_{Thumbnail: Cain, a member of Crescent City Police Department’s volunteer K9 team, works on his human remains detection skills at the Lake Earl Wildlife Area. Above: The human members of the K9 crew, Cathy Schneider, Jenna Phillips and Gloria Bobertz pose with their canine counterparts. | Photos courtesy of Gloria Bobertz}

Cathy Schneider and Gloria Bobertz began working with canines for different reasons, but they have the same philosophy in mind — a good dog never wants to stop.

They don’t have to instill this maxim in their 16-year-old colleague Jenna Phillips. Her dog, Juno, is still going despite being struck by a car last month.

“She’s starting to get up on her own,” Jenna said. “She can take a bunch of steps and she goes back down. The swelling has gone down a bunch. The bruises are gone. The infection in her belly is gone, and she’s more playful.”

Juno was nestled in the backseat of Jenna’s mother’s  car with a favorite toy.  Jenna, her mom and Juno had accompanied Schneider and Bobertz to a care facility in Grants Pass on Monday where two of the seven dogs in the Crescent City Police Department’s volunteer K9 crew were training to be therapy dogs. 

Redwood Voice Community News caught up with them at the Black Bear Diner before they headed to Schneider’s home in Oakland, Oregon, ahead of Juno’s first veterinary appointment following the surgery she had  two weeks ago to treat her injuries.

The Labrador cattle dog mix is expected to start weekly physical therapy sessions soon. It’ll take about three months for Juno to resume her training as the team’s articles-detection dog.

“The therapy is to make sure she has a normal gait,” Bobertz said. “We’re going to slowly start working her back into training.”

In addition to articles detection, CCPD’s volunteer K9 crew is training for electronics detection, firearms detection and human remains detection. 

The visit to the Grants Pass care facility was for Merlin, Schneider’s papillon, and Cash, Bobertz’s German shepherd husky mix to further their training as therapy dogs. According to Schneider, who has 28 years’ experience working with dogs for search and rescue and human remains detection, CCPD’s goal is for Merlin and Cash to provide comfort to children experiencing the justice system and for first responders battling wildfires and other disasters.

After about a year in the field, Merlin and Cash will be able to be deployed all over the United States as therapy dogs, Schneider said.

Most dogs are trained in multiple disciplines. For example, Merlin has been deployed for human remains detection in addition to his therapy dog work.

All the dogs, except for Merlin, are rescue dogs, said Bobertz, who retired from the Del Norte County Behavioral Health Branch in 2022.

“If you see a quality in the dog, you can train this dog to do something,” she said. 

CCPD Chief Richard Griffin said the volunteer K9 program began with a conversation he had with Bobertz about two years ago. Bobertz’s cousin was one of several victims in a cluster of unsolved murders in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley area of Idaho and Washington, the chief said, and she was interested in cadaver dogs.

Griffin said he realized that the skills a cadaver dog has could be used to help Crescent City recover from a major disaster. Since Bobertz and Schneider are volunteers, the program wouldn’t be too much of a financial burden for the city, he said.

“We’re Tsunami City USA. There is a reality at some point that we’ll need the services of cadaver dogs,” he said. “I remember when Hurricane Katrina happened and all the agencies that responded — that’s what I envisioned.”

The seven dogs in CCPD’s volunteer K9 program join the agency’s two working dogs, sergeants Kostya and Murtaugh. The department recently celebrated the retirement of its long-time K9 officer, Lt. Kai on Dec. 2.

At that meeting, Griffin said to have three working dogs on patrol plus seven in CCPD’s volunteer program is “almost unheard of” in a department of that size. Though some funding comes out of the city’s coffers, the volunteer program is funded primarily through donations, he said.

It was because of Bobertz that CCPD connected with Schneider, Griffin said. Bobertz’ is also the reason Jenna, a sergeant in CCPD’s Explorer program, was paired with Juno, he said.

“It’s one of my employees saying, ‘Here’s an idea. What do you think?’ And I supported it,” Griffin said. “We found in Jenna the perfect prototype of what you want in a young individual that’s motivated for a purpose.”

According to Bobertz, the two cadaver dogs on the volunteer K9 crew are trained in archeological human remains detection. They can detect odors that are far fainter, which is valuable in solving cases that are decades old.

This is important to Bobertz, whose cousin, Kristina Nelson, was 21 years old when she and her stepsister, 18-year-old Jacqueline Ann Miller, disappeared from the downtown Lewiston, Idaho area in 1982.

Nelson’s remains were found almost two years later off an embankment near Kendrick, Idaho, Bobertz said. Though law enforcement have identified a suspect, they’re still searching for another victim connected with that case.

Bobertz said she has always loved dogs, but it wasn’t until she began researching her cousin’s case that she realized how valuable a tool they could be. She felt that if she could train a dog to detect human remains, she could help others find missing loved ones.

She said she began volunteering for CCPD’s missing persons and cold case team about two-and-a-half years ago.

“It’s a pay-it-forward,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky in that my cousin’s case has received so much social media attention. Sure, that doesn’t always solve the case, but if I’m able to help somebody down the line, that’s what it’s about.”

In addition to the training their dogs go through, Bobertz, Schneider and Jenna will also receive specialized instruction. This includes taking courses through FEMA, as well as field psychology, particularly with human remains detection.

As an articles-detection dog, Juno would be searching for items that have human scent on it, Schneider said. Maybe a suspect police are searching for threw his car keys out the window or smokes a certain brand of cigarette, she said as an example. That’s where Juno would come in.

Schneider said one of the things she would be working with Jenna on is how scent moves in different environments and how she would read that in her dog’s body language.

“The dog will tell you where they’ve got the strongest odor, but that isn’t necessarily where your object is,” she said. “You then have to interpret what the dog is telling you and help the dog get as close as you can.”

According to Bobertz, article detection is less complicated than human remains detection, but Jenna’s work with Juno opens doors for her.

“She’s on the money,” Bobertz said of Juno. “And that says a lot for a handler to have that kind of bond with the dog. They’re a team, but you have to work on that obedience and patience. And I’m going to emphasize the patience part because I think people don’t understand that  it is a lot of patience and for a young person to have the kind of patience and dedication that Jenna has is incredible.”

Juno will be 3 years old around the time Jenna turns 18, which will make her eligible to be certified through the North American Police Work Dog Association, Bobertz said. She hopes that Jenna, whose goal is to be hired as a full-time police officer with CCPD, would encourage her peers to work with dogs.

Bobertz also pointed out that most police K9s do apprehension and narcotics detection work. Because of funding issues, cold cases get pushed to the back burner for most departments, she said. This is where volunteers are valuable, Bobertz said.

“Unfortunately there are so many of these cases everywhere and they just get put in a box on the shelf,” she said. “We would like to help build that network of volunteers to start taking an active role in solving some cases.”