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Max hated water, and Ron knew it. Max never liked to swim. He
didn’t even want to bathe regularly, truth be told.
But this day was different. There was Max, bounding over the reeds in a
Canadian swamp as fast as his legs could carry him, oblivious to the fact that
he was dashing through water up over his chest.
Max and Ron had been trying to locate a low pressure gas leak in
a damaged circa-1950s concrete pipeline for three days when, as Ron
remembers it, Max “just started going nuts.” Within seconds, Max had
splashed into the aqueous muck, a signal to Ron that he’d found his
mercaptan-scented target.
Max’s reward? A hearty scratch behind the ears and a dog biscuit.
You probably already guessed that Max was a dog. A German Shepherd, to be exact – and one which
had been specially trained to use his sense of smell to track drugs. And Ron Mistafa is the owner of
Calgary, AB-based Detector Dog Services International Ltd, a company that uses trained “detector dogs”
to sniff out dangerous pipeline leaks. Ron brought Max out of retirement in the hopes that the former
police dog could use his skills and training to identify and mitigate third-party damage, long considered
the leading threat to pipeline integrity and safety throughout the world.
I N N O V AT I O N S • V O L . V I I , N O. 1 • 2 0 1 5
Diverse
Expertise
Helps Detect
Third-Party
Damage
DOGS
DRONES
INSPECTION
OF ALL KINDS
FROM
TO
&
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