美国国家公共电台 NPR In Dog-Eat-Dog World Of Congress, 2 GOP Lawmakers Spar Over Canine Training Facility

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NOEL KING, HOST:

In the foothills of the Blue Ridge¹ Mountains, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms runs an academy for dogs. They're trained to detect explosives and chemical accelerants used in arson² cases. A powerful senator wants the facility moved to his state, and a powerful congressman³ is fighting back. NPR's Brian Naylor reports on a dog-eat-dog battle in Virginia.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good dog. Good dog.

BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE⁴: A half-dozen dogs are demonstrating their training at the ATF's Canine⁵ Training Center. They run around a large gymnasium-like room. On the floor are metal cans and suitcases, some of them with traces of explosives. But good dogs stop and sit by the containers with the explosive traces and are rewarded with a handful of treats.

SHAWN CRAWFORD: We get the dogs that don't make it as a guide dog. They're usually too high energy. There's nothing wrong with them. We just say they're making a career change.

NAYLOR: Shawn Crawford is a trainer with the ATF. He says the dogs are all one breed - Labrador retrievers.

CRAWFORD: We get them when they're about 14 months old - male, female. If we look at breed history, they're hunting dogs. So if I have a gun in a school or an explosive device in a school, it's in a locker⁶, the dog's hunting with its nose to find that odor. So why not use a hunting dog to hunt for explosives?

NAYLOR: The dogs trained here have had some high-profile assignments lately. They were deployed⁷ after the Parkland School shooting last February to search for possible bombs and spent ammunition⁸. In March, they were used during the Austin bombings. The ATF's Cody Monday says, aside from their sniffing⁹ abilities, Labs are used for another reason.

CODY MONDAY: They won't bite you. They'll lick you to death. And that's one of the reasons that we like Labradors is they're friendly, you can take them just about anywhere, and you don't have to worry about anything like that.

NAYLOR: The biggest qualification for the dogs is that they like food, which may explain why few of them fail their training. The ATF has trained more than 1,100 dogs here for its use and thousands more for the military. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, represents the district here and is proud of the facility but is worried about its future. That's because the chairman of the Senate Appropriations¹⁰ Committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, also a Republican, has shown interest in moving it to his state. It's an idea Goodlatte says makes no sense but needs to be taken seriously.

BOB GOODLATTE: The fact that the request was made and the fact that it seems to be an ongoing¹¹ interest caused us to want to put on the record all the reasons why this is a great facility here and why it would not be a good idea to spend $40 billion or more to move this facility to a place where they'd basically have to start from scratch.

NAYLOR: Shelby has suggested moving the dog-training facility to the Redstone Arsenal¹² where bombs have been tested and manufactured since World War II. But Goodlatte says you just can't train a bomb-sniffing dog at a place where everything smells like a bomb. Shelby's office says the senator is not actively¹³ pursuing moving the dog-training center but wants to make sure it's spending taxpayer¹⁴ dollars wisely. A study conducted by the ATF concluded it would cost 40 million of those taxpayer dollars to move the facility from Virginia to Alabama. And while it's unