Raphael’s Excellent Week

Lots of finds, and a Turtle Reunion!

Raphael’s Very Good Week

Well, it was actually 10 days, but Raphi had remarkable success recently, and he also had fun with his best friends in training. Then he got to see his brothers for the first time in years.

On September 19th, he searched for a cat that had been missing for a week.  Raphael is a cat-detection dog, and his job is to do a grid search, checking all the hiding places for any cats.  We usually check one yard and make sure it is clear of cats, and then move on to the next.  On this day, when we started the search, he seemed to be following a scent trail of a particular cat. He has been successful sometimes when he does this, even though that’s not exactly how he was trained, so I will let him follow a scent trail when he gets going on one.  I always run a GPS app on my phone, so we can come back and fill in the gaps of any place we might have skipped over.  In this case, Raphael followed this scent trail to a house more than a block away, and to a large pile of debris.  I’m certain a cat was either hiding in there at that moment, or had been there recently.  But, since Raphi is trained to find any cat, and not a specific cat, we didn’t know if he had tracked down the right cat.  We couldn’t see a cat in the large pile of debris, but it is certainly possible one was in there.  To make the best use of our time, we told the missing cat’s owner that we strongly suspected a cat was in the junk pile, and they should continue to investigate it, but we were going to move on with the search, in case that was not the right cat.

Raphael searched for three hours, through the woods, and in and out of many yards.  He checked a basement that cats were known to get into.  He checked an abandoned house where a murder had taken places years ago, and that house was very run down, with holes in the walls where a cat could easily get in and climb into the rafters.  Of course, Raphi didn’t know a murder had happened there, and he checked the smelly house happily.  I was glad to get out of that sad house, and relieved that Raph did not detect a cat in there.

As we were nearing the end of our allotted search time, having covered most of the area we planned to, we were coming back to the missing cat’s yard, and Raphi stopped to smell something.  I couldn’t see anything at first.  I pushed aside the leaf he was sniffing at, and saw an internal organ, most likely belonging to the missing cat, indicating a predator attack.  This was important evidence that absolutely never would have been found without a search dog. Even when I was looking directly at it, I would have dismissed it as nothing related to a missing cat, if not for Raphael pointing it out to me.   I praised Raphael for his excellent work.  The cat’s owner was understandably very upset.  I told her that the most likely scenario was that her cat was taken by a coyote because this evidence, left in this location, was a signature of coyotes.  I told her I couldn’t be certain it was her cat, but the probability of it being some other cat was much lower than the likely explanation, that her cat just happened to be out at a time when a coyote was passing through.  No other cats were reported missing in the area at that time. This cat’s owner deeply appreciated Raphi’s work, allowing her to know what likely happened to her cat, instead of leaving her always wondering.  Although it was a sad outcome for the cat and his family, it was excellent work by Raph.  We celebrated his good work with a play session with his best friend, Valentino.  Raphael had solved a missing cat case, to about a 90% certainty, when no other method could have found that evidence.

On September 20th, Raphael searched for another cat.  After about an hour of doing a grid search, Raphi found tufts of fur on a lawn.  The fur matched the missing cat.  From that point, Raphi followed a scent trail for about twenty feet, and he found something I couldn’t identify.  I picked it up with a tool, and finally determined it was an internal organ.  A few feet away from that, there were fragments of bone.  Finding fur that matched the missing cat, plus organs and bone fragments, I was 100% certain that Raphael had solved his second case in two days.  That cat’s owner was of course deeply saddened by the discovery, but she appreciated knowing, and she was thankful for Raphi’s good work.

On the 21st, Raph and I searched for a cat, but we didn’t find her, or any signs of what might have happened to her. Raph led me to some mud with what appeared to be cat footprints, a possible sign that we were looking in the right place. We did a thorough search, and we ruled out many hiding places.  The fact that we did not find any evidence of an attack was a positive sign for the cat’s owners.  We were able to direct the cat’s owners to some areas of interest where I thought the cat might go, based on Raphi’s work.  A few days after that search, I received a message that the cat was found, safe and healthy.  I think that lost cat might have been moving around as we searched, moving from one hiding place to another, and avoiding us.

On September 22nd, Raphael helped us train Raven.  We went to a nice forested park, and Raphi walked a scent trail with his human, Brenda.  They were the target for Raven, so she could follow his scent.  Raven was very excited to catch the scent of her friend, Raph, and she started tracking him before I even presented anything with his scent. Raven pulled hard and found him without too much trouble, except that she was overheating from being too excited.  I had to stop Raven a couple of times and have her lie down in the grass to cool off for a bit, and then resume the search.  Raphael loves to play this game where he hides and gets found by one of his friends.  When we got close, I let go of Raven’s leash, and she and Raph chased each other around in the meadow.

After that training session, we all went to a Turtle Reunion!  Raph met his three brothers, and they played in a yard for a couple of hours.  He was a little cautious about seeing his brothers again after a couple of years, and I couldn’t quite tell if he recognized them.  After milling around with Donatello, Michelangelo, and Leonardo for about 20 minutes, they all started to warm up and they played.  Michelangelo is the brother that looks most like Raphael.  Donatello and Leonardo look similar to each other, and a bit different than the other two.  The families of the four Turtles enjoyed seeing them all together, playing and having a good time.  Raphael and Michelangelo seemed to have similar playing styles, and they tumbled around together.  I think altogether, the 10 smartphones at the reunion must have taken 10,000 photos and videos.

