent exposure to ensure dogs can recognize target odors despite differences in diet, stress levels, or environmental factors. She notes, “We give the dogs enough samples that they know they're not just looking for a lactating female brown bear who's eating salmon and is on antibiotics” (09:38). Training also involves teaching dogs to perform a specific response, such as lying down with the specimen between their paws, which signals a successful detection.

Dogs vs. Machines in Detection

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the effectiveness of dogs compared to technological devices. Kayla argues that while advancements in machine learning and olfactometers are promising, dogs remain superior in terms of efficiency, portability, and adaptability in rugged terrains. She states, “Dogs are a lot more efficient at searching an area... And they're just a little bit hardier than like most machines are” (13:53). The human-dog bond further enhances their performance, making them invaluable partners in fieldwork.

Fieldwork Experiences and Wildlife Encounters

Kayla shares captivating anecdotes from her fieldwork, including encounters with elusive animals like bobcats and jaguars. One memorable moment was when her dog, Niffler, successfully identified a jaguar scat in the dense Guatemalan rainforest, showcasing the practical applications of eco-odorology in tracking and studying predator populations. “It was totally magical... like, oh, shivers” (44:04).

Choosing the Right Dog: Rescue vs. Purpose-Bred

The episode also explores the selection process for conservation dogs. Kayla discusses the preference for rescue dogs within her organization, noting that older dogs are often ready to train and adapt more quickly than puppies. She explains, “Within Canine Conservationists, four of our five dogs are rescues... because their older and they're ready to train” (15:26). This approach contrasts with sectors like law enforcement, where purpose-bred dogs from specific breeds like German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois are more common due to their specific skill sets.

Listener Questions: Training and Career Paths

Kayla addresses numerous listener questions, offering insights into training techniques and career opportunities in eco-odorology:

• Training Your Own Dog: Kayla confirms that it is possible to train pet dogs for conservation work, albeit with significant commitment and specialized training. She recommends starting with canine nosework classes and supplementing with online courses on conservation dog handling (56:26).

• Other Detection Animals: While dogs are the primary agents in eco-odorology, Kayla mentions that animals like Gambian pouched rats are also used for tasks such as tuberculosis and landmine detection. However, she notes the limitations of other animals, like cats, due to issues with motivation and focus (39:17).

• Career Longevity and Retirement: Conservation dogs typically work until around 14 years of age, depending on their health and abilities. Upon retirement, dogs usually stay with their handlers or are placed in safe homes if they outlive their working years (61:24).

Challenges in the Field

Despite the rewarding nature of her work, Kayla candidly discusses the challenges she faces, including the emotional toll of canine mortality and the demanding nature of maintaining and training dogs. She shares, “It's hard to maintain these dogs... I wish I could catch a break as far as like, the dog care” (65:19).

The Bond Between Handler and Dog

A recurring theme is the profound bond between conservation handlers and their dogs. Kayla emphasizes how dogs provide emotional support, companionship, and enhance the safety and effectiveness of fieldwork. “Having this domestic animal that I do get to sleep in my bed... and having that emotional bond, it genuinely is so nice” (20:34).

Conclusion and Further Resources

Kayla Fratt's work in eco-odorology demonstrates the incredible potential of dogs in advancing conservation science. Her dedication to training, research, and the welfare of her canine partners underscores the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in solving environmental challenges.

For listeners interested in learning more or supporting her work, Kayla recommends visiting canineconservationists.org and following their social media handles at @k9conservationists. Additionally, the podcast offers access to online courses and resources for aspiring conservation dog handlers.

Notable Quotes

• “We are like, you know, the salamanders that can kind of sense light and dark but can't actually see. That is like the difference in degree between our olfaction and their olfaction.” (08:46)
• “Dogs are a lot more efficient at searching an area... And they're just a little bit hardier than like most machines are.” (13:53)
• “Having this domestic animal that I do get to sleep in my bed... and having that emotional bond, it genuinely is so nice.” (20:34)
• “It's hard to maintain these dogs... I wish I could catch a break as far as like, the dog care.” (65:19)

Resources and Links

• Canine Conservationists: canineconservationists.org
• Follow on Social Media: @k9conservationists
• Related Episodes:
  • Mammalogy with Dr. Danielle N. Lee on pouched rats
  • Cryptozoology and Cervidology episodes for more on wildlife detection

Support and Participate

Listeners are encouraged to support the work of conservation dog teams by donating or participating through Canine Conservationists. Engaging with the community via their podcast and social platforms also helps raise awareness and advance conservation efforts globally.

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Thank you for tuning into this episode of Ologies with Alie Ward. Stay curious and keep exploring the myriad ways science intersects with the natural world!

Transcript

[Alie Ward]

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[Kayla Fratt]

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[Alie Ward]

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[Kayla Fratt]

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[Alie Ward]

Oh, hey, it's that thing in the backyard that you meant to do something with, but now it got rained on. It's Alie Ward. This is Ologies. This is a show that is seldom about dogs. Except for now, as this is a bit of a companion episode to last week's ethno sinology episode about dogs being your companions. How wolves went to dogs. So this week we are following up with a wonderful new guest on how science and concert conservation partners with dogs to do the work that we cannot. So, yes, dogs can not only smell narcotics in a duffel bag, they can also let us know how plants and animals are faring in the wild. So this guest shot her shot by tagging me in some excellent videos. About her work in conservation and look where we are now. We got a whole episode. So as a second year PhD student at Oregon State University, they travel the world studying wolves on islands in Alaska, jungle cats and so much more. And as a founder of a non profit group called Canine Conservationists, this ologist coined the term ecoodorology, which can involve dogs detecting little plants, mold invasive species. They detect bat and bird fatalities on wind farms, invasive zebra mussels, carnivore populations, cheetahs in Kenya, bobcats in the foothills, and they're trained to find so much more. So this episode is a bit of a treat because we recorded it in two parts. First, I headed to a trailhead in LA's Griffith park on an absolute Scorcher.

[Kayla Fratt]

Is so hot and we're kind of moving back on down. I'm probably going to let him just keep this ball and let him we call this quiet quitting where he can now go hang out in the shade, do whatever he needs to do. He's got his balls.

[Alie Ward]

It was over 100 degrees that day and I was able to meet conservation dog Barley as we sniffed our way up dusty paths and hung out in a cedar grove looking for evidence of coyotes and bobcats. I'm also I'm panting here and there. So was Barley. But Bartley Charlie didn't have a mic and I'm sweating everywhere. But we get into it. Then we followed up with a traditional studio episode where I was as composed as a person can be when they're talking about puppies. But first, quick thanks to patrons who make the show possible. You can be one of them by hitting up patreon.com ologies where you can ask the ologist questions before we record and we chime in every week with discussion threads over there. Also, thank you to everyone in Ologies Merch, which you can get from ologiesmerch.com and to everyone who for no dollars supports us just by leaving reviews so more people could find the show. I read them all and this week I will read you one from someone who wrote I'm a Rhiannon too, but I do not study deer. Thank you so much for making this podcast when the world really needed it. Rhiannon. What is Rhiannon talking about? We're going to clear that up later in the episode if you don't know. But for now sit and stay for an entire episode on how dogs happily do our dirty work of sniffing for wild animal poop. Rescue dogs doing dog jobs, what rewards work when training dogs On a boat, dogs in the jungle, wolves in the sea, why noses are wet, how garbage your sense of smell is, and how you can get into this field and out into the field. Working with your best bud with conservation biologist, dog trainer, canine advocate and eco odorologist Kayla Fratt.

[Kayla Fratt]

Farley is in this chair right here. And Niffler is probably going to settle in a dog bed that's like just right on the other side of the table. Sometimes they're like under my feet. My name is Kayla Fratt. She her and I am studying the movement and diet and a bunch of other interesting questions of the Alexander Archipelago wolf using scat collection through the detection dogs and then also looking at some behavioral characteristics with the detection dogs as far as like learning and efficacy and whatnot.

[Alie Ward]

You're collecting data on the wolf in this series of islands, but you're also collecting data on how the domesticated wolves are learning that. Right? Domesticated wolves being dogs. You can see last week's ethno sinology episode, which is all about that.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. So as far as the wolves go, we're basically working with poop. So the dogs will locate little piles of poop, or sometimes big piles of poop. We take those home, we take them back to the lab, and then we do a process called DNA meta barcoding, where we pull out all of the little strands of DNA and we run those against a database and then figure out what is in that fecal sample and kind of at what levels.

[Alie Ward]

On a more detailed level though, we.

[Kayla Fratt]

Can also do a process called genotyping, which tells us who the wolf is, you know, the individual ID their sex, and over the course of years, then that can tell us maybe how old that wolf is or if that wolf is ultimately harvested. And then we can kind of match that DNA back, then we can know maybe how old that wolf was at the time that it died. And then on the dog side of things, I'm keeping track of all sorts of things as far as how far the dog is away from the scat when it first catches the odor, how the dog actually moves to the scat, and whether or not the dog reports with what we call a trained final response, which is that they're supposed to lie down with that scat, or if they kind of stand there and are a little bit wishy washy about that identification, which sometimes can be fatigue or vegetation related. Like you can imagine if there's a big pointy rock or like a thorny thing there, they might choose not to lie down. But sometimes it also can indicate that they're not as certain about that id.

[Alie Ward]

So when a trained dog smells something that it's been told to look for, it will lie down kind of sphinx, like, with the specimen between his two front paws. So he just laid down.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yep. I think we've got bobcat poop.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, are you serious?

[Kayla Fratt]

You were not supposed to be working yet, bud, but good boy.

[Alie Ward]

Wow. A bobcat poop right there, just sitting on an embankment, sort of. And so he just got rewarded with a ball.

[Kayla Fratt]

With a ball. Yep. You better go get the.

[Alie Ward]

But in rocky terrain, of course they're going to wing it. And Kayla is not only studying the ecology of the wild animals, but also how the canine ecoodorologists are doing their jobs.

[Kayla Fratt]

And then I'm doing a lot of data collection on the training side of things. So actually getting the dogs ready and how we use them in the field and how that affects the results long term. Lots of data.

[Alie Ward]

Lots of data. So back to the undomesticated actual wolves. When you say harvested, what exactly does that mean? Does that mean that they are culled or does that mean that they've been poached?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. So these wolves are primarily in the Tongass National Forest, where there is hunting and trapping allowed for these wolves. They're not in, like a national park or somewhere where they're protected. So, yeah, currently mostly hunting and trapping. And it is legal, it is permitted.

[Alie Ward]

When you're coming up with a training plan for the eco odorological aspects of it. Like, what are we talking in terms of olfactory acumen? When we're talking about dogs, what are they smelling that we aren't so many things.

[Kayla Fratt]

We are basically nose blind as far as, like, mammals go compared to dogs. We are like, you know, the salamanders that can kind of sense light and dark but can't actually see. That is like the difference in degree between our olfaction and their olfaction. Wow. So as far as then training goes, what we generally are starting with is getting a lot of samples of our target odor. And the reason we want a lot is because there can be variations in odor depending on what that animal was eating, its reproductive status, if it's particularly stressed that day, if it's on antibiotics. You know, when we're talking zoo samples, that's a big factor. So we want to make sure that we give the dogs enough samples that they know that they're not just looking for a lactating female brown bear who's eating salmon and is on antibiotics. But we're Actually looking for blackberries in general.

[Alie Ward]

Wow.

[Kayla Fratt]

And then we're doing all sorts of careful handling with those samples to make sure that we don't get those samples covered in our own sweat. The scent of plastic, if they've been stored in, like, plastic bags. You know, if you put that scout sample down on the surface and then pick it back up, is it picking up odor from something like that? Are you storing it in your freezer next to your other biological samples within their cross contaminating? And then once we've got all those samples and we've kind of got them prepared appropriately, then we can start introducing the dogs to those.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, but how long does that take? Like years? Or are dogs sense of smell so good that they just learn in an.

[Kayla Fratt]

Instant with the more experienced dogs that we have at this point, that process often goes pretty quickly for like just a scat sample of a given species. That might just take a couple weeks of training. But then when you're looking at some ecoodorology, dogs will work with things like pathogens or fungi or identifying specific insects, nests. Once you get into kind of those areas, then that training can take quite a bit longer because it's what we would call like a lower odor profile. So it's just less stinky or it's really, really specific if you're thinking about the difference. You know, if I want a dog to find elk poop, that's pretty straightforward. But if I want the dog to tell me the difference between an elk with chronic wasting disease and an elk without chronic wasting disease, now we're starting to get to the point where the dog is trying to identify a really, really small, small signal among, like, the entire odor profile of an elk scat. There's just a little bit in there that tells us whether or not it's chronic wasting disease. And that's there's a project out of the Penn Vet working dogs that are working on that. It's extremely challenging but very, very cool work.

[Alie Ward]

On our website, we're going to link more research on that from Penn University's vet department on chronic wasting disease having been detected in the Hog Heaven reserve in Montana as well as in Michigan. A not at all alarming headline read, researchers warn zombie deer disease could spread to humans. And if you're like, what is a prion? Why does it sound like a computer part? Well, it's a misfolded protein. And we talk more about proteins and how they fold with Dr. Raven Baxter, aka Raven the Science Maven, in her episode on molecular biology. And we Also address it in the two part cervidology episode All About Deer with not one but two rannans who study deer. Speaking of other episodes, last week's ethnos analogy episode with David Ian Howe discussed how dogs are a biotechnology which not only could out smell a machine, but could also probably chew it up and leave it for dead. Are dogs better at that than machines or are they quicker or are they more portable? What's the benefit to using little cutie babies that love working as opposed to a sample machine in the field?

[Kayla Fratt]

So one of my mentors, Simone Galbois, who's out of Dalhousie University, he thinks that in all likelihood in our lifetimes we're going to see machines taking over things like medical detection. So you know, you hear sometimes about the cancer sniffing dogs or dogs that are able to sniff ptsd, those sorts of things. There's a pretty good chance that we're going to see devices that can do that in our lifetimes. But that's partially because you're taking a sample. Maybe you've got like a, you could imagine a device that you breathe into, like a breathalyzer basically that would be pretty easy to actually create the device that can do the olfaction and everything else. But when we're talking like our work in Alaska, you know, barley was covering 16, 18 kilometers, which I don't know what that is in miles, like 10 or 12 miles maybe in a day. If we had a device that was going to do that, one of us would probably have to be carrying it. I know they've piloted some that are like wheeled, but we're not working on terrain that you can wheel something around. There also was a really interesting study done by the Department of Defense a while ago where they had one of these like olfactometers on wheels and they compared it to a dog and it was just a lot slower because basically dogs are a lot more efficient at searching an area. And maybe with appropriate training, the human who is manning that machine could have gotten better at it. But it's just not likely to be something we see in our lifetimes. And also, you know, so I don't want to carry something like that.

[Alie Ward]

So heavy, expensive, not delicate enough in their abilities. And also they don't exist now. Eco odorology dogs, they're not going to be phased out anytime soon. Also machines can't hang in the field like Barley or Niffler or Ellie, Suki, Scotty or Ollie.

[Kayla Fratt]

A lot of those instruments are not going to be waterproof. They're not going to be mud proof, you know, they're not going to be something that you can like drop and pick up in the mud and like keep going versus dogs. Like there are problems, you know, they, the dogs get ticks, the dogs can get sick, the dogs can get injured. But a machine could also get injured I suppose.

[Alie Ward]

Ouch.

[Kayla Fratt]

If you think about it that way. But they're overall just a little bit hardier than like most machines are.

