Pup 2 Pup: From Seal Handler to Dog Handler

Casey Baines:

Hello everybody and welcome once again to Detect and Protect, the Australian biosecurity podcast. I am your guest host today; Casey Baines. Today we move on to hear from some of our current handlers as we continue celebrating last year’s 30th anniversary of the biosecurity detector dog program.

The program plays a vital role in the interception of biosecurity risks in the airport, mail, and cargo environments. The detector dog’s excellent agility and super noses make them one our most effective and loveable detection methods.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Kelvin Wong.

Kelvin joined the department in 2021 as a biosecurity officer and joined the detector dog program soon after. In this episode, Kelvin talks about his past experiences working at Taronga Zoo training seals and its similarities in training our biosecurity detector dogs.

Being a relatively new handler, he also talks us through his learning and development techniques, team culture and figuring out different detector dog quirks.

Ok, time to hear from Kelvin and his experiences in recently joining the detector dog program.

So thank you so much to start with, for agreeing to be part of the interview. We're super excited to be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the detector dog program.

And as you might have seen, we've input, interviewed and put out some comms from our handlers that started the program in the early 90s. We’re really, really keen to hear from some of our current handlers at the moment to see, I guess differences in the program and where it's going for the future.

Maybe could you start us off by giving us an overview of how you came to join the program, where you're located and who you work with now?

Kelvin Wong:

Hi, my name's Kelvin. I'm a biosecurity dog handler. I joined the department in March 2021. And then I joined the dog unit in June of that year. So I've been with the dog unit for about 1 1/2 years at this point.

Casey Baines:

Awesome. Happy anniversary, that's good to hear. And where are you located and do you work in the airport or mail centre specifically?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, we are at the we're central E, so I'm located in the Sydney Gateway Facility Mail Centre and also Sydney Airport.

Casey Baines:

Oh really interesting. And is there one specific dog that you work with or if you that you favour and who's that?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, so I've been partnered with a dog called Udell. She's about four years old. And yeah, she's been a lot of fun.

Casey Baines:

Given that you joined the department and then moved straight into the into the Detector Dog unit, was that your reason for joining the department? Did you want to become a handler?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, that was that was a large part portion of it. I was lucky enough that once I finished my training, I was actually sent to the airport to do bench inspections, which I found really interesting. But I was also almost simultaneously, given the opportunity to apply for the dog unit and that just sounded so interesting as well that before I even really got to dip my toes in the airport, I had raised my hand and they accepted me. So I got to try a little bit of airport, find out how interesting it was. And now with the dog unit.

Casey Baines:

Nice. That’s really interesting. It is really interesting to talk to people around the department and just see how a little bit of, a little bit of experience somewhere else in the department gives you really, a leg into other places. So have you had any experience handling dogs before or do you have pets or anything like that?

Kelvin Wong:

Not in an official sense. I've always grown up with dogs. Yeah, and been interested in constantly being learning about, you know, their behaviour and exactly what, what they're doing at any given moment and what they're thinking in a way. But then I also worked at Taronga Zoo for a while, so I got to work with the seal trainers and they will, you know, during their shows and when they're talking to guests, they'll be spelling out exactly what they're doing, training wise and I always found that really interesting. And yeah, so when the opportunity came to kind of learn from some more experts here at the dog handling unit, yeah leapt at the at the opportunity.

Casey Baines:

While we're on that now, while you were at Taronga, do you see any similarities between the way they train the seals for their shows versus the way that we might utilize our dogs?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, definitely. The biggest one that I saw was the fact that people tend to give the animals a little bit too much, maybe not credit, but kind of give them a bit too much, kind of human emotion and human thought you know? I think that dogs just being cheeky, I think the dog's trying to annoy me. I think they're trying to, you know, outsmart me. No. Usually they're just, they're just doing the easiest way to get the treat. They're doing the quickest way to get the reward. They're not exactly, you know, looking at you going “oh, he's having a bad day, he hasn't had his coffee, I'm going try and do the thing.” They just go “oh, we're playing this game great. I'll try the thing that works the fastest for me.” And yeah learning, seeing that from the seals where they're like “oh doesn't it look like seals doing this?” No, he's just, you know, he's actually just you know giving it a go and yeah.

Casey Baines:

Best way to get the next fish get the next fish. How cool, so you mentioned sorry if I've already got the wrong, Udell is your dog.

Kelvin Wong:

Yes. Yeah.

