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By: JMertlich,
10/14/2008
Extraordinary Dogs: Mission Possible
There’s no mission that’s impossible for Stache, a Labrador retriever who, with his handler, Jim McCans, has been involved in nearly two dozen searches as a certified cadaver dog. For his dedication to this job that is essential to both the families of victims and to a criminal system that often requires a body in order to solve a crime, the four-year-old canine was awarded the 2008 ASPCA Presidential Service Award.
“A little over three years ago,” McCans explains, “I was teaching forensics at a medical school when the idea of sponsoring a cadaver dog was pitched by the program’s medical director. I volunteered Stache for the project, and we attended a 12-week United States Police Canine Association program at the Philadelphia Police Academy.” Stache learned to detect the odor of decaying human tissues in different scenarios—in locked cars, buried underground, in junkyards. “He will scratch and bark at the surface of a grave or other site where a body may be concealed,” says McCans of Stache, who achieved a perfect score on his final training exam. “He can even ride in a boat and detect a body under water.”
Since graduating from the academy, Stache and McCans have been involved in many challenging searches, including a trip to Mississippi to find a Hurricane Katrina victim, and solving a missing persons case in Philadelphia. But it was this past year that Stache and Jim faced their biggest challenge—they were asked to provide assistance in Iraq to search for missing American service men and women.
Stache and Jim were instrumental in nine separate recoveries, but not before a close brush with death when an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) exploded in their path. The blast left Stache with temporary hearing loss, but he has since recovered and returned to the states.
Although Stache “lives to do searches,” he’s still very much a family dog—and can often be found basking in the attention of many adoring fans—literally. Says McCans, “He’s the mascot for almost all of my daughters' sports teams when he is not working!”