SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Brian Eberle is a Fire Investigator and scent detection K9 handler. He has worked in both law enforcement and the fire service over the past 22 years and has been working with K9s for the past 18 years. He is certified in Fire and Explosion Investigation through the National Association of Fire Investigators, and is a Fire Investigation Technician and Certified Instructor through the International Association of Arson Investigators. Brian is certified as a Peace Officer through Colorado POST and has attended a 200+ K9 school through Maine Specialty Dogs, in addition to several continuing education K9 classes.
Brian has instructed at the local and State level in both fire/arson investigation as well as K9 detection for the Colorado POST Police Academy, the Mountain Division of The International Association of Identification, as well as multiple local police and fire department trainings. Brian is currently completing his master’s degree in forensic science, with an emphasis in Arson Investigation, has assisted dozens of law enforcement agencies, and has been accepted as a qualified expert multiple times in court.
He is Co-Founder and Vice President of Bloodhound Man Trackers, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit that provides proven Bloodhounds for Law Enforcement use on an as needed basis. Brian and his K9s are members of NecroSearch International and are resources for NCMEC. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for International Fire Dogs and works with the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention, Fire Investigation Unit where he is an investigator and K9 Handler.
INTERVIEW
LYNN: Brian, please introduce us to your dogs.
BRIAN: Moose is a 4-year-old Czech-line German Shepherd. He is a decomposing human scent detection K9 who began his career in 2022. Moose was imported to the US by a retired couple who soon found out that he wasn’t pet quality and was instead a working dog. I got him when he was 10 months old and started training him for his current job.
Hiccup is a 4-year-old Bloodhound. He is trained as a scent discriminating tracking and decomposing human scent K9. I got him when he was just over 7 weeks old, and he started training the following week. Despite his size, he is incredibly gentle and just happy to be around people.
LYNN: What training did you go through as a handler to work with NecroSearch?
BRIAN: I was trained by K9 Deputy Al Nelson (ret) who worked for 39 years with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado and was one of the NecroSearch Inc. founding members. When it came down to working bloodhounds, Al was the leading authority. I met weekly with him and Frank Hurst (retired Elbert County SO K9 handler) every Monday to start my apprenticeship in a discipline that would become my passion.
After working for several years with Al and Frank and making many mistakes with my first bloodhound, Al recommended me for a position with NecroSearch. Training involved very specific tasks for a bloodhound; it was not the typical lessons of teaching the dog to “sit” or “lay down.” Our training revolved around tapping into the bloodhound’s supernatural ability to sniff.
Training scenarios were all based on real cases that Al had worked over his many years, but without the consequences of real life. Al always said that we don’t have to train the dog, “cuz he knows what he’s doing… it’s the handler that needs to learn.” And Al would remind me of this anytime training didn’t go as planned.
As both the dog and handler advanced in concepts, the training would become more dynamic. We started from basic tracking on a grassy surface consisting of only 10 ft or so, to trails that involved vehicles, aged trails, and increased distances.
LYNN: How did you get involved as a K-9 handler?
BRIAN: I’ll start off saying that I was always a dog guy… but I was fascinated with working dogs of all kinds and how they could help people with different tasks. When I was going through the police academy, Al Nelson came in to teach about the amazing abilities of the original police K9 - the bloodhound. After class, I told him that I wanted a hunting dog and asked if he could help me. He told me when I was done with the academy to look him up. I honestly believe he thought he’d never hear from me again.
Since we both worked for the sheriff’s office, I got in touch with him after the academy. He invited me out to K9 training, where I would often be used as bait and told to hide from the dogs for an undetermined amount of time. Eventually, Al and his hounds would come and find me.
One day, he let me work his old girl Marky. Despite screwing up most of the commands and handling, Marky found the target person. Eventually, Al me asked if I’d be interested in hunting people instead of animals. I was hooked. It wasn’t long after that that I got my first bloodhound.
Over the years, I have worked as a FEMA USAR K9 handler, an arson dog handler, but I have always stayed true to the bloodhound breed and their amazing nose.
LYNN: How many dogs have you had?
BRIAN: Well… I’ve had a few. Some worked out and some didn’t make the cut and were just good pets. And some were good working dogs but not with me, so they went elsewhere to have productive careers.
I am on my 3rd bloodhound (Meav, Lucy, and now Hiccup). All my hounds were trackers and were also used for decomposing human scent. My first hound Meav (Mave), didn’t like the smell of death, however, and so she only did it for a few years. Hiccup, my current boy, has a real nose for decomposing human scent and almost seems to enjoy searching for that odor.
My German Shepherd (Moose) is also trained on decomposing human scent. Moose offers some advantages that most bloodhounds don’t, such as the ability to listen. While I’ll argue that bloodhounds have the most amazing nose, sometimes they let their nose dictate their behavior. In fact, when off leash, most hounds will not readily listen to the handler. Moose on the other hand, is well behaved and listens. On top of his discipline, he is an athlete that can cover a lot of ground without me having to be tethered to him like I do with the bloodhounds.
Moose and Hiccup work as a team, Moose goes out and covers the large open area and narrows our search down to a few feet for Hiccup to come in with his precision. I also worked one Belgian Malinois when I was with the fire department and on the FEMA USAR Search Team, and I have a lab ROTC (Rot-see) who is currently my accelerant detection K9 (arson dog).
LYNN: How often does your dog ‘hit’ on the wrong spot during a search? What happens then?
BRIAN: The dogs don’t false alert. They may miss or not be as close as possible, however, to the area where the odor is coming from. There are a number of reasons for this, but it is usually handler error. If the dog alerts, then there is something in their nose or head representing the target odor.
Sometimes, the problem can be that decomposing human scent hasn’t been broken down to an exact science, and we don’t always know what the dog is truly smelling. The dogs will indicate on blood, tissue, leftover “ooze” from a body, bone, or human waste. But if trained properly, they only hit on human scent and not any other decomposing animal scent.
The dogs aren’t perfect, but they are way more accurate than anything else we have. Knowing that the dog can have bad days or be ‘off,’ when the dogs do hit, their hit needs to be corroborated by another scientific proven means. This can be the forensic testing for blood or the evidence technicians finding evidence of decomposing human scent.
LYNN: When is a K-9 handler usually brought onto a case?
BRIAN: This depends on the needs of the case. What the dogs do is narrow down an area or give probable cause for law enforcement to investigate further. The dogs can be brought in on a cold case years after a homicide where there might be a clandestine grave in a plot of farmland and the detectives need to narrow down an area. Or sometimes the dogs are brought in for something more specific, like providing PC to search a vehicle that was potentially used to transport the victim.
Specific to NecroSearch (NSI), we are utilized typically on cold cases. We combine the many disciplines to help narrow down an area where a body might be buried. Typically, with NSI, the dogs are one of the first resources deployed because they are cheaper and faster than some of the other specialties. For example, when we are working with an agency, and they have a lead, we’ll deploy the dogs to cover the often-vast areas to search. If the dogs indicate, then we’ll use another discipline like botany or Ground Penetrating Radar. If these other disciplines give an indication that clues may indicate a body could be present, we usually feel optimistic on our location.
LYNN: What frustrates you the most about murder investigations?
BRIAN: I’m frustrated when law enforcement agencies don’t request the use of K9s early on in a murder case. This is partly due to their ignorance, because they just don’t know what resources are available. And that’s partly on us to get the word out.
When it may be a missing person case, before being declared a homicide, the dogs could provide some key intel early on. Bloodhounds are tracking dogs; that is what they do. A dog may be able to pick up a track and help reduce that distance (time and physical distance) between the event and the bad guy getting further away.
The other request that frustrates me is when we are asked to search large areas (I’m talking square miles). These dogs are amazing, but like anything else, the better intel and advantages we can give the dog, the better our chances are. Sometimes, we don’t have anything more than a plot of land we have to search. We’ll do it, but if we can reduce our search area, the dogs have a better chance of success.
LYNN: What’s the toughest lesson you learned by working on a murder case?
BRIAN: Every case brings a lesson. Sometimes the lessons are small and only relevant to me and how I worked my dog, or maybe how I will train the dog in the future. At other times, like with my first bloodhound, I learned that she did not like working on decomposing human scent. This just wasn’t her strength, so I didn’t use her for that. Every case, however, reminds me of something bigger—that no matter how bad the world seems, there are good people willing to give their time and effort to help others. While a homicide case is awful, I see it bring out the best in many people, and that is always a bit of good in a bad situation.
LYNN: What surprised you the most about a certain case?
BRIAN: One of the first homicides I worked was particularly gruesome. We were asked to search an outbuilding to see if the dogs would indicate an area where detectives thought the crime had occurred. Walking up to the shed, my dog became very scared and was just “off.” She worked the area and indicated. It was later corroborated to be the location of the murders.
What surprised me with this case was how it opened my eyes to what I think is beyond our comprehension—how in tune dogs are to emotions. I firmly believe the reason my dog acted so scared and ‘off’ was that she was picking up on the feelings/emotions of the victims at the time of their murder.
We know that there are chemical changes in the body (like adrenaline being released during excitement), and these chemicals are detectable in the blood. To me it became clear that a person's emotions is detectable to our dogs through their incredible sense of smell. It was just one of those “aha” moments that made me have a deeper appreciation for how dogs “see” their world through their nose and how much information they really take in.
LYNN: Thank you so much, Brian. I’m not only a dog lover but have dogs as secondary characters in all my books. We even have a miniature long-haired dachshund at home who we’ve often joked about being smart enough and having a good enough nose to find a dead body. So far, she's only found food and dog bones. Anyway, Brian, I love what you do, and I’m sure the law enforcement agencies do too. Thanks again.
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