[Alie Ward]

If there's ever a Boston Dynamics dog that has an eco odorological device again, that's not going to be our lifetime. It's also going to be much creepier and expensive I imagine.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean I can imagine a couple upsides. Like the biggest thing I complain about now that I'm a PhD student is trying to manage the energy level and the ongoing training of the dogs when I'm not in the field and kind of constantly needing to like, you know, I was up at 6:30 this morning and took the dogs for a run in the rain in Oregon and like that was kind of miserable and it would be nice to have something that I could just take the batteries out of and then take out again before the field season. But also then I wouldn't get to live with my dogs so like I wouldn't actually trade them for something like that. But occasionally, you know, the dogs do require a lot of year round maintenance.

[Alie Ward]

Do they tend to be rescues or do you need a specific breed?

[Kayla Fratt]

It varies a little bit depending on which organization you're talking to. So like within canine conservationists, four of our five dogs are rescues and Kayla.

[Alie Ward]

Says that's within their core group. But when they hire contractors, about 90% of those working dogs are rescues as well. Some groups prefer to have the family line medical history of a breeder dog. But Kayla says canine conservationists actually prefer rescues because their older and they're ready to train as opposed to what she calls the floppy sloppy puppy years now. Most military and government worker dogs however are from breeders. And part of that it's just because they have the budget. I looked up what that budget is and found that around LA the current price for a police dog is approximately $12,000 just to get the dog, not including the training which runs about $13,000 but then maintenance, training, equipment, supplies and vet care. That's the guacamole of the dog budget that's going to run you extra. How much harder is it to sniff out chronic wasting disease in an elk or a wolf that has the flu than finding cocaine in luggage?

[Kayla Fratt]

Ooh. My gut reaction is finding cocaine in luggage is hard because people are actively trying to conceal it from the dogs. And some people are smart about that. A lot of them, to my understanding, are not. Um, but that is something that we don't have to deal with in the conservation dog world. We don't have to deal with, you know, samples generally that have been like, wrapped in a bunch of plastic and then dipped in gasoline and then buried in coffee grounds or something like that, you know, which is what sometimes is done with trafficking.

[Alie Ward]

Wow.

[Kayla Fratt]

To fool the dogs. I think, you know, if you had just plain samples out, the chronic wasting disease is probably harder. But the problem with cocaine is that it's concealed.

[Alie Ward]

Whenever there's like a dog at the airport, I'm always afraid, like, what if someone brushed up against me with drugs or something?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Everyone's like, oh, this is so cute. It's so weird. But what other industries use eco orderology, other than conservation and trafficking and law enforcement, what other applications are there for dogs who are really, really good at their noses?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. So, you know, if we're talking eco odorology, that probably is primarily the, the conservation ecology, those sorts of things, because it is eco. But then we also can get into a lot of it then goes into law enforcement. So, yeah, we've got the drug dogs. A lot of us know about those. There also are quite a few firearms detection dogs primarily. This is a little bleak in US Schools. There's kind of an increasing push for dogs that can find firearms in schools. I don't love that. That is a place that we're at, but it is an industry that exists. And then explosives detection dogs. I have a couple acquaintances who train dogs to do like they check stadiums before, like the super bowl and those sorts of things. And then a lot of, you know, missing persons dogs, dogs that maybe trail suspects, human remains. Detection dogs will also look for, again, missing people. And then there's live find, disaster search and rescue dogs. So we're recording, I guess it's been a while since Helene at this point.

[Alie Ward]

And Helene was a Category 4 hurricane that hit the southeast United States in September 2024 with 219 people killed and nearly 30 missing.

[Kayla Fratt]

Still, you know, if we think of Helene, I know that it was a huge mobilization of live find, disaster search and rescue dogs that were getting sent out to then try to find people who were in the floodwaters and were still alive and needing to be prioritized for rescue.

[Alie Ward]

Why is it important for you to get the word out? Why are you so passionate about this?

[Kayla Fratt]

Ooh, that's such a good question. I mean, a. Because I love it. Like, I just love getting to talk about it. I think I have the coolest job in the world and I like to get to tell other people about it and I like how happy it makes people. It's nice to have something to do with conservation and the environment that makes people feel good. I also think that there's a lot of applications for conservation detection dogs that haven't been explored fully yet. The more people who are aware of it and are getting involved, the more likely we are to connect, be able to continue moving this industry forward in a really responsible and thoughtful and evidence based way.

[Alie Ward]

You know, it's interesting, I've interviewed a lot of people who are wildlife ecologists and they say that they wanted to start in veterinary medicine because they love dogs. But then veterinary medicine is a really difficult field emotionally as well. It's really hard to get into vet school. And it's interesting that you work in conservation, but you also get to work with dogs as you're in the field.

[Kayla Fratt]

Absolutely. I mean, that is one of the other things that I always really have loved about this field is that, you know, when I was a little girl, I was obsessed with Jane Goodall and I, you know, I'd watch all these documentaries of her interacting with the primates and, you know, her like, handing that banana to David Graybeard. It was the first time that a.

[Alie Ward]

Chimpanzee reached out to make contact with me.

[Kayla Fratt]

I was just like, oh my God, this is what biology is. This is what I want to do. And I was watching Steve Irwin and, you know, like, like that's what I wanted to do. And then the further I got into my career and realized, like, a lot of times we're not actually interacting with these animals at all. We're not touching them, we're not playing with them. And to some of that, I think there's a huge ethical benefit to that. I think that is a good thing. But emotionally it was disappointing. So having this domestic animal that I do get to sleep in my bed and I get to, you know, feed them little chicken nuggets and tell them how cute he is, you know, and even just like checking them for ticks at the end of a field day and having time to groom them and hang out together and just have that emotional bond, it genuinely is so nice and it's so meaningful. And I don't think it should be trivialized as just a silly emotional thing that we want I think loving animals is such an important driver for so many of us. And it's not something that I think we should just dismiss because it is an emotion, but it's nice to have a way to express it that isn't harassing wildlife.

[Alie Ward]

Right. It also seems like other people have expressed concerns about field work. Sometimes you're in remote places. Sometimes you're in places you're not familiar with. Sometimes women, people of color have more issues with harassment. And it seems like having a field companion by your side is also maybe strategically kind of comforting.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. Yeah, I could definitely see that.

[Alie Ward]

We talk about this in a few episodes, like in the wonderful Karina Newsom's wildlife Ecology episode, which is all about fieldwork.

[Kayla Fratt]

It's so funny because it's been so long since I was in the field without a dog, but I'm sure that's something that I would notice the absence and. Yeah. Would feel lonely. Less safe. Yeah. Sometimes we're staying in, like, sketchy roadside motels halfway between Place A and Place B, you know, on the side of a highway somewhere. And it's nice to have the dogs with you for sure.

[Alie Ward]

And you were talking about your PhD work. What are you looking for with the wolves? What kind of data are you collecting?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, so the nice thing is, as far as, like, the. The harvest side of things with the wolves, they actually, when they're harvested, there's a sample taken from those wolves, and it's all reported with Alaska Department of Fish and Game, so I just get to use those samples later on. So what we're actually looking at with these scat samples is the Alexander Archipelago in southeast Alaska.

[Alie Ward]

And Kayla says if you make an L with your right hand, like, you were going to put, like, a shape of an L on your forehead, if you will, and then you turn it counterclockwise about a quarter of a turn, you got Alaska.

[Kayla Fratt]

And then you've got your thumb pointing down. That is roughly Alaska without the bit that goes out into the Bering Sea. Right. I'm from Wisconsin, so I, like every state, has to become a hand to me. Yeah. The Alexander Archipelago is like, way down at the tip of your thumbnail.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, okay.

[Kayla Fratt]

Anyway, so we've got, like, a thousand islands in this Alexander Archipelago, and Prince of Wales island is kind of in the center of that. And the vast majority of wolf research in this area has centered on Prince of Wales because it's really exciting, accessible. You can get a direct flight from Juno.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, wow.

