{"id":4089,"date":"2013-06-03T08:03:02","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T15:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov\/wordpress\/?p=4089"},"modified":"2019-07-17T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T15:58:00","slug":"detection-dogs-profiled-nbc-bay-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov\/wordpress\/index.php\/2013\/06\/03\/detection-dogs-profiled-nbc-bay-area\/","title":{"rendered":"Detection Dogs profiled on NBC Bay Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.nbcbayarea.com\/news\/local\/Agricultural-Dogs-Sniffing-Out-Illegal-Produce-209436231.html<\/a><\/p>\n

This video content is no longer available.<\/p>\n

View more videos at: http:\/\/nbcbayarea.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There was a time when Hawkeye the dog stood amidst the humblest of life\u2019s predicaments.<\/p>\n

He was confined to a kennel in Georgia, his days playing-out in a small concrete cell.<\/p>\n

But this was one of those occasions where fate interceded, drawing open a rusted chain link door to an unpredicted path. In this case, Hawkeye\u2019s keen nose led him to a new life as an agriculture-sniffing canine sleuth.<\/p>\n

\u201cHawkeye finds a lot of things there\u2019s no way we would\u2019ve been able to find,\u201d said Tino Menchaca, Hawkeye\u2019s handler with the Santa Clara Agricultural Department.<\/p>\n

Hawkeye was enlisted as one of 13 dogs employed by California\u2019s Agriculture Department to sniff unmarked shipping parcels; looking for plants, produce and seeds sent in defiance of the state\u2019s agricultural quarantine.<\/p>\n

The plants can harbor invasive insects that can pose a dire threat to California\u2019s $43 billion agricultural industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dogs in this last fiscal year hit on 124 packages that had detrimental, nasty, nasty pests that we don\u2019t want in California,\u201d said Michelle Thom, deputy agricultural commissioner with Santa Clara County.<\/p>\n

Every day Hawkeye and Menchaca, his agricultural biologist-handler, comb the warehouses of UPS, FedEx, and the U.S Postal Service. Hawkeye sweeps through shipping boxes, darting past the ones with perfume, beef jerky and other confusing scents \u2013 alighting on one which he begins to scratch and leap around.<\/p>\n

That box will normally hold items like oranges sent from a Florida backyard, mangoes from India or other exotic fruits.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently there\u2019s a citrus pest called citrus psyllid,\u201d said Menchaca. \u201cIf that one gets loose in our county it can cause a lot of damage to the citrus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dogs have intercepted numerous packages containing fruit flies – a major concern to farmers in the Bay Area\u2019s vineyards. Most of the package senders are oblivious to the state’s laws, said Thom.<\/p>\n

In many cases sending plants, seeds and produce is permitted, as long as the box is marked. That alerts agricultural inspectors to check those boxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the parcels that aren\u2019t marked, the parcels people have no idea there\u2019s an agricultural quarantine against these products,\u201d said Thom. \u201cThese dogs will let us know, hey, this package has agricultural products in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dogs work several two-hour shifts a day, with a break in between. They undergo weekly training to make sure they don\u2019t seek out the wrong type of products. The dogs can work up to eight years before they\u2019re retired, and can then be adopted by their handlers.<\/p>\n

During their working years, the dogs spend their off-hours in kennels and dog hotels, often kept away from socially mingling with other dogs.<\/p>\n

But on Wednesday, 12 of the state\u2019s 13 agricultural dogs and their handlers gathered in San Jose for the annual group training. When the dogs weren\u2019t racing around a warehouse sniffing packages, they sniffed and chased each other around the parking lot.<\/p>\n

A photographer hired by the state snapped a group photo and then individual pictures of the dogs and their humans. Menchaca posed with Hawkeye, who ignored the photographer\u2019s dramatic gestures to get him to face the camera \u2013 a reluctant star agent, now far removed from his days of struggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.nbcbayarea.com\/news\/local\/Agricultural-Dogs-Sniffing-Out-Illegal-Produce-209436231.html This video content is no longer available. View more videos at: http:\/\/nbcbayarea.com.   There was a time when Hawkeye the dog stood amidst the humblest of life\u2019s predicaments. He was confined to a kennel in Georgia, his days playing-out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,116],"tags":[117,118],"class_list":["post-4089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agricultural-education","category-invasive-species-2","tag-detector-dogs","tag-sniff-dogs"],"yoast_head":"\r\nDetection Dogs profiled on NBC Bay Area - CDFA's Planting Seeds Blog<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov\/wordpress\/index.php\/2013\/06\/03\/detection-dogs-profiled-nbc-bay-area\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Detection Dogs profiled on NBC Bay Area - CDFA's Planting Seeds Blog\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"http:\/\/www.nbcbayarea.com\/news\/local\/Agricultural-Dogs-Sniffing-Out-Illegal-Produce-209436231.html This video content is no longer available. 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