Civil + Structural Engineer Magazine Interview

Every Dog Has Their Day:

America’s First Water Leak

Detection Dog

By Luke Carothers

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 

distribution 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

Arkansas 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 places,

having spent time working with dogs in three different units. When she was

paroled, Tracy began working with Carrie Kessler.

Tracy Owen  now runs 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

 talks about dogs is not unlike the way an empathetic teacher talks

about their students. She uses words like “special” and “unique”

to describe Vessel and her peers; she fosters 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 Vessel

the right qualities seemed to shine through immediately. Vessel has

just the right temperament for the job and feels an intense desire to please.

Tracy, had to wait until the seven-week training period was over. As soon as it was, Tracy immediately reached out to see if Vessel was adopted, and when

she wasn’t, Tracy asked if she could undergo a two-week service

training period.

During this time, Vessel was working with inmates from the Randall L.

Williams unit when Tracy realized that Vessel was developing a strong

ball drive. She describes this moment as “full throttle” believing her

drive was unlocked. This means Vessel wasn’t suited to work with

someone who has disabilities because she just had too much drive.

 Tracy wasn't deterred. The trainer believed that Vessel’s

love of learning and her ball drive would find her a place to help. She

knew there was still something special in store for Vessel.

Getting Vessel’s Feet Wet

Shortly after unlocking her ball drive and losing the prospect of helping

someone with disabilities, Vessel’s destiny was realized when CAW

came calling. Tracy originally didn’t like the name Vessel,

but when this opportunity came up, she knew the name was the right

fit. Vessel’s name, her demeanor, her drive, and her desire to please all

came together at the perfect time.

CAW wanted to start from the ground up. The company asked Tracy if she could train a dog to detect water leaks. She

responded with an emphatic, “sure”.

Tracy admits she had little professional experience in scent detection.

Her only experience, as she puts it, was “playing around with some of

[her] training dogs.” However, Tracy was confident that she knew the

fundamentals, and she was confident in Vessel’s ability to learn and her

drive to please others.

Tracy knew Vessel would be the perfect candidate for this job because

she is ball-driven rather than food-driven. This means Vessel views

rewards as completing a task and getting to go again. In other words,

because Vessel wants to please her handler, she will complete the task

as quick as possible. Once Tracy got Vessel to focus on the

smell of CAW’s water, her own nature will allow her to continuously

hone her skills as long as she is allowed to do her job.

Although Vessel’s training is ongoing, the initial process takes around

six months (as well as the previous service and handler training). Most

of the time during this training period is spent changing the scenario

and making the dog work in different environments. For a worker like

Vessel, this is extremely important. Vessel is responsible for detecting

water leaks that occur in different environments, and it is extremely

important that she can stay on task.

Tracy believes one of the keys for training a detection dog like Vessel

is to start with short training sessions that are set up for success. The

sessions must be short because, as a younger animal in training, the

dogs don’t have the longest attention span. As the training continues,

however, the sessions increase in duration and the tasks become harder.

Vessel’s training began in this way with short sessions that took place

mostly indoors. Tracy  described this stage of the training

as short. She would ask the dog to find a smell that is just a short

distance away with little else to distract them. As the dogs complete

these shorter tasks, they then begin to move outside and are given more

and more distractions.

Vessel is also different from other service animals in that she has public

access training. This training adds a few extra months onto the pro

gram, but it offers a few key benefits. For example, Vessel is able to

interact with the public for demonstrations, and she can fly on planes with her handlers. This training also allows Vessel to give educational

demonstrations to children. Vessel’s public access training allows her

to travel more widely and spread the message about what she is doing,

which was one of the main goals when CAW began this project.

This new working relationship took work from both sides. On one

hand, Vessel can be a lot to handle while she’s on the job. Vessel’s ball

drive and high energy give her an incredibly high work rate, which can

be difficult to manage in suburban and urban environments. Vessel’s

assignments often require her to work within neighborhoods where

there are more distractions such as traffic and curious pedestrians.

Stephen has learned early into his career working with Vessel that

sometimes she needs an extra set of eyes to keep her out of harm’s way.

The unique nature of Vessel’s job means that she works in quite the

variety of environments. However, once Vessel puts her work vest on,

there is nothing that can distract her. According to Stephen, Vessel’s

identification record is nearly immaculate. In fact, since Vessel was

hired in the Fall, she has positively identified over 80 leaks, both above

and below ground. Not only is this a prodigious amount of production, it is also efficient. During that time, Vessel only misidentified one CAW leak, and, even then, Stephen refuses to blame Vessel calling the one miss -identification a “handler’s error”.

A Model Employee

To be clear, Vessel’s story is great, and she is a cute pet, but that does not lessen the impact she is having with her work. Prior to Vessel’s arrival, the process of identifying surface water as a treated water leak involved not only identifying the leak but also sending that water into the lab is make certain it is CAW water. Because Vessel is only trained to identify water specifically treated at one of the CAW facilities, the need to test it diminishes significantly. 

Vessel’s ability to detect water underground also saves CAW time and money when it comes to digging in the ground. Stephen Sullivan notes a particular case when someone asked them to check for a leak at the

base of the hill because water was running out.

Vessel was able to identify the leak closer to the top of the hill which

saved what likely would have been 60 feet of digging into a residential

hill. This non-invasive way of identifying crucial breaks in water lines

could prove useful in other urban or residential settings.

On top of saving time and money for CAW, Vessel is also a public relations star. Because Vessel has public access training, she is able to

travel far and wide. According to CAW, this training is a result of the

desire to spread this idea to other areas of the United   States.

As other utility companies look for ways to reduce their unused water

rate, they will look at Vessel as a shining beacon of using resources in

a new way. In an industry that often looks towards technology to solve

the latest issues, this is an opportunity to reassess how we can use the

tools around us to solve the problems we face.

A Flood of Positive Results

Vessel only began working at CAW in early November 2019, but her

handler, Stephen Sullivan, has a lot more experience when it comes to

working with treated water. Stephen has worked for Central  Arkansas

Water for the last 13 years as a foreman in the construction sector, but

his job changed dramatically last October when he was asked to work

with Vessel. However, for Sullivan, the difference between laying pipe

every day and working with Vessel is a huge one, but it is definitely a

good thing.

Vessel was initially wary to leave Tracy, so trying to bond

was initially met with some resistance. Each time Vessel smelled her

trainer, she would become distracted and try to search the facility for

them. However, Vessel soon learned to trust Stephen and the two have

developed a strong working relationship. Since Vessel spends her time

outside work living with Stephen as a pet, this bond is only set to grow

even stronger. Stephen describes the strength of this relationship along

the lines of trust; he believes that the more Vessel trusts him, the better

she is able to do her job.