[Kayla Fratt]

But there's a thousand islands in this archipelago, and These wolves are spread out across all of these. Well, maybe not all of them. That's kind of the question. We don't know what other islands these wolves are using. And we don't know, like, how big does an island have to be for a wolf pack to make it their whole territory? Or, you know, once it's this size, are they kind of using multiple islands? How do they choose to move between different islands? How do different islands affect what they're eating? We don't really know much about that when we're kind of getting out into these smaller islands. So my research is, it's super cool. We're out on a boat all the time, and we're taking this. This little tough boat from, like, island to island and doing searches across all of these different islands. I think I counted it up, and we're somewhere between 25 and 30 islands last year, which, you know, in the grand scheme of a thousand, not that many. But also a lot of these islands are like a couple acres. They're like rocks in the ocean, you know, and some of them you actually can't get the boat onto because of the way the cliffs are or, you know, the beaches and whatnot. It's just actually not safe to land a boat. So that's part of it sometimes as well. But yeah, so it's a lot of really interesting questions about, like, island biogeography and landscape ecology and wolf movement. And these wolves eat sea otters, and we don't necessarily know why a wolf would choose to eat a sea otter instead of a deer. Is it just sea otter abundance? Is it something about what makes them vulnerable to wolves? And so with a lot of fancy maps and a lot of fancy pipetting and a lot of poop samples, we can get to those answers. And that's kind of why I'm in the PhD at this point, because I, at this point, feel relatively confident in training the dogs to find the poop. But then all of the questions that come after that, there is so, so, so much more that happens once you've got that scout sample.

[Alie Ward]

How are these wolves making it from island to island?

[Kayla Fratt]

They swim.

[Alie Ward]

How far can they go?

[Kayla Fratt]

Like a couple kilometers. Like what?

[Alie Ward]

They can wolfie paddle?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, they just wolfie paddle their way through. We actually saw a deer swimming between islands once. The deer actually will swim even more than the wolves. Or maybe it's just that there's a lot more deer than there are wolves, so you're more likely to kind of catch them going between. But no, we've seen Wolves on our camera traps or we've seen evidence of wolves on really, really tiny islands that, like, we know for a fact there's no way they were hanging out there for long. Like, they were coming through. Maybe there was a deer on the island that they're just gonna, you know, corner really easily because it's really easy to catch one deer on one tiny island.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, wow.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. Or maybe they were using it as a stopover between two islands. Who knows?

[Alie Ward]

Do you think orcas ever take any out while they're wolf paddling?

[Kayla Fratt]

Oh, my gosh. I've been wondering this. Probably, like, occasionally you'd have to be super unlucky as a wolf because, again, there's so few of them and they don't do it all that often. But I think we've all kind of seen that. Maybe not all of us, but I know I've seen this, like, meme or whatever of, like, just a reminder that orcas are the number one marine predators of moose. I wolf down a lot, a lot of food. So, like, orcas do get moose when moose are swimming. So I don't see why they wouldn't. But I've never heard of it. I don't know if anyone's actually looked or exactly how you would figure that out. I'm sure it's happened once.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Isn't it weird how marine mammals, whales, orcas, are descended from like a servatological type of animal and then they became marine mammals?

[Kayla Fratt]

Evolution is so wild.

[Alie Ward]

It's so weird that it's like a former ungulate eating an ungulate. It's nuts. But what is it like to do this fieldwork where you're in the middle of absolutely nowhere on tiny islands, like on boats? Do you get seasick? How cold is it? What does it look like?

[Kayla Fratt]

It's very rainy and windy and wet a lot of the time. We had a very, very wet summer and this. So this part of southeast Alaska gets twice as much annual rainfall as Seattle. So if you think Seattle is rainy, double it. And a lot of that happens in the winter when we're not there. But still it's very wet a lot of days. You know, I'm going to have to work in Fahrenheit here. So sorry to everyone who works in Celsius. But like, you know, it's like a high of 60 and rainy and then, you know, overnight lows in the 40s and 30s.

[Alie Ward]

So that's like 16 degrees to negative 1 degree Celsius. I'm sorry, we're American we have a lot of problems here.

[Kayla Fratt]

I luckily don't get seasick when I'm hiring techs. That's something we talk to people about and something we put in our job posting of like, hey, we are spending like two to four hours a day on a tiny boat in choppy waters. Like, if seasickness is a thing for you, this probably isn't a job. And if you're not sure but you think it might be a problem, probably not the job for you.

[Alie Ward]

What kind of boat? How, how big are the boats? Are they Zodiacs?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, no, no, luckily not. It's, it's a 35 foot tough boat. So it's kind of got an enclosed hull in the front that actually is heated, it's got seats, it's very cozy. And then it's got an open back where we can throw all of our gear. So it's, it's not too bad. It is just choppy occasionally, especially when we're going out to some of the outer islands and sometimes you are kind of getting exposed to like the full on Pacific swell of, you know, open ocean. And then a lot of times we try to stick to the inside as much as we can to mitigate that. We get to see whales most of the time though. Like, we see humpbacks all the time. We see sea otters all the time. The beach combing is incredible. I found so many like cool nudibranchs and sea slugs and like, oh my God, I found a sea otter skull this summer. That was a big highlight for me. You know, it's just, it's so cool. It's just amazing. I don't know.

[Alie Ward]

Well, you can't interview the dogs before you adopt them. How do you know if a dog is going to upchuck? Kibble the cat has something to say about it. Kayla says that her cat is fine on boats too, which is not something that most people ever have the opportunity to find out and maybe should only be explored with an open mind and some heavy leather gloves. But yeah, how does she know if the dogs are going to barf or not?

[Kayla Fratt]

Not good question. I think at this point, both of my dogs have been in cars and trains and buses enough that I feel relatively confident that they're okay on most forms of transportation. We do have within canine conservationists, we have a dog who's going to have his first boat experience this coming summer. So what we might try to do is get him used to like an ATV or something else that's a little open a little bit Choppier. But generally our dogs just have have such a close relationship with their handlers. And we look for dogs that are resilient and trust people and are willing to kind of try new things with us because that's so important in so many different ways that so far it hasn't been a huge issue. I know other people who have, like, flown in helicopters with their conservation dogs without necessarily doing a ton of prior training. And again, because of that kind of like, working dog bond, it often works out okay.

[Alie Ward]

Can I ask you questions from listeners?

[Kayla Fratt]

Oh, my God, yes.

[Alie Ward]

Ah, they have great ones. But before we get there, let's dip into our pockets and pull out a treat of cash for a cause. This one is easy. It's in Kayla's name and we're donating to her and her wonderful colleagues [e-mail] and Kayla's mission, alongside colleagues Rachel, Heather, Jenna, Vanessa and Bernice, is to unite highly trained conservation detective dog teams with researchers to collect scientific data. And they provide mentorship, education, and foster collaboration among scientists and novice handlers and local communities. And you can donate or learn [e-mail] that's K&N9conservationists.org and that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show. This podcast is sponsored, brought to you by Squarespace. I am a happy Squarespace customer and I have been since the start of Ologies. Right before I launched Ologies, I was like, have to do a website. I gotta make my personal website. How am I gonna do this? I procrastinated for three years and then I heard about Squarespace on another podcast and I was like, I'm gonna try it. Turns out I'm in love with them. Squarespace is an all in one website platform. Squarespace makes it really easy to just make a beautiful website. They have great templates, they have drag and drop tools. It's really easy to edit and change. You can engage with your audience. You can sell engagement, anything from products to content to time, all in one place. And you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or [e-mail] Ologies Squarespace really makes it easy for people, and I'm talking about myself, to make the website of your dreams. So check out squarespace.com for a free trial and then when you're ready to launch squarespace.comologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, you can do it. I did it. You can do it. I know I usually Save my secrets for the end of the episode. But I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It's really Reese's. Anything but. Reese's Peanut butter cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these chocolate salty peanut butter. The textures. I love everything about them. Also the there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's peanut butter Cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's peanut Butter Cups now at a store near you found wherever candy is sold. And I am. This show is sponsored by Better help. Listen, in 2025, maybe you're ready for a little something new. Life isn't about a makeover resolution that fades by February. It's about picking up a pen and looking at the narrative of your life and deciding, I'm going to write this the way I want to live it. Therapy can rewrite the stories that you tell yourself and let you live a better life. That's one reason I've used Better Help. 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And other times you eat a meal and you're like, I want to go nap on the couch and I can't remember my own name or I need 10 desserts right now. That could be your glucose talking. My glucose is very low. My insulin floods in response to sugar and then it crashes and I feel like garbage. But introducing lingo this is a biowearable, it's from Abbott and it tracks your glucose levels in real time. And then on an app it gives you insights into how high they went, how much they crashed, how well managed your glucose is throughout the day. So I tried Lingo. I have it on my arm right now and it's awesome. For me I know that my blood sugar greatly impacts impacts my life and I can look at that and see the data. I love that Lingo has science backed recommendations to eat in a way that works better for you personally. So to see how your body responds to food and learn what you can do to improve your metabolism, try Lingo. It starts at $49 for a two week plan, no prescription needed and for a limited time you can save 10% on your first order with the code ologies@hello lingo.com the Lingo Glucose system is for users 18 years and older, not on insulin. It's not intended for diagnoses of diseases, including diabetes. For more information please visit Halalingo.com all right, the holidays are over, but it's still cold. So maybe you need hearty recipes, some cozy stuff to put in your mouth. Home Chef, they're here for you. They have classic meal kits with like pre portioned ingredients. They have quick 30 minute recipes, they have things you can put right in the oven. They have microwave meals if that's your bandwidth. Everything you need to eat good food that is hassle free and that's not takeout or cookies for dinner. People who use the leading meal kits have rated Home Chef number one. What I dig about them is that they have a lot of different options for types of meals. 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[Kayla Fratt]

