August 16, 2024
NETFLIX/YouTube
Cynthia Otto, the founder and executive director of Penn Vet's Working Dog Center, explains the program in Netflix's documentary 'Inside the Mind of a Dog.' The university research hub trains bomb sniffing, search-and-rescue and cancer-detecting dogs.
A Philadelphia program that trains dogs to sniff out bombs, missing people and even cancer has a role in a new Netflix documentary.
"Inside the Mind of the Dog," which hit the streaming platform Aug. 9, explores the psychology and personality of our pets. The film talks to numerous experts about what makes dogs tick, including the staff at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center.
The Working Dog Center, located in Grays Ferry, is no ordinary veterinary clinic. The University of Pennsylvania program researches and trains scent detection dogs. Cynthia Otto, who founded the center in 2012, was inspired by the search-and-rescue dogs deployed during 9/11. She and her colleagues aim to test and develop science-backed methods of training pups for these tasks.
"We realized that there was no science to really support these amazing dogs that were doing the search-and-rescue work," Otto says in the documentary. "We needed a program that we could research the dogs, we could understand the dogs and improve the health, the well-being, the welfare of these dogs. And the availability, because there weren't enough of these search-and-rescue dogs to do the jobs that we're asking for them."
"Inside the Mind of a Dog" offers viewers a peek at the WDC's training exercises, like its massive "scent wall." Dogs must pick the port with the correct smell from a collection of 20 bored into massive wooden boards, all while staffers throw distractions like tennis balls their way. Penn Vet also uses a scent-detection wheel, loaded with samples of blood from patients with cancer and those without the disease, to teach dogs how to correctly identify the cancerous cells.
"Even if people have a different diet, if they come from different ethnic backgrounds, if they're from a different geography, a lot of times the machines get confused by that," Otto explains in the film. "So, there's something very amazing about the dog's brain and their processing ability."
The dogs best suited for these tasks must be agile, virtual "gymnasts" that can climb ladders and rubble, Otto says. While hyperactivity and barking are disqualifiers for service dogs, they're actually assets for these "working" dogs.
"We're looking for very, very different types of dogs," Otto says. "We know, in any litter, the dogs that won't sit still really want to work in detection-type, active jobs."
Dogs at the WDC also run through strength- and core-building exercises familiar to humans. Before activities, they might warm up on a treadmill or hold planks to work their abs.
The WDC doesn't just train future K9s or search-and-rescue dogs. Penn Vet's program offers basic obedience and puppy classes to the public, along with intro scent detection courses for pets.
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