Raph had a successful search on September 27th, but, since that was a happy ending, I’m going to skip over that one for now.  On September 28th, Raphael did outstanding work, finding evidence of a sad ending.  The cat we were looking for was an indoor-only cat, who was deeply loved.  It appeared she had jumped off a deck, down to the yard below.  This neighborhood was known to have coyotes, and earlier that week, a block away, remains of a cat had been found after a coyote attack.  Raphael and I searched through small green belts and little wild pockets between the homes.  Raphael found coyote scat in a dozen places.  You can tell what coyotes have been eating because they consume the fur and bones of their prey, which is usually rabbits and rodents.  Every time Raphael would find coyote scat, I would break it apart to see what they had been eating.  In each case, it did not appear to be cat fur, fortunately.  After we had been searching for hours, Raphael’s nose went up, and he sniffed at the air intently.  I knew he was onto something important.  He was looking up the hill, into a large blackberry patch that was downhill from the cat’s home.  Raphi pulled me up into the brush.  I had to crawl on my hands and knees through a green tunnel that was easy for Raphi or a coyote to get through, but not so easy for someone who is 6’3”.  Raphi went over logs and under branches, and with his nose he pointed out five locations with tufts of fur that matched the missing cat.  The earth was disturbed as if there had been a struggle. This crucial evidence absolutely never would have been found without Raphael’s nose. The fur Raphi found was covered in dirt, but it seemed like a match for the missing cat.  I collected the fur and compared it to some fur known to have come from the missing cat.  It appeared to be a match, to me, and given that the cat had jumped out of the house and right into prime coyote territory, the most likely explanation was that she had been taken by a coyote almost immediately after she jumped off the deck.  It seems likely that the coyote was nearby, watching, waiting for her to jump.  This cat’s owner was deeply upset, of course.  She had done everything she could to keep her cat safe, and because of one fluke, one moment that could happen to anyone, her cat was gone forever.  She said she appreciated Raphi’s work, regardless of the outcome, and she would rather know the truth, then always wonder what happened.

Backing up to the 27th of September, this was Raphael’s best search of the ten-day stretch.  He was searching for Bella in Auburn.  Bella had been seen the previous night, after having been missing for several days, but she ran off again.  I told the owners of Bella that they probably didn’t need a search dog, since they knew approximately where their cat was, but they wanted Raph to come out and search so they could find their cat as fast as possible.  Raphi searched all around the apartment complex.  He was interested in several areas, but it seemed to me that a cat had been there recently and moved away.  After we had covered a large area, we came back and rechecked some areas we had already covered, in case the cat looped around to avoid us.  As we were searching near the pool, Raphi caught the scent of a cat in a shrub near the fence.  Raph was insistent that there was a cat in there, but I couldn’t see one.  The interior of this shrub, I think it might have been a type of laurel, was convoluted, with branches looping around each other and turning every direction.  Raphi and I looked into the shrub for several minutes.  Raph was pointing at a particular place with his nose, but I didn’t see anything but branches.  Finally, the missing cat moved a little, and my eyes were able to distinguish Bella in her hiding place.  I praised Raphael for his excellent work. I told Bella’s owner where she was.  She looked directly at her cat and couldn’t see her, but after a few moments, Bella moved again, and her owner could see her.  I took Raphael away and put him in the car so he could sit in the air conditioning with Tino.  I instructed Bella’s owner to just sit outside the bush, near Bella, and talk to her in a calm voice.  I thought Bella would probably come out to her after 15 to 30 minutes.  I told her not to grab for Bella, but to let her come out on her own when she was ready.  At just about the 30 minute mark, Bella finally came out to her person, and allowed her person to pick her up.  She was safe.

I told Raphi what an excellent Turtle he was.  He had solved 4 out of 5 missing cat cases in a ten day period.  Even though three of the four found cats were deceased, it was still excellent work by Raphael, and our clients appreciated his skills and drive.

To cap off this excellent stretch of ten days, on September 29th, we went to training again so Raven could find him.  It was a cool morning, and Raven tracked Raphi for about half a mile and found him in a grassy area between two buildings.  When Raven got close to Raphi’s hiding place, I let go of her leash and let her run to him.  They greeted each other happily, and then Raphi ran to greet me.  He is always so happy to see me, and he shows his enthusiasm by hurling his body against me.  In the days after we captured the four puppies, in August of 2021, Raphael would show how much he liked me by running across a yard and hurling himself at my face, slamming his body into my head.  It certainly made me feel loved.  These days, he slams into me a little more gently, but he definitely tells me he loves me.

Raphael is an excellent working partner.  I love to be around him and to work with him.  The cases he solves would likely never be solved without him.  Even though sometimes he finds bad news, finding the truth is always better than forever being in the dark.  Raphael was dumped in the mountains with his three brothers.  Useless Bay Sanctuary volunteers rescued the four puppies, and they were all adopted.  Raphael was my favorite one of the Ninja Turtles from the beginning, and he really loves me.  I am so lucky that I get to work with him.  He will have an excellent career as a cat detection dog, and the once unwanted puppy is a treasured family member who is providing a service to society.  We see him at least once a week, and often several times a week.  I am always happy to get slammed into by Raphael with his signature full-body greeting.