Central Arkansas Water (CAW) has taken a lot of steps to reduce their unaccounted water rates. They’ve tried satellite detection and manual searching, but recently they added a new tool that will help them lower their unaccounted water rate from 11-12 percent below the American Water Works Association’s “gold standard” of 9 percent to the low rate of 5 percent. In terms of water detection in the United States, this tool is one of a kind. Enter Vessel, an adorable black lab mix. She isn’t just a pet-able face, either. Vessel is as hard a worker as they come, and she is no stranger to gainful employment. Prior to undergoing training as a water leak detection dog, Vessel was a member of Arkansas Paws in Prison, where she worked with inmates who were given the opportunity to train res- cue dogs that would otherwise have no place to go. Vessel was special, however, and when CAW went looking for a suitable dog for the task, trainers immediately singled her out as the best candidate. Afterwards, Vessel underwent specialized training to detect leaks. The process seems simple. Handlers bring Vessel to an area where they hope to detect either surfacing or non-surfacing leaks in their water dis- tribution system and let her go. Her task is straight-forward: detect any treated water leaks in the area. When Vessel finds a suspected leak, she immediately goes to that spot and lays down, looking at her handler. The handler asks Vessel to confirm the leak to which she looks at the handler, barks, and lies back down. What happens if none of the water leaking from the distribution system reaches the surface? This is where Vessel sets herself apart from her human coworkers. She uses her superb canine senses to smell chlorine as it is expelled from the treated water, meaning that even water underground can’t escape Vessel’s nose. Tapping into Vessel’s Potential CAW’s most effective tool in the fight against unaccounted water was forged in the most unlikely of places. Vessel is a graduate of the Ar- kansas Paws in Prison program. Paws in Prison is a unique opportunity where inmates are selected to become trainers of rescue dogs. The program not only provides an opportunity for prisoners to build skills that can be used to transition to a life outside of prison, but it also trains remarkably talented dogs. On top of that, the program also saves these dogs from being euthanized. Tracy Owen is a professional dog trainer, and she was one of the very first Paws in Prison trainers. She has been training dogs for about 17 years, although she joined Paws in Prison when it started around 2011. Owen was lucky enough to work with the program in a few different Every Dog has their Day: America’s First Water Leak Detection Dog By Luke Carothers
places, having spent time working with dogs in three different units. When she was paroled, Tracy began working with Carrie Kessler. Carrie Kessler has over 20 years of experience being a professional dog trainer. In her current role working with Paws in Prison, she supervises the training in two different units: The Maximum-Security unit and the Tucker unit. This is where she found Vessel. Tracy Owen and Carrie Kessler now run On the Nose, a dog training company that specializes in leak detection, although there is a lot of room to grow in terms of what these dogs can do. The way Tracy and Carrie talk about dogs is not unlike the way an empathetic teacher talks about their students. The pair use words like “special” and “unique” to describe Vessel and her peers; they foster the idea that each dog is different and suited to their own tasks. When it comes to Vessel, her trainers believe she is perfectly suited to her job. Tracy specializes in service dogs, and when she first worked with Ves- sel the right qualities seemed to shine through immediately. Vessel has just the right temperament for the job and feels an intense desire to Vessel gets to work quickly after being given the command to search for a water leak.
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csengineermag.com
may 2020
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