Hello. I was wondering how hard it is to train the dogs. Oh, gosh. The first time was so hard. I cried all the time. I was sure that Barley and I couldn't do this. This. I was sure that he wasn't cut out for it. I was sure I was not a good enough trainer. It has gotten easier in general every time and the dogs get better at it too. So first time dog, first time trainer, really, really tough situation. I wish that there was a better way to like it. Like with horseback riding. Generally you don't put a green rider on a green horse. That's something that we try to do as well in the working dog world when we camp.

[Alie Ward]

Lauren Reed from Chattanooga, Tennessee wants to know. Hi, I guess I'm wondering, how do you know if a dog is going to be good at the job?

[Kayla Fratt]

The, the like, quickest little test that we do is we take their toy. So we look for a dog who's like bonkers for the toy and we'll hold their collar back. Sometimes we'll even cover their eyes and we throw that toy into really, really tall grass or somewhere else where it's impossible for the dog to see. We release the dog and what we're looking for there is that the dog is focused and keeps looking. We don't actually necessarily like it if in that test the dog finds the toy right away because that just tells us they found the toy quickly. What we want to see is that tenacity that when they can't find it, they keep looking and they keep trying. Oh, so that's like the number one test that if, if I got to ask someone one thing about a dog before I had to say yes or no to it. That's what I would ask for.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, Grammy would be so bad at that. Absolutely. Just the worst. She's like, don't look at me. But actually speaking of certain, certain animals being good or bad, MacNut cookie, Earl of Grammelkin, Hunter Roberts, Tiger Yuri, Anna Dillon, Megan Walker and Cleo Catra all wants to know, in Cleocatra's words, do detection cats exist? Anna Dillon wants to know any other animals that do this conservation cats, other people. There's like obviously some cat people. Tiger Yuty says cats noses are supposed to be even better than dogs. Are there any efforts to train cats? Also there are rats that sniff out landmines which we've covered in our mammalogy episode. Could rats be used for this kind of work too? So, yeah. Are dogs the only ones?

[Kayla Fratt]

Dogs are not the only ones. Yeah. The rats are probably the next biggest example. There are these gambian pouched rats. They're super cool. They're used primarily for tuberculosis and landmines. I probably wouldn't use one for my work in Alaska because again, of the. The amount of distance we're covering. Okay. It just wouldn't necessarily be fair to ask like a three pound animal to do that.

[Alie Ward]

Just a heads up, we have a whole mammalogy episode with Dr. Danielle N. Lee, who studies pouched rats used in landmine detection. They wear backpacks. We also have an episode with Bobby Corrigan, whose entire career revolves around sewer rats. And he made me cry about sweet, sweet rats. So we're going to link those episodes in the show notes.

[Kayla Fratt]

But I can see other situations in which, like honestly, when, if you're searching a boat for zebra mussels, a rat would actually potentially be a better choice than a dog in something like that. I don't know of anyone doing anything with cats. With cats, what we struggle with is the motivation and the focus. So. And that's kind of where we come back to like detection. Wolverine would be awesome. But like, can I convince a wolverine to look for what I want and can I get that wolverine to like stick with me and work with me in the woods? Not so much kind to the same problem. Generally speaking, with cats that tracks.

[Alie Ward]

Macna Cookie and I, I know the answer to this, which I know it's a yes or no question. So it's exciting. Can a shelter dog be trained to be a detection dog like the rogue detection team does for Sierra Nevada Red Fox?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yes, absolutely.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, of course. And you know, some people. This is an interesting question. Melissa Deboskin, first time question asker, wanted to second the inquiries about whether most of the dogs are purpose bred. Katy Brd said, are certain breeds better? Like how are police dogs usually German shepherd shepherds?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. Well, so partially the German shepherd thing is like, it's just historic. There are just these big breeding programs that breed dogs and sell them to police departments and they work with German shepherds for the most part. That is changing now. There's kind of this push towards what we call the floppies. So, you know, like if you go to a, an airport now, you're more likely to see a pointer than a German shepherd. And there's this, this belief that they're less scary. And I think that's, that is fair. I think most people are less scared of a pointer than a German shepherd. The other thing that you have to think about with police dogs, the reason you see German shepherds in Belgian Malinois more in police dogs than you do in, like, conservation, A lot of those dogs are dual trained, so they're not just sniffing out drugs. They're also trained to bite the person that the cop sends them after. So that's where you kind of want a dog who is interested in bitey things and bitey sports and bitey activities. We're not looking for that in conservation. So we. We don't get quite as many shepherds, although they often. I have worked with shepherds in this line of work.

[Alie Ward]

Speaking of biting, Katie brd, Kyle Cunningham Rhodes, Heather Crane, Andy Pepper. Interesting stuff. Kyle Cunningham Rhodes asks, how do you deal with crittering and other high prey drive behaviors? And Katie asks, how do you train them not to go after the animal? Thinking of my dog who will go nuts when he sees a rabbit.

[Kayla Fratt]

That is the number two thing that I would like to ask someone when deciding whether or not to hire a dog. For me personally and within canine conservationists, if we've got a dog who has everything going for it but is nuts about trying to go after squirrels, it's still a no for us. You know, my dogs have come into contact with jaguars in national parks in Guatemala.

[Alie Ward]

So when I was on the trail with her, Kayla told me more about critter sightings in the wild.

[Kayla Fratt]

We saw bears in Alaska, but they, as soon as they hear you come in, they're out, they're out of there. They don't want anything to do with you. The wolves more or less the same. They're a little more curious. But most animals, they don't want anything to do with us. We've seen jaguar, one jaguar when we were out, that was in Guatemala. And I actually. So Niffler, my younger dog, was working, he had just found a scat. And I picked up the ball and yay. Good boy. Throw the ball. And we all look up to watch Niffler chase the ball. And then someone goes, jaguar. And I had thrown the ball at the jaguar. It was fine. It was quite a ways down the trail. But yeah, I was like, okay, Niffler, come on back with that ball right now. Thank you. Good boy. You know, going up like octave by octave. Yeah. Again, not a big deal. Just really cool to get to see a jaguar.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Do you just go on and have a normal Wednesday in the jungle after that?

[Kayla Fratt]

Then as we all kind of like, okay, we're going to put the dog on leash and like we're done searching for a couple minutes. We got to go see if we can see more of this jaguar. We couldn't get another glimpse of it, but yeah, that's totally magical. Yeah, like that's, that's, it's such a cool big cat sighting. Not one that we were ever expecting to get in that part of the world. Like you can go to some places in Brazil where you're pretty likely to get to see jaguars. Dense Guatemalan rainforest, we were not expecting to get to see one. So it was so freaking cool.

