Read Color Blind (Team Red) for Free Online Page B

curiosity (Why are they using deer scent instead of rabbit or cow? Why should I scent track when I can follow Gil’s big-ass, size fourteen shoe prints?). But, there were some tests in which Bruno could not complete, and those were the ones where Red showed remarkable superiority. Unlike other dogs, Red had the intelligence to make leaps of deduction beyond a normal dog’s thought process.
     
    One of my favorite tests was a simple tracking pattern that Gil crossed with skunk scent to throw the dogs off. When Bruno tried the pattern, he hit the stronger decoy scent and was unable to finish following the original trail because his nose was overwhelmed from inhaling the strong odor. When Red walked the same pattern, he stopped well back from the distracting skunk odor. After a few minutes he asked me, “What is that smell? It’s interesting, but very potent.” I had to smile, who else had a one year old that could use a word like potent in a sentence?
     
    “Its skunk,” I explained, “the odor David and I suggested you avoid or you will be spending quality time in the kennel until we get the smell out of your coat.”
     
    “I’ll remember it,” Red assured me; he proceeded to make a wide circle around the stronger concentration of skunk scent picking up the original trail about fifteen feet beyond the decoy line.
     
    Red also had the ability to distinguish specific scents and relay the pertinent details. One example was just last week when we were able to confirm the police should be looking for a female suspect in a robbery crime. There was no detectable DNA present, but Red could tell the canvas bag we were shown had a female’s scent. A regular K9 would also have known it was female, but it would not have thought that fact important, let alone had a way to convey the observations to the handler. This type of higher reasoning convinced Gil that Red (and I, by association) would be a good addition to some of the Spokane police task force’s trickier investigations.
     
    We have the most fun when people tried to hide from Red. He could and would track what a regular K9 might be distracted away from (yeah, kinda contradicts what I said about his being sidetracked on speed tests). One policeman, Officer Janice Marks, playing the target, says that Red was the only dog she’d tested that looked up and examined the trees when he followed her trail to the river. Sure enough, Officer Marks was up in the boughs, dressed in camouflage gear. She had leapt up to a lower limb then climbed about fifteen feet high, hoping the dogs would give up or try to pick up the trail along the river’s edge. When asked later why he looked up Red explained there was a freshly broken branch, on the ground, by the tree that had the officer’s scent on it. That significance of that clue had not been understood by the other dogs.
     
    Red and I completed our circuitous route that included a side trip down to the fish hatchery and along the boat launch area. In the summer, dozens of people would start a lazy boat float down the Little Spokane River, pulling out an hour and a half later at the Painted Rocks site, or continuing for another hour or two until the Little Spokane poured into the Spokane River. It was a wonderful, relaxing way to spend a hot day.
     
    When I had my eyesight, I used to spend mornings at the end of the float, fishing in the Spokane River. Fishing was one of the activities I really missed, as I used to spend hours on the river banks or at the lakes, casting with the hope of enticing trout or bass to bite.
     
    I had no idea how long Red and I were gone on our walk. Experience with the circuit we completed told me we had probably been hiking for close to two hours. Red has no concept of time, so he’s pretty worthless as a four-legged timepiece. I knew we were close to home when I could hear the faint buzzing of drones in the distance. Well, there was also that steep hill approximately ten minutes from the house; I