Casey Baines:

Yeah. Does he or she have any traits or what makes you, you and Udell a good team?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, I'm still getting to know her cause I've only had her officially for about six months now. Maybe a little bit more. But I found that she is very clever and very efficient. If she can get something done without all of the extra, you know, bells and whistles, she'll just do it. So it's been a great learning experience for me in that you can't exactly overexcite her. She'll never get frazzled or confused. She'll just do the bare minimum, and I mean that in a good way in that you know, if I've made the goal clear, she'll just do it. She won't kind of get too excited and jump around and bounce off the walls. She’ll be like “oh understood,” and she'll do it, which is made me have to be much more targeted when I'm running a dog, whereas normally I can get away with, you know, just being excited and clapping my hands. And, you know, waving my hands in a general direction and they’ll do it eventually.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, I guess that ability to not get shaken or excited or anything like, that is actually perfect for what we want for our detector dogs. And not be distracted by the crazy environments that you might find in a mail centre or all the people at an airport or things like that.

Ok, so when you speak about your time as a handler, do you have one specific story that you might tell people when they say “oh, what's your most interesting find or what's the craziest thing you're dogs done or something like that?”

Kelvin Wong:

There's been a few good ones for me. My first seizure with Udell, that would probably be the one that absolutely knocked my socks off sort of thing. We were at the mail centre. I was running her and still kind of getting to know her and kind of bonding with her, making sure that what we were doing was fun. And I had planned a bit of training. I was going to let her find something and give her a nice big reward. And there was a bit of a hold up in getting the training ready so I decided to just get the nerves out of the way and just kind of screened some mail and see what happened. And she happened to find some fresh springs of rosemary in someone's mail. Uhm, she actually, so she found and indicated it and I actually didn't believe her at first, because I know she's smart enough to see us moving, training around and getting ready to put training up. I know she's smart enough to be like “Ok, now the games actually going, I'll pick which one I think it is.” So yeah, we were just running normal mail and I hadn't expected there to be anything in there. And she found some Rosemary and it blew my socks off because I hadn't been with her for that long. And yeah, a couple of springs of Rosemary in a package. You know, it was really, really exciting.

Casey Baines:

Amazing how it doesn't need to be something you'd like. When people think of a detector dog you think “oh, they're going to sniff out a whole chunk of meat or a steak or something like that.” Talking to our handlers, one of the really interesting stories I've heard was one of the Beagles back in the day crossed the entire baggage hall just to find a tiny little leaf stuck in someone shoe. And with all these other smells and scents around them, it's amazing how our dogs can just hone in on the biosecurity risks. I guess is a feat to them as well, yeah.

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, exactly.

Casey Baines:

You mentioned you were doing a training run. Could you maybe tell us about the similarities and how we keep our dogs up to their standard while they're still in operation?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah it's sort of a good thing, in that we tend to not get as many live targets as we would like. By live targets I mean things that we would try to seize or biosecurity risk material. So there are sometimes where we'll go, well nothing's come down for a while and the dogs kind of, not necessarily getting disheartened but at the end of the day it's hard to keep them motivated and searching to their fullest ability if they go well “this is this is just a bunch of regular mail, everyone's playing by the rules there's nothing to find here.” And so, training serves two purposes, one to continually motivate them. You know, occasionally we'll put something up there to get them kind of perked up and realizing that it is still fun out here and also obviously to introduce them to new odours to reinforce old odours, to redefine different odours. So that's something that I'm still definitely learning and if you do talk to some of the other handlers that are on the nominations because they know much more than I do. But yeah, always trying to make sure that your training has value, covers all your bases and really aimed towards a goal. At any time I could put an apple in an envelope and she’ll figure it out. But with a little bit of thought you can tailor it so that it really teaches her something and really improves her work, which I’m still 100% still trying to figure out. A lot of the times I’ll present my, “I think I’m going to do this, I’m going to put some leaves and this envelope and put it up there” and someone will in two sentences give me a suggestion that's 10 times better than like “oh, that's great. Have you considered?” And they'll just say something that you go, of course, of course. That's way better, that’ll really help. So yeah, trying to find that balance and find that little sweet spot. It is always really hard.