[Alie Ward]

Did the hair stand up on the back of your neck?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. Well, and the funny because my first response was disbelief because it was actually a lot smaller than I expected. So I was like, are we sure that's not an ocelot? And then I was like, no, it's too big for an ocean. I was like, we sure it's not a puma? And then you know, we got the binos on it and it's like, no, it's got spots. It was probably just a young guy, but yeah, totally like, oh, shivers. Like we were all high for the rest of the day. Just really cool.

[Alie Ward]

What were you guys looking for in Guatemala with jaguars?

[Kayla Fratt]

So that is actually now my lab mate at Oregon State and roommate Ellen Dimmitt is doing research on jaguars, pumas, ocelots, margays, all of those carnivores on basically creating like a food web and figuring out what they're all eating and how they're all moving and how they're using. This is the Guatemala Maya Biosphere Reserve.

[Alie Ward]

Cool.

[Kayla Fratt]

So cool.

[Alie Ward]

So yeah, dogs gotta keep their cool. Don't freak out man, you're at work.

[Kayla Fratt]

Like most dogs do have some sort of interest in like fast retreating prey animals. Most dogs are going to be interested in bunnies or squirrels to some degree. I'm not saying my dogs are robots and that they're perfect. They obviously, you know, a squirrel runs across their line of sight, they notice it.

[Alie Ward]

In the dog's defense, this happened to me immediately on the trail. It's funny that I just saw a squirrel and I was distracted by it, but Barley was not.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yes.

[Alie Ward]

Which says a lot about us as different animals.

[Kayla Fratt]

So we teach the dogs that disengaging from interesting things in the environment on their own pace. We reward them for that. Then we work on safety skills as well. So like in the case of seeing a jaguar in Guatemala, I recalled Niffler back to me. I just put my hand on his collar. I told him how perfect he was. He got a huge reward. In the case of like a rattlesnakes we come into contact with, that's where we might use like an emergency down where I'm going to tell the dog to lie down. They lie down no matter where they are, no matter what's happening, they stay there. I move around the snake and come and collect them and then we move on.

[Alie Ward]

You mentioned following jaguars and I know you're looking for scat. And Aaron White said, my dog loved eating cat poop and other stomach churning delights. How do you keep the thing you're looking for from being snacked upon? And Ruben also said, how do you train the dog dogs to not eat the special poo?

[Kayla Fratt]

Oh yeah, good question. Both of my dogs are like irredeemable litter box raiders. So the funny thing is both of my dogs do this recreationally. And like we've got like a Tom and Jerry set up in my house going right now between me and the dogs and the litter box. It's like, it's crazy because they're so smart and they. I've trained them to problem solve and use their noses to get what they want. So it makes it really hard to outsmart them and I'm very tired. But generally what we look for, you know, when we've got a dog who is like as over the top nuts for their ball as our dogs are, and they know that finding the scat without touching it gets them their ball, that generally makes it pretty easy for them to learn not to eat it. So my dogs will eat poop recreationally but won't do it in work. Yeah, they know that finding it gets their ball and they want the ball more than they want the poop.

[Alie Ward]

It's like a doctor who's like, I don't drink on the job, but I do like a whiskey at home.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Alie Ward]

So awful. You know, Some people were curious about your own experiences. Zed Shiragane wanted to know what's your wildest moment while you're out training with this? Dogs can be both an animal or human interaction. Just something that had you reeling afterwards. Ken and Cody wanted to know what's your funniest dog related story or mishap? Anything happened to you that just you could not shake?

[Kayla Fratt]

Okay, so funny stories this summer in Alaska, we just had so many like hilarious mishaps of trying to get the dog off the boat. So as I said, we're on this like 35 foot boat and we're going to These really remote islands. So there aren't docks. Generally, if we can, in deep enough water where we can kind of push the boat up against a cliff that then we can step out onto. But sometimes we're having to kind of go up into the beach and then you're stepping down and hoping that your boots are tall enough, but then you're in this situation where now you're standing in, like, mid calf deep water and now the boat is at your, like, shoulder to head height. I'm pretty short, so if you were taller than me, it wouldn't be quite as much of a problem. And now the dog is at head height and you need to get the dog down and you don't want to sprain the dog's shoulder or anything at this point. So what we've trained Barley to do, and barley is £50, so he is, you know, like somewhere between a third and a half of my weight to put his front paws on my shoulder. And then he kind of, like, hops and I, like, catch his ass and then, like, do this, like, weird kettlebell move to get him onto the ground. And there were so many times this summer that I was either very close to or actually did, like, kind of eat shit doing this. And then, like, everybody's wet and, like, we're covered in kelp and, you know, it's raining anyway, so, like, whatever, we're just wet all the time.

[Alie Ward]

But there, it's work, It's a job. They're like, it's a living. It's how I make my chicken. You do what you gotta do. You mentioned something about not maybe seeing the jaguar, but smelling it. And Andy Pepper wanted to know, is it all oldfaction or does hearing come into play too? Perry C. Said, I had heard that dogs can breathe out and smell in through the side of the nose at the same time. Is that true? Rachel Guthrie wants to know if there's been any research on how their brains work. So the physiology of it. Are they using other senses?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yes. Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm like, I'm so excited. I'm, like, currently a little obsessed with the physiology of olfaction. This summer, I was reading, like, a veterinary textbook on, like, noses and olfaction and just having the best time. So hearing? No, because we're working with scat. Scat doesn't make a noise generally once it's on the ground.

[Alie Ward]

Well, that's good sight.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yes. Barley or the other dogs will occasionally, like, target rocks that look like scat and, like, get close enough, take a Whiff and then be like, oh, no, definitely not a scat. And then as far as. Yeah. So yes, dogs can smell through their nose and exhale. I don't know if they exhale at the same time, but. So if you look at your dog Snoot, right, there's like a hole in the center, and then there's a slit to the side. The odor goes in the holes, and then it actually has, like, a differential speed as it goes through. So it slows down as it goes past all these scent receptors. So there's more time for it to be bound to the ascent receptors. It does a hairpin turn, so it goes past them twice. It's also separated so they can tell the difference between whether something is stronger on their right versus left side of their nose, which is crazy like cuckoo bananas to us because, again, we are nose blind. Like, we just cannot fathom what they can smell because they can smell through time. They can smell through space. Like, they can smell in, like, fifth dimensions. If you think about it too much. Much. This is what I think about as a PhD student if I've, like, taken an edible when I'm trying to unwind from research. But yes. And then as they exhale, it exhales out through those slits on the side of their noses, which then keeps them from recycling that air so they're not resampling the same air. But also as it exhales, that creates a little vortex that volatilizes the air on the ground. And kind of that increased humidity can also aid in olfaction. At least this is what is thought. It's what's hypothesized and helps then bring more air back into that nostril. So they're like, exhaling it and creating, like, this whole vortex around their face that, again, they can tell the difference between right and left. It's just. Oh, it's so cool. It's so cool, Allie.

[Alie Ward]

They are also in possession of a vomeronasal organ or a Jacobson organ that's at the top at the roof of their bath. And the nerves of that go directly into the brain. Now, in the Gustatology episode, we discussed why my daughter Grammy opens and closes her mouth kind of like a puppet it in fast motion when she tastes something new and learned that she's using that vomeronasal organ in addition to her olfactory system. Also, your dog, should you have one, has a wet nose because particles in moisture, heavy air are captured more easily by wet mucous membranes. So you, with your dry nose and your pathetic sense of smell, you could only dream of what they have have.

[Kayla Fratt]

If you think of like, our visual section of our brain is really huge. Their olfaction section is really, really large.

[Alie Ward]

Well, I mean, given that they're so sensitive, Rich, Tomo Simpson, first time question asker, and Karine the climate communicator Wildminster, wanted to know, in Rich's words, how often do they have to be reminded what they're smelling for? Do they have a cheese course to cleanse the palate before a different smell? And Karine says, like the tiny jars of coffee beans, it perfumeries.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. So I think if you're working with dogs in like a laboratory setting where you want them to do these like, really fine level discrimination work. So that's like the sort of stuff that Dr. Nathan hall does at Texas Tech University.

