Published: April 06, 2008 12:20 am         

Blu follows nose; officer follows Blu

Sometimes at the end of the trail is a person who has broken a fish or game law

Special note to fish and game outlaws.

Officer Blu likes the way you smell.

When Blu, a 98-pound black Labrador retriever takes off on the track of a person who may have killed an illegal deer or hunted without written permission or fished without a license he doesn’t know that the person has probably done something illegal. Blu just knows that sniffing his way through the woods or along the stream or even across a paved highway is what his buddy and his handler Maryland Natural Resources Police Officer Curt Dieterle wants him to do.

“And he does it really well,” Dieterle said this week. “I’ve had people we’ve caught say ‘that’s a hell of a dog,’”

Most recently, Easter Sunday in fact, Dieterle and Blu got a call from fellow officer John Amann, who had seen two people angling in Fifteen Mile Creek, which wasn’t open for fishing.

The pair of illicit anglers saw Amann as well and hightailed it through the woods, which was the sign for Amann to call for Officer Blu.

“It was the first Easter Sunday I’d had off in 10 years, but that’s what we do,” Dieterle said of the noontime telephone call.

“By the time we got to the creek, Amann had already found an ice chest with 14 trout in it,” Dieterle said. “He said the two had run across the stream so I took Blu to the other side and told him to ‘track.’”

And boy did Blu track.

Dieterle described a 1.25-mile jaunt through two hollows and up onto a ridgeline. “I could see where they had probably gotten on a 4-wheeler and Blu kept pulling in the direction it had gone. Even though they were on a 4-wheeler, he could still smell them because they lose skin cells as the wind blows over them and even just from breathing,” Dieterle said.

Soon dog and handler came to a field. “I had an idea where we were headed, but I let Blu lead the way and told Amann (via radio) to circle around.”

Blu stayed on the track across old U.S. 40 and then across M.V. Smith Road (he’s asphalt trained, according to Dieterle) and just about the time the canine officer led his handler to the back steps of a residence, Amann pulled up in front of the house.

It was the house of Brian W. Peck, 33, who, as reported in a news release from the agency, was charged with fishing without a license and fishing in a put and take trout stream during closed season.

“He told us who the other person was,” Dieterle said. That resulted in the ticketing of Danny W. Jay, 31, Cumberland, for the same charges.

“They both admitted the situation,” Dieterle said. “They can pay the fine or go to court in May. The fish were still good so we gave them to a needy family.”

Blu has successfully tracked lost people. He has led Dieterle directly to hunters in treestands or in secluded locations who were suspected of breaking the law. Some, in fact, were scofflaws. Some were not.

Blu’s value is not always in finding a violator.

Recently Dieterle along with fellow officer Jim Clise, received a high commendation from NRP for handling a situation at Rocky Gap State Park.

Dieterle recalled the day when he was at park headquarters and a passing motorist stopped to alert someone to a suspicious situation at the nearby exit ramp of Interstate 68.

Dieterle said a woman was driving a car that also held her husband and 8-year-old son. “Apparently she had not taken medication she needed and was, well, flipping out. She said I was the devil and we had to restrain her so she wouldn’t hurt herself or cause a problem.”

Dieterle said the situation was under control and he believed that the son could be further traumatized by watching his mother in that particular setting so he asked him to feed Blu a couple Milk Bones.

“He said ‘you mean I can feed a police dog?’ and I said ‘sure, I think he’s hungry.’ By the time we were done with that the ambulance crew had taken over. We eventually got a nice letter from the husband thanking us and telling us that his wife is doing fine now.”

Blu is the agency’s resource dog in its Western Region. Another Labrador, Bear, has that role in NRP’s Central Region. Now being trained are Ruddy, who will patrol the Eastern Region, and Dock, who will be stationed in the Southern Region.

In January, Blu found four illegal hunters in Washington County. “We found three of them, but Blu still wanted to track, which told me we hadn’t found the one he had been scented on beside the driver’s side door. So we kept going and got the fourth one. I said to him, ‘you must be the driver of the silver pickup’ and he asked me how I knew.

“My dog told me,” Dieterle said he replied.

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.