Casey Baines:

And it's really interesting that people sometimes just think that our detector dogs can just flick a switch and turn it on and do things. But actually we need to keep working the dogs to make sure that they continue to recognize things and continue to keep doing the job they do so really interesting. You mentioned with that someone or another handler or supervisor might have mentioned “oh you could have done something else.” Can you talk a bit more about, I guess the culture of being a handler and the maybe the tight knit community that you work together to achieve the same goal?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, we're really lucky in that I found that the whole team wants the dogs to succeed and there's no hiding it. And it is good that there's also a culture of giving feedback and receiving feedback. No one likes to realize that they've been doing the wrong thing for, you know, weeks on end and no one likes seeing one of their teammates you know do the wrong thing for weeks on end. So we've been, I've been really lucky in that I found the team is really supportive and really, really knowledgeable. And so I've, initially at least, I basically would walk up to handlers, and basically I still do if I have any sort of uncertainty, I’ll see them do something and I’ll walk up and I’ll basically try to read their mind and go “I think you did this because of this. I thought the goal was to do that and I think that you put that apple in that envelope at the very end so that the dog would learn this.” And sometimes I'm right. But more often than not, they'll be like “ooh, almost.” They’ll be, like “kind of. I did put the envelope down there. But actually the reason it was this and not that.” It was something completely different and I've really found trying to get in there, get in their shoes and kind of figure out what they're thinking is really tough, but they've been really helpful obviously. They've never been, you know, blown off or said like “no, that's not right” and they just walk off, they always go “no, this is the little twist I had.” And so yeah, it's been really good that the whole team has had the dogs as a priority and always trying to make sure everyone's working together.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, it's really, really interesting and great to hear like a collective learning not only are there teachers trying to teach you things, but that you're eager to go and talk to someone and say “I really think you did this for this reason. Am I right? And can I learn more?” Yeah. Really cool.

Well, where do we go to next? Other than specifically working the dogs, do you think you've learned other skills or gained other skills that could prepare you in your career further by being a detector dog handler?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah definitely. I'm still learning to kind of take a big picture kind of view and just honestly just have a little bit more organization. The amount of times I'll run in and be like “what haven’t we done for a while, I haven't done, we haven't done meat for a while. Let's do some meat.” And that's kind of the start and finish, that will get me through the day. I'll work on meat that day and that will be my plan. I've been really glad that the job kind of forces you to go “Ok, well, that could get you through the day. But what did you do yesterday? What are you going to do tomorrow? Let's kind of zoom out a bit.” And you know, have training plans, have training plans within those training plans in case something goes wrong, have backup plans, have all sorts of preparation that you wouldn't necessarily think goes into dog handling because at the end of the day you pick up the leash and the dog walks with you. But yeah, with just a little bit of effort, you can really maximize your time and go “I'm actually working on three things at once because you know, I sat down and planned it out.” As opposed to, you know, rocking up at the day and going “I guess we can try some sausages” and that kind of being the end of your thought. So I'm really glad that the teams have pushed me to constantly and there have been sometimes where someone will come up to me like “what are you doing that with that training?” And they don't mean that in a in a kind of accusatory sense that I've done something obviously wrong. They just want to hear my thoughts and I'm glad for it because I'll often I'll be like “Oh well, I was going to try and work on meat because this this and this.” And they'll go like “ok that's an interesting plan. I wouldn't do it this way because you don't often see sausages in envelopes. You probably see them in a box. Could you want to swap that around sort of thing.”

Yeah, they've, they've in the same way that I'll try to read their mind. They'll come up to me and go “what are you thinking and doing that?” And I found that's definitely really made me really kind of crystallize the ideas in my head as opposed to just flying by the seat of my pants.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, really interesting and really interesting to think that critical thinking. That you might say you're a critical thinker, but everyone keeps learning and keeps building on that. And every day too through the career. Really cool.

We're sort of coming up to peak period. Could you maybe run through what a busy day for you as a handler in the mail centre would look like?

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah. So it will depend largely on the profile of the mail, so the country and the type of mail coming down. But on a day where it is busy, it is all hands on deck because at the end of the day, the dog will indicate to a package and you not necessarily know what's inside. Sometimes they might write on the outside "this is a box of sausages” and you might know that's right. But most of the time you can't actually reward the dog while it's out there. So someone needs to take that parcel, get it opened by the Australia post workers and have a look, before you know. And there are times where we'll get dozens and dozens of parcels or mail items from the same country. Sometimes in the same bag of mail all at once, and the dog's going “yep, all of these, these, these, these, these.” And we'll need all hands on deck running, picking them up, taking them over, inspecting them, letting the handler know so that they can re-expose the dog if it was correct or re-expose them even if it was wrong. And it is a bit of intensive process, because quite rightly, we do take a lot of care with those items. You know, you can't just rip them open and have a look. You need to get someone to open them properly, you know, take out the items one by one. You can't just kind of dump them on the floor and see what's there. You have to kind of respect people's property. And so there have been times where we'll find multiple things in one short burst. And there have been times where that short burst has lasted most of the day and we’ll be having trolleys and trolleys of stuff that we’ll need to inspect. All while making sure that poor dog who you know is very excited because they found 12 things in 12 minutes, isn't getting too tired, so we'll need to swap that dog out. And it is great that we're starting to become that kind of well-oiled machine and you know I feel like I'm participating and helping more than I am getting in the way and you know, slowing everything down. But it is basically, really, really cool to see the dogs, because they can tell as well, we're kind of getting excited and they can kind of tell that there is stuff around, you know, maybe it's leftover from the parcel that we just moved or maybe they can even smell the trolleys as we walk past to get a new dog. It is a very, very tiring day, but also really exciting because you can't necessarily let your guard down for the entire day, and that's always, it's always exciting.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, that's such an important job. You're right you can’t let your down. You’re here to try and catch everybody biosecurity risk you can. Yeah, it's really interesting that you mentioned that the dog picks up that you're excited. One of the things that the other handlers have said is particularly with dogs, you don't ever really get a day where you can just be down and not turn up to work mentally. You've always got to be switched on and the dog can read someone’s personality so well and be ready to pick up on. They're ready to go. They're ready to do something or they think something's are just around the corner. It adds a complete different dynamic it's really cool.

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah I've been having that, not necessarily issue, but I'm still trying to find out what her, what Udell’s kind of buttons are. There would be sometimes where I'll try to bring my energy to the to the maximum and you know, uh “she's a bit slow she's a little bit flat today. Let's really bring the party” as they like to say and she'll look at me and be like “nice try. Good act. Thanks for playing” and she'll continue coasting and there'll be some days. Actually, no that was one of the other highlights. There was a day where I thought there was a, there was a bit of a mix up with some of the logistics for getting the new dogs in. So I kind of volunteered to stay until they were ready to swap back over and I had to run Udell multiple times without any training set. So basically I was just going to monitor the mail and try my best and make sure that nothing gets through and try to only motivate her, using my energy alone and I guarantee it wasn't me because I've never been able to replicate it, but she for some reason switched on incredibly and found a couple of things. She must have you know. I do know that sometimes because the mail comes in a big bag. You can sit next to a smelly box of leaves for months at a time and maybe that box comes down the belt before the actual box of leaves. So there's a chance you don't smell that neighbour box and went “oh ok, this isn't it. But it's nearby” and switched on but that that was one of the ones where I was like “Ok, this is this is her ceiling.” She actually can get really excited. She actually can get, you know, not necessarily frazzled, but a bit frantic because she was like “well, that the neighbour box has just gone. Where's the actual one? Have I missed it?” And she started getting a bit very, very energetic. And I've never been able to replicate it with my body language or tone of voice or yelling or clapping or jumping, but It's been a lot of fun trying to get closer and closer. I still don't think I'm there yet, but I can get in the ballpark at least, which is a, you know, a really good feeling and yeah, just making sure that I'm changing it up as well. Because I definitely know that I tend to slow down when I know she's near the right answer and she look at me like “ohh, ok, well, it's here then, isn't it?” The one that I've been trying to cut out recently is if I reach into where I normally keep the training. If she sees me reach into it even for a moment, she'll go “oh ok” and she'll stop looking at me and look away and search really hard, giving me the chance to put it on because she knows that if she's looking at me, I'm not going to take it out. I'm not going to take it out of there and put it on the belt. We'll see. So she'll look at me like, “oh sure.” And she'll do the, you know, the equivalent of a kid going to bed at 8:00 o'clock so Santa can leave the presents, you know, she'll be like “oh, yeah, sure. No, you do whatever you need to do” and she'll look away and pretend to search very hard. So I have an opportunity. So I basically need to continually pretend to do it over and over again until she realizes that she can't dictate what I do.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, that goes back to you at the start your they'll take the easiest way they can get their reward, right? So she knows that you're going to something that will eventually lead to the reward and she'll do everything to make it easier for you to get there. So yeah. How interesting.

So as you know, this is our 30th anniversary and we sort of looked back at the start of the program, but we're talking to our current handlers now and I would really like your view on what you think of the program today and a bit more of what you think the program might look like 10 years into the future or yeah, a future view.

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, I do know that with this recent push in, you know budget and innovation and all that, they've made a really concerted effort to make sure that you know we're modern and we're flexible and adaptable. And I found that some really starting to come through. Some of the new processes they have in place, some of the new techniques that are allowing us to use or well not necessarily that we weren’t allowed to use them before, but they’re you know encouraging or putting in the new places or new ways and just giving us more tools to train our dogs and run the dogs. And also with and this is one of the silver linings because you know with the foot and mouth disease outbreak obviously there's a lot of stress with it actually coming into the country. But it has kind of reopened a few avenues that we can screen passengers and that's made it really exciting for the dogs as well.

Umm so I'm, my hope is for the next 10 years that that kind of level of innovation and experimentation continues. Right now we’re already seeing some pretty great results and I'm just really excited for the dog unit to continue to improve and try new things and not necessarily get them all right, but continue trying. And when it does go well it's been really, really exciting.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing. You keep trying new things. And when it does go well, you double down on that and benefit. Take that benefit and then keep building again or trying new things. That's the best way to work. Yeah.

And so the department's just done. When I, when I say just done, a few months ago now, a big recruitment, external recruitment for more detector dog handlers. Through your experience of recent training and joining the detector dog program. Do you have any advice to someone who might want to join the detector program in the future?

Kelvin Wong:

I personally was quite lucky that I grew up with dogs and at the end of the day, you know, if you can tell the difference between a happy dog and a sad dog, a stressed dog, a scared dog, a sick dog, that's always going to give you a big leg up. But if you're willing to just constantly be paying attention even when you're not running the dog, when other people are running their dogs and you're not sure what they're doing. Guess and then check. You know, you go “oh that that was weird. Why did they tell the dog to do that so much earlier than I normally do.” Have a guess “well why would they? Why would they have done that so much earlier.” And then walk up and ask them. And that's been really, really exciting. Because when you joined the dog unit, you're actually not by yourself. You're with the whole team. And the team wants you to succeed. The team wants the dog to succeed. The team wants, you know, biosecurity risk not to make it through, so leaning on them really, really helps. And just remembering that yeah, you have support. You're not expected to be perfect or know everything early on. You're just expected to make progress. You know, get there as quick as possible. It's not going to be particularly quick. I've been here for a year and a half, and I've been running Udell for about half a year and I still there would be sometimes “I don't know what that was, something just went completely out of whack.” That's not what we want. But you know, I turn around and ask someone, “what do you think just happened?” As opposed to just throwing my hands up and giving up.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, that's why they say don’t work with animals and children, right? Always new experiences. That's great. That's all I have for our questions. Is there anything you'd like to add, or you'd like to say?

Kelvin Wong:

Not really. I'll just end on a on a fun note. Yesterday I'm at the airport, there was a backpacker who was quite tall. I'm not a great estimator, but significant, good at basketball. And he was wearing a backpack very high up and I'd been getting Udell to kind of pop up on two legs and smell backpacks, and I figured I'll give her a challenge. So I actually told him “leave your backpack on. I'm going to give it a go.” And I even told them in person like “she’s probably not going to, you know, like knowing my luck. This is going to be the one that's just a bridge too far.” And yes, mid run, I asked her to go up and she managed to hop up on 2 little legs and sniff that backpack from all the way down there. And I got so excited that I threw my hands up in the air and she turned around and got very confused because that's not a that's not a signal I'm supposed to use. But I just told her that she was a good girl and thankfully she went back to work. But yeah, that was really exciting. I regret doing it in front of all the passengers and everything. But I was just so excited that we were actually making progress. And fingers crossed that continues.

Casey Baines:

Yeah, that's so exciting. And one of the reasons that our Labradors are so great is that they can reach high places and get to the top of a trolley or in that they’re such a versatile dog. And that's why we have them as our multipurpose dogs. It's such a good job. Well, thank you so much, Kelvin. It's been amazing to talk to you. If you do have a photo we could use, send it through. And once we have the final product we’ll send it your way just before we publish it.

Kelvin Wong:

Yeah, too easy. Too easy. I'm not entirely sure where I am on Wednesday, but Thursday I'm fairly confident that I'll be at the mail centre, be able to get some photos. Is that going to be Ok if I get it to you maybe later Thursday?

Casey Baines:

Yeah, yeah. But we're not in a huge rush. We're not going publish anything for a couple of weeks yet.

Kelvin Wong:

Ok, cool, cool. But I'll still try to do it by the end of the week.

Casey Baines:

Awesome. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon.

Kelvin Wong:

Nice, bye for now.

Casey Baines:

Cheers bye.

I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode of Detect and Protect. You can find out more information on the department's website or by visiting biosecurity.gov.au. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast series to get updates on future topics and learn more about Australian biosecurity. Also be sure to follow us on our social media pages. Thanks very much for listening everybody. And we will catch you on the next episode of Detect and Protect.