[Alie Ward]

And Dr. Hall is an associate professor of companion animal science who has authored papers such as the Influence of Scented Toy Enrichment on Owned Dog Activity Levels in a Household Setting.

[Kayla Fratt]

I do think they have actually talked about needing to give the dogs like a break and letting them recalibrate because they're in this really like, fine scale program versus, yeah, what we do out in the woods. The dogs are basically always looking for everything we've trained them on. So, for example, both of my dogs are already trained to find ocelot scat. Starting in January of this year, Barley is going to go work on an ocelot project for his first time in like two years. So we're getting a fresh box of ocelot poop in a couple days here because he hasn't actually trained with ocelot for a couple years. So I suspect if I just dropped him off on this project, he would find some. But we're actually going to help him kind of refresh on it by practicing a bunch with that scent to kind of bring it back up to the top of mind. It's not like every day I have to put a wolf scat sample out and be like, all right, buddy, you remember, it's this like they, they've got that.

[Alie Ward]

Especially given that these deployments aren't necessarily about ocelot ecology to them, they probably don't care at all. It's about smelling something cool, laying down with it between their paws, and getting to play with a toy. Like someone who is addicted to toys. Dave Brewer, Lisa Gorman, Molly Shotwell, Kyle Cunningham Rhodes and Matt Sakato want to know, in Dave Brewer's words, how long does it take to train a dog? Also, Molly Shotwell wants you to know, Scotty is so cute.

[Kayla Fratt]

Scotty is our rising star. He is so handsome. He's a little bloomer old border collie with like a split face. So half of it is dark and half of it is white. He's just adorable. He's perfect in every way. Scotty is like our. He's our little prodigy. Scotty had a ton of previous training on him because he'd actually been through. So he had failed out of a couple different jobs by the time we got him. So we already had a lot of transferable skills.

[Alie Ward]

Kayla told me a little bit more about Scotty while we were on the trail.

[Kayla Fratt]

One of our dogs, Scotty, actually has been through three homes before us. And the crazy thing with him is he was actually, he was in a sheep herding home. He was in a competitive agility home and he just didn't like either of those sports.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, my God.

[Kayla Fratt]

He just wasn't interested. He wasn't interested in the sheep and when they did agility, all he wanted to do was sniff and he just wanted to play ball. And we're like a dog that only wants to sniff and play ball. Sign him up.

[Alie Ward]

Was he in a shelter just with that kind of rap sheet or did someone say, hey, I understand.

[Kayla Fratt]

We, we posted a very cute hiring post on social media and the person who had him at the time, who I believe was the agility lady, reached out and said, you know, I think that this dog is going to be a lot happier with you guys than with me. So he actually, actually skipped the shelter entirely, but probably would have ended up there eventually had he not gotten to just have a soft landing with us. And he's our little superstar. We love him so much. Compare that to Niffler, who is my younger, younger dog. I got him when he was nine weeks old. And really, even at nine months, like, he wouldn't have been able to do anything that was any harder than a wind farm. So, yeah, anywhere from a couple months to like maybe a couple years. But part of that is also physiological. Like you're. It doesn't matter how good your training is, you're not going to get a five month old dog to go to work because they're babies and they're right, they get tired easily and they're distractible and yeah, they still are like barely potty trained at that age, you know.

[Alie Ward]

Well, in terms of other people's dogs, Doug Pace, Melissa Hart, Faith Novella, and Alicia Stelzel wanted to know, can we train our own dogs to do this? Melissa Hart says can we train our own sweet doggies using the same technique. And Faith Novella says, can there be a dog trained to sniff out turtles? Trying to save box turtles from lawnmower over here and would love to put my doggos to work.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So there's a really cool paper from Dr. Nicholas Rutter out of Australia. He did a ton of his PhD work about training volunteer conservation detection dog teams to do actual impactful conservation work. So yes you can. He did a great job creating a program and it worked quite well.

[Alie Ward]

Dr. Rudder has published recent papers such as can volunteers train their pet dogs to detect a novel odor in a controlled environment in under 12 weeks? And diving in Nose first. The influence of unfamiliar search scale and environmental context on the search performance of volunteer conservation detective dog handler teams.

[Kayla Fratt]

I will say it is a crap ton of work. So like this is not something where you're going to go to a training class once a week for six months and then you're going to like go do it necessarily maybe three times a week for six months and then yes, if this is something you're interested in, what you could start out with is like canine nosework classes. Those are in most medium to large sized cities. Like I had an option for canine nose work classes in Missoula, Montana. So it's not like you have to live in LA to have an opportunity to do something like this. That'll give you the basics of like teaching your dog how to read odor and working with your dog through olfactory stimuli, potentially teaching your dog on alert behavior. It is pretty different from what we do though. It is kind of like, you know, the difference between like gym class, pickleball and like Olympic tennis. You know, it's not, you know, it like gets you started but it's not really it. So if you're really, really interested in like, you know, I forget who it was, but they wanted to do help with box turtles. There are people doing box turtle research already with conservation dogs quite effectively, but maybe not in your area. They probably do need more volunteers. They do need more help. Shameless Plug we have an online conservation dog handler course that teaches you about dog training, dog selection, wildlife interactions, odor dynamics, all of that sort of stuff. That would a really good supplement to getting some hands on practice with something like a search and rescue group or that canine nose work that I mentioned so that you get kind of both sides of it. You get the hands on practice and the theory.

[Alie Ward]

So if you go to k9conservationists.org you will find a whole ass tab for learn how to be a canine conservationist. They have online classes. They got virtual coaching. They have private coaching and training. They have seminars. They got a book club. So book, boom. There you go. Now, this question is one of the most asked. Here we go. We had a lot of questions, kind of from concerned listeners. Kristin, Nina, Giaccabe, Ray, Sugar Puff, Daddykins, Jacob Shepherds, Shera Mans, David Villafranco, and Haley. And I don't want this to be controversial, but they all kind of wanted to know, do they know they're a good boy? Are they all good boys and girls? Who's a very good dog? Are they all good dogs? Who are the goodest? Are they the goodest of good boys? Would it be possible to tell the dogs that you love them, you're doing a good job? And also, just one request, Please just tell those doggos that they're good boys and girls and that we love them over their questions, so.

[Kayla Fratt]

Oh, my God.

[Alie Ward]

Is that a question they get a lot?

[Kayla Fratt]

Well, first off, y'all are gonna make me cry. Yeah. Yes.

[Alie Ward]

No.

[Kayla Fratt]

They all know they're such good dogs. I tell them they're good 10,000 times a day. Occasionally, I tell them they're bad, but, like, in a loving way, like, you're such a bad dog. Why?

[Alie Ward]

Oh, you little bad dog.

[Kayla Fratt]

I love you so much. You're so bad. Niffler gets called stinky a lot, which is just like a progression of, you know, Niffler to sniffler to sniff to sniffy to stinky. But, yes, thank you, no, they are all very good dogs. Barley is probably both the best and the worst dog. He and I, again, are in this war of attrition of the litter box that I am losing, for the record. So both very good and very bad.

[Alie Ward]

Well, there's a lot of people who would just request you kiss them on the head. Actually, someone did ask, are they petable while working, or how much is it, like. No, do not. It is working right now. I know police dogs do not pet.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, generally, no, because you can't catch them. Like, they're off leash and they are, like, out there. You know, you're not gonna be able to catch them while they're working. But no, like, when we do demos and, like, we do meet and greets afterwards, not all of our dogs. Not all of our dogs are, like, interested in meeting a bunch of strangers, but most of them are. Barley, when we do demos, is pretty famous for, like, bringing his toy to a bunch of different members of the audience. I can't. And yeah. Niffler will try to crawl inside your skin and will clean your ears for you. So, yes, they are petable as long as, like, you ask the handler permission first because. Because not all of them are interested in that.

[Alie Ward]

A few people wanted to know about career arcs. Maxeroni Caro Young, Cooper Michael, Emma Henson, Amani Politano, Jay Romspel, Kristen Love, Amanda Lask, Laurie Pemberton wanted to know, in Amani's words, where do they go when they retire? Like, what's the career length for them?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, so as far as when they retire, it depends kind of on their, their bodies. I know conservation dogs who have worked up until about 14 and then some that retire younger if they've got some sort of catastrophic injury or a degenerative disease. So that can cause a career to be shortened. Generally they stay with their handlers, with police. Dogs are owned by the department in most cases. So they will kind of move them out so that there is space for that handler to then take on a new working dog. And kind of similarly with service dogs, sometimes it's helpful or kind of even necessary to move that other dog into a retirement home so that, that, you know, you can imagine someone who needs a service animal might not have the time and the space and the capacity to care for an animal that is not helping with their life anymore. Or sometimes it can be really hard for those dogs to continue watching the other dog get to work. So it can actually be really challenging for those dogs as well. And it can be helpful for them to move on into like a softer landing retirement home. My dogs aren't going anywhere.

[Alie Ward]

And Kayla notes that if, say, a dog works with them for six months and it's just not a good fit, fit, it's not looking good, they might try to give that dog a career change and place it with another handler in a totally different job so that the dog is happier doing its own thing. Maybe the dog wants to go into graphic design or real estate. That's fine. Speaking of job swapping, last question from listeners. Melissa Duboskin, first time question asker, we kind of talked about this earlier. Says, I'm a veterinarian with a strong interest in behavior and training. Could I get into this line of work even if I am sadly not assigned? Scientist Keely Chavez wants to know any job openings. Kate, first time question asker says, what jobs like this exist? Jacqueline Church says, anyone else thinking, why is this not my life?

[Kayla Fratt]

Kate?

[Alie Ward]

And Mill says, this is a dream job I didn't know existed. How can people get into this kind of work.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. So we will be hiring in 2025, mostly seasonal. So if you're available for a summer and want to come hang out with us on either a wind farm or, or potentially doing some other projects, I'm going to be needing a tech in Alaska. I'll actually be needing three techs in Alaska. We'll have an opportunities tab up on our website when those positions are kind of ready and we know how much we're paying and what we're offering and all that sort of stuff. Otherwise, keep an eye on the Texas A and M University jobs board. Sometimes there are conservation dog gigs posted there. They are few and far between and they are very competitive, but they are there. Then also you could consider joining the Conservation Dog Alliance. That's a really good place for like peer to peer networking and mentoring. And we have skillshares every month. Month. And we all post jobs there all the time. So especially if you're in other parts of the country or the world, you're not necessarily in the Pacific Northwest or the Intermountain West. That would be a really good place to go and look because I've seen job postings shared in that group from the UK and India and all over the place. So that would be a good starting spot.

[Alie Ward]

Nice. Worst thing about your job, something's got to suck. Other than the cat snackies, but anything suck about it. I mean, I know there's also probably sad things that suck about it.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, we could go really sappy, which is just that the dogs don't live long enough. Barley is turning 11 soon and I am not okay with that. So that's really tough. And then, you know, I've already hinted at this, but it is hard to maintain these dogs and like we're not paid very much. The job is very light, like go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And then like nothing but grant writing for a really long time. And you have to kind of be constantly on top of the dog's training and maintenance and physical therapy and fitness and you know, sometimes I just wish I could catch a break as far as like the dog care. Like I'm constantly leaving happy hours and parties and whatnot early or turning down social events because I've got to go take care of the dogs. And that is dog own ownership and I love it. But it, you know, sometimes it kind of sucks.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, it's a part of it. It's. You know what though? If you have friends that are like, I gotta peace out the dogs, your Good friends are like, of course, you know, your good friends are like, it's part of you. Can you imagine if you're like, I'm gonna go check on my baby. And people are like, whatever.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah, yeah. No, nobody's mean about it. I'm just bummed. I, I left a party last night at 11pm and everyone else stood out till 2 and like, it would have been fun to stay out till two, drinking tequila, singing karaoke, but you know, I had to do physical therapy for my dog, which, like, you know, not complaining too much, but a little bit.

[Alie Ward]

Once you get to be my age, you'll be like, ugh, how can I leave this party at 10:30? Go to bed.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

I'm like, you left a party at 11, that's so late. So if you've been listening to ologies for a long time, you might recall the 2018 two part somnology episode about how I went well over a decade so sleep deprived that I would sometimes sit down next to a pile of laundry and fall asleep in it. A more recent episode on Burnout goes into way more detail on why that happened. So yeah, sleep is the best for me at least. What about for Kayla? What about the best thing?

[Kayla Fratt]

Oh my God. I mean, obviously just the dogs, like the, the whole, the whole thing, like getting to be out in the woods and seeing your dog making an amazing find and seeing that training build off. And especially honestly for me, it's the times where I see the dogs making a logical leap or like asking me a question through their behavior and then getting to be like, yes, yes, that's awesome. Of course, let's go for it, you know, and just like that relationship is so cool and actually getting to have a conservation impact and like working in these, on these amazingly important and cool process projects through the help of my dogs is just, it's the best.

[Alie Ward]

Like really, you're really getting to work with your best friend, your best buds all the time, you know?

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Not to mention I, I hear camping with a dog is nice because they are protective and also they're warm. You can snuggle them.

[Kayla Fratt]

Yeah. Yeah. Although they're also sometimes wet. I. My whole life is just wet right now because of fieldwork in Alaska and then now it's winter in Oregon.

[Alie Ward]

Well, it's so great to be able to see you out in the field and to follow along and I just think I'm so glad that this is an ology that is now fully coined and official and that there'll be more of you in the future. What you're doing is so, so cool and also so cute.

[Kayla Fratt]

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Alie Ward]

So ask smart people not smart questions and hit the train trail with a science dog. Make sure you have water or hit the trail with any dog and let them huff stuff in five dimensions. They're having a blast. Thank you so much to Kayla, the future doctor Frat and Barley, who she says she will thank in her dissertation acknowledgments and is she's pushing for him to be honored with a dogtoret and you can find out more about her work and all of her colleagues and dogs via the website canineconservationist.org and through their social handles at k9conservationists which we're going to link in the show notes. They also have their own canine conservationist podcast. We're gonna link all that. We are at Ologies on Blue sky and I'm I'm still apparently on TikTok. TikTok survives. I'm at alie_ologies Instagrams are ologies and alie ward linked in the show notes. We do have shorter kid friendly versions of Ologies in their own podcast feed. They're called Smallogies, available for free wherever you get podcasts, they have a new green logo S M O L O G I E S thank you [e-mail] ologies for making the show possible. Aaron Talbert Admins Theologies podcast Facebook group Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Susan Hale is our phenom of a managing director. Jake Chaffee is a lovely editor and leading the post production Wolf Pack is editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audience. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and if you stick around till the end, I tell you a secret. And this week it's that I have a new job. It's full time, it's in the tech industry and my position involves increasing revenue through engagement and the only downside is that there's no pay. It's just me all day refreshing apps in terror and I'm just driving revenue new for other companies. I think a lot of you are my co workers refreshing apps, seeing what's going on while I'm still doing this job full time. So I'll see you guys in the breakdown room. Another news, if you are feeling bad at all, one thing that has earnestly helped me through some periods of darkness is finding a place to volunteer anywhere. Maybe something you're into like a community garden program or reading to seniors or mutual aid, or organizing clothes donations or judging a local pie contest or wearing a name tag at a museum. And just mostly most of your job there is just pointing people toward the restrooms when they ask. I did that last one. It changed my life. Definitely made me happier. And here we are. I made an episode about that and we'll link it in the show notes. So heads up. Keep going. Life is a marathon. The course is determined mile by mile as you go. All right, Bye bye. Pachydermatology Homeology Cryptozoology Lithology Nanotechnology Meteorology Cold Factology Mapology Serology I will smell you later.

[Kayla Fratt]

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[Alie Ward]

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[Kayla Fratt]

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[Alie Ward]

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