Hunter is one of just two dogs in the Falklands trained to upkeep the tight biosecurity measures of South Georgia, keeping it rodent free.
Hunters powerful nose and agility mean he is the perfect fit for his role as detection dog with Larsen Limited, the company undertaking biosecurity work onboard cruise vessels bound for South Georgia.
Larsen is co-owned by Naomi Cordeiro and Duncan Willis, who invited Falklands Radio along to see Hunter undertake his work aboard a cruise ship.
While Hunter got to work, seeking out scents that might indicate rodents are present on the vessel, Duncan spoke about whether the qualities that make Hunter so good at his job are a matter of nature or nurture.
“A lot of it comes down to the dog’s ability, mindset and genetic composition,” he said. He likened teaching a dog to recognise odour as learning a language, saying once the dog understands the rules, you can teach them a new word, or in this case a new odour, very quickly.
But Hunters’ nose isn’t the only thing that makes him great at his job, it’s also his contentment and ease in travelling on the zodiac out to the vessel, working in confined spaces, around new people and new smells regularly, all whilst undertaking his job properly.
“You can train most dogs to find most things if the reward is good enough. What you can’t necessarily train them to do easily, is to do that in a high-pressure situation,” Duncan says.
“Most dogs can concentrate for about 40 minutes before they start to lose that concentration.” He explains that the job of a handler is to make sure the dog is fit enough to tolerate those 40 minutes but also to notice when the dog is getting tired so they can rest as needed.
Naomi and Duncan made their way to a few key points on the ship with Hunter; these are the areas that rodents are most likely to be or to have passed through. This is notably where the lines come onboard, which rodents could use to scale the ship whilst moored, as well as the garbage area and provisions.
The provisions area is crucial to check, being the location of the food stores, fridges and freezers. Even with plenty of temptation around him, Hunters focus on his task does not waiver. Whilst he scaled shelves in a refrigerator, stacked with fresh fruit and vegetables, Naomi spoke of his searching process.
She said his handler will often guide or lift him around a small space, because as a little dog, he cannot always access all the shelves that are needed to be checked. His nose is hard at work, Naomi says, “he is searching for live rats or mice as well as signs they could have been there, which is usually in the form of urine, faeces or tracks.”
To communicate to his handler he has found something, Hunter will change the way he is acting. All dogs have different indications and Hunter will often make a pawing motion if he locates urine or faeces, but if he finds a live rodent, he will enthusiastically bark to signal.
When speaking about how the training process works to train a dog to be able to perform this job; Naomi said that as Hunter is a type of terrier, he likes to chase mice and rats anyways- making the odour detection aspect of the training easier.
“The principal behind it is to encourage a positive association with the odour they are looking for” she says, doing this by presenting the dog with its favourite thing when they locate the odour, in Hunters case it’s his ball.
The tougher part, as Duncan mentioned, is the dogs ease in operating in different environments. This requires a resilience from the animal but also lots of practice and environmental training.
The only other dog in the Falklands able to do this work is Larsen’s other hound, King, who is currently injured, meaning Hunter is working overtime this cruise ship season.
Hunter and King are the same breed, Jagdterriers, which are German hunting dogs. The team plan to expand the fleet of dogs, hoping to source another dog later this year from Holland.
It’s rare that live rodents are found onboard vessels, but these dogs are able to locate traces of rodents that are up to 12 weeks old.
If the dog does find traces that old, it will signal this to their handler who will feedback the information to the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (GSGSSI), who Larsen is contracted by to do this work.
The detection of older traces of rodents could “indicate that there may not be rodents present on the ship itself but possibly in storage warehouses where provisions have been stored,” Duncan explains. This would be fed back to GSGSSI who could advise the vessel operator that their warehouses or stores need additional biosecurity work.
Duncan advises that they intentionally do not train their dogs to have what is known as a ‘trained final response,’ often shown as a sit and stare action. They prefer Hunter to have a different response to every odour detected, which means they are able to interpret how old the odour Hunter has signalled on actually is.
The role of the handler is not just training and overseeing the dog at work, but reading what the dog is signalling, however specific it may be, and passing on that information.
Behind all of this hard work by Hunter, Duncan and Naomi is one very important aim: to prevent rodents from making their way to South Georgia.
Naomi explains this is because “years ago, South Georgia Heritage Trust and the GSGSSI undertook a 10-year eradication and habitat restoration campaign.” This 10-million-dollar campaign began with eradicating invasive reindeer on South Georgia and eventually moved on to the eradication of rats and mice.
The huge operation saw bait dropped from helicopters all across the island to eliminate the invasive rodents, which have a significant impact on the native wildlife of South Georgia.
According to Naomi, “in 2018 the island was declared rodent free and so the job now is pre-border biosecurity,” meaning all vessels travelling to South Georgia are checked for signs of rodents to ensure the island does not become infested again.
Since being declared rodent free, wildlife on South Georgia has responded dramatically. “The island has even seen the return of one of the most southernly songbirds, the South Georgia Pipit, where their eggs and nests were once decimated by rodents.”
Naomi says that this is why she does her job, and has done for the past 7 years, because “you really feel like you’re contributing to the environment.”
