An Interview with Alison Pearce Stevens about Detective Dogs

Alison Pearce Stevens tells me why she wrote her book Detective Dogs and how dogs' noses can help protect wild spaces by sniffing out invasive species.

By Zazie Todd, PhD

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Detective Dogs: How Working Dogs Sniff Out Invasive Species is the latest from Alison Pearce Stevens. It's a fascinating (and fun) account of the work of conservation dogs, written for middle graders but honestly of interest to adults too! We get to see the dogs at work and learn about the difference they make. The text is accompanied by photos of dogs in the field, most of which Alison took herself while researching the book.

I asked Alison to tell me about Detective Dogs. 

Why did you write this book?

Functioning ecosystems are essential—we’re completely dependent on them, but many people don’t realize this, and our natural spaces don’t get much attention. I’m working to change that by showcasing incredible ecosystems in my books. As an animal-lover myself, I know many people gravitate to animals, which makes them the perfect vehicle to tell some of these stories.

With Detective Dogs, I wanted to share the relatively unknown work that conservation organizations are doing to protect a variety of ecosystems from one specific kind of threat: invasive species. Now, a book about invasive species probably wouldn’t find much of an audience, but a book about the dogs who sniff them out? That’s a much more interesting proposition. Even people who don’t love dogs are going to be curious to know how dogs’ unique skills are helping to protect our planet’s natural spaces.

Why are dogs so useful in the hunt for invasive species?

Their noses! Humans are great at finding things by sight, but when you’re looking for something tiny, like a seedling or an insect or a free-swimming mussel larva, our visual abilities become really limiting really fast. But dogs can differentiate between all kinds of scents and locate the source in a complex environment. They can even detect odors that are underwater or buried underground, which means they can help us locate seeds from invasive plants before they ever get a chance to sprout.

And they work great with their human handlers. Sometimes the dog is doing its own survey while the handler tracks progress from a distance. When the dog signals a find, the handler verifies it’s the correct target. Sometimes they work more closely, with the handler guiding the dog to check places that look like they might contain the species of interest.

The handler is constantly watching both the dog and the environment to maximize likelihood of detecting the species in question.

Detective Dogs is available from all good bookstores.
See below to find out where to get a signed copy.

What kind of dog is good at this job?

Dogs that are obsessed with toys make the best detective dogs. Their drive to play means they will do anything to get a bit of time with their favorite toy, which makes them easy to train. During training, dogs quickly learn that when they find a particular scent, they get their reward. I’ve watched training videos in which it took less than 10 trials for a new dog to figure out what the handler was asking and start signalling when she found the target scent. Once they understand the game, it’s easy to train them to different odors, so many conservation dogs are trained to work on a variety of projects.

Can you give an example of one of the invasive species that you write about in the book, and how dogs are used to combat it?

During a trip highlighted in the first chapter, Working Dogs For Conservation teams were in Grand Teton National Park searching for saltcedar. This is a tree from the Middle East that’s beautiful when it blooms (why people brought it here!), but has become a serious problem. The trees release salt into the soil, making it too saline for native vegetation to survive, which allows the saltcedar trees to grow into dense thickets. They require lots of water, which is a big problem in arid environments, and they crowd riverbanks, which affects fish habitat and blocks access to water for other wildlife.

Saltcedar trees had been found downstream of this particular stretch of the Snake River, so the teams were looking for the parent tree—the one pumping seeds into the river. They were also looking for any young trees, so they could be removed before they got big enough to cause problems.

There were two dog-handler teams working the river. Each team had their own raft and an experienced river guide to move them from island to island. They played leapfrog—only one dog checked each island—so they could survey as many islands as possible. When they found a tree, the handler marked the GPS location in an app. The search teams don’t do the removal; another group comes out later for that. They didn’t find the parent tree on the trip I joined, but they have since located and removed it!

When you were researching the book, what did you learn that surprised you?

I was amazed to learn that while a handler easily walks two to three miles in a day, the dogs can go five or six times as far, so the handlers have to keep an eye on them and call it a day when the dogs start to get tired. I also wasn’t expecting bear bells to be an important part of the dogs’ gear. Not necessarily to alert bears to the dogs’ presence (although that is a possibility—one team came across a massive moose on one island), but to alert the handler when the dog is signalling. The bell jingles as long as the dog is moving. When the jingle stops, the handler knows the dog has found something. When there’s a lot of vegetation, the dogs are completely invisible, so the handler uses a GPS tracker to find the dog and check to see what it found.

Can you tell me something about your writing process and how it shaped the book?

I went out into the field with each group that’s featured in the book, and I took most of the photos. I’m a very visual person, so after all of my research trips, I went through the thousands of images I’d taken to remind myself of the trip before writing about it. There were a lot of ways to approach this, but I wanted my readers to experience what it was like to go out into the field with the conservation teams, so that’s the approach I took—I relayed the experience as I observed it.

Who will especially enjoy this book?

Obviously anyone who loves dogs! But also anyone who loves nature and the environment and wants to know more about how we protect those natural spaces. I would even say that people with boats who have to be concerned with zebra mussels or people dealing with spotted lanternflies or saltcedar would be interested to know what’s being done to combat them. Invasive species are a problem all over, but most people don’t know about these intrepid dogs and the important work they do.

I will add that the book is for ages 8 and up, but I’ve heard from parents who enjoyed reading it to younger children and from adults who raved about how much they learned when they read it for themselves. So even though it’s technically a children’s book, it’s not just for kids and not only for upper elementary.

Detective Dogs: How Working Dogs Sniff Out Invasive Species is available wherever books are sold, including Bookshop (which supports indie bookstores in the US). If you would like a copy of Detective Dogs signed by the author (and her dog!), you can order it from Francie and Finch bookstore. 

About Alison Pearce Stevens: A biologist turned children’s author, Alison Pearce Stevens writes fun nonfiction: articles, picture books, and middle grade books. All of her work is inspired by a love of science and nature. She’s a regular contributor to Science News Explores, Highlights, and other children’s magazines and authored Rhinos in Nebraska, Animal Climate Heroes, Detective Dogs, and the forthcoming picture book, When Beavers Move In. Her books have been Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selections and won state book awards and a Blueberry Honor. They have also been included in year-end best-of lists, including Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Books and NSTA/Children’s Book Council’s Outstanding Science Trade Book and Best STEM Book lists. Learn more at apstevens.com.

If you liked this, you will also like:

• Canine nose work: Why you and your dog will love it with Bonnie Hartney
• Conservation Dogs and Deadly Trade by Sara Driscoll
• Human remains detection dogs and historic searches with Kim Cooper and Cat Warren

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