WD4C: Can Man’s Best Friend Help Save Wild Sheep?

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, TRAINED DOGS HAVE PROTECTED DOMESTIC FLOCKS FROM RAVAGING PREDATORS. NOW, CONSERVATIONISTS ARE USING A SPECIAL GROUP OF TRAINED CANINES TO DETECT DISEASE IN WILD SHEEP, WITH THE GOAL OF HELPING SAFEGUARD THEIR FUTURE. Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C) in conjunction with Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF), Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, and Utah and Montana State Universities are putting these dogs' smelling capabilities to the test.

The goal is to train dogs to smell Movi, the pathogen that wreaks havoc on bighorn herds.  “People want to know if the dogs can do it and the short answer is yes, the dogs are really good at this,” said Pete Coppolillo, WD4C’s Executive Director.

“We started with domestic sheep and demonstrated that the dogs could detect it from a breath sample collected in a mask during the pandemic because we used Movi as a model for COVID.”


 
Wide-ranging testing on nasal swabs and scat are ongoing. Field tests for 2023-24 include Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota and Arizona. This is a work in progress and it still takes sending samples to a lab to see if a dog is correct but there have been some positive strides.

 

Click here to listen to the SHEEP FEVER Podcast Episode 35. Sheep Fever co-host Gray Thornton visits with Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C) Executive Director Dr. Pete Coppolillo and WSF Vice President of Conservation Kevin Hurley to discuss how these four-legged friends are making an impact on wild sheep conservation, trap & translocations, and test and remove programs throughout the west.

“We’ve got accuracies over 80 percent and with some dogs over 90 percent but we’re going to try to get that in the high 90s, which would be on par with laboratory diagnostics,” he said. WD4C dogs are currently doing many tasks around the world ranging from anti-poaching work in Africa to helping stop the spread of zebra mussels on waterways in Texas. “Not only are the dogs able to detect zebra mussels but the larvae which are invisible to the naked eye. This is helping with boat inspections set up to stop the spread because a dog can take the inspection to a different level than a person can, Coppolillo said.
 
The long-term goal is to be able to sample a herd’s disease status on the ground by sniffing scat without having to set up an expensive, labor-intensive capture. 
 

"There is still work to be done, but WSF is all in," said WSF President & CEO Gray N. Thornton. "If we can detect infected animals without captures and handling, what we invest in these testing captures can be put to other uses, like habitat enhancements. More importantly, will be the ability to translocate wild sheep to new ranges with high confidence that we're moving healthy sheep and not spreading disease along with them."

 
Finally, this project doesn’t just benefit the sheep but it helps abandoned dogs as well.  Most of WD4C’s dogs are from shelters and the number one breed in their kennels according to Coppolillo are “mutts”. The chief characteristic their trainers look for is a “high ball drive”. In other words, the desire to chase and play with a ball for long periods of time. That’s their reward for the hard work they do to help our beloved wildlife in many capacities.  Saving forgotten dogs and giving them a purpose to save wild sheep is a win if there ever was one. So maybe one day soon, this will translate to man’s best friend becoming one of wild sheep’s strongest allies.
 

CONSERVATION IMPACT

WSF has contributed $105,618 since 2021 to support WD4C’s testing efforts and facilitating capturing testing samples from federal, state and tribal agencies.

Contributing Author: Chester Moore