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“The certification isn't about proving that the dog can find a leak. It's about giving utilities confidence that the professional team can perform consistently, safely, ethically, and competently.”
Lolita Shaffer joins our hosts, Robin Greubel and Stacy Barnett, in this two-part conversation to talk all things water leak detection!
It’s a growing niche in the dog training world, but a pretty important one. After all, America's water utilities maintain 2.2 million miles of drinking-water pipe, enough to circle the globe 88 times, and industry estimates put coming rate hikes sharply higher as aging, "non-revenue" leaks go unfound.
Acoustic listening equipment, the current industry standard, can hear a hissing pipe but also every earthworm, bug, and passing car, leaving handlers to triangulate blind. Dogs, calibrated on-site to a utility's own water before every job, can generalize across leaks ranging from a quarter-gallon a minute to tens of thousands, including one Florida job under an interstate that was gushing 70,000 gallons a minute.
Lolita traces her own path into the work back to hunting-dog trials and a sister already doing human remains detection. It’s a lineage that Robin, coming from cadaver-dog work herself, recognizes immediately in how hydrology carries odor whether the "victim" is a body or a busted water main.
Lolita has worked with Water Professionals International to build credentialing that treats handler-and-dog teams the way plumbers or engineers are licensed, and is portable across state lines. She has a five-year goal of turning "detection dog" into a real, benefits-earning career. Stay tuned for the next episode of K9 Detection Collaborative, which will be part two of the conversation!
Key Topics:
- What Are the Dogs Actually Smelling? (01:29)
- A Retiring Workforce and the AWWA/WPI Alphabet Soup (04:24)
- Heavier Than Air: Why Chlorine Gas Rises to the Surface (07:46)
- Acoustics, the Delsar, and the Limits of Listening Equipment (20:01)
- 2.2 Million Miles of Pipe (and Four Trips to the Moon) (23:45)
- The Florida Interstate Leak (28:01)
- From Hunting Dogs to Water Leaks (33:39)
- Building WPI Credentialing Into a Five-Year Career (35:54)
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