US News

A scent-sational puppy!

This adorable pup is a super dog of the future.

Morgan, a yellow Labrador retriever, is one of seven 9-week-old pooches handpicked by breeders and Ivy League researchers for a study of genetics and behavior in a program designed to develop superior sniffer dogs.

Not only will the pooches work with search-and-rescue missions and military deployments, they also will be trained to detect cancers in people, say those involved with the program.

“These dogs will have the foundation to detect anything. Right now, they are in prep school,” said veterinarian Cynthia Otto, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Vet Working Dog Center, a million-dollar nonprofit overseeing the project.

The pups include: two male chocolate labs, Thunder and Papa Bear; three yellow labs, Socks, a female, and two males, Sirius and Morgan; a female golden retriever, Bretagne, and a female Dutch Shepherd, Kaiserin.

They’re all named after hero search dogs who worked in the aftermath of 9/11 and have since died. Some have been selected by the breeders of several of the hero pooches looking for similar characteristics in both.

For the next two years, researchers will collect and analyze genetic, behavioral and physical data from the dogs to understand what helps them succeed and then use it as the basis for a breeding program.

As with race horses, the sperm of the best male dogs will be collected and frozen. It is too hard to collect eggs from the girls, experts said.

Every three or four months, new pups will be donated by private breeders as the program expands to 24 for the first year.

Otto said the pups’ pedigree isn’t the only thing going for them.

“It’s nature and nurture. You can’t separate them. You’ve got to start with the right genetics and then you put them in the right environment,” she said.Ultimately, the best dogs will be used for sniffing out bombs or drugs, for use in rescues, to detect cancer or diabetes in people, and to determine if a water supply has been contaminated, Ott said.

In terms of cancer, “The dream is the [dog] screening will be better than the screening in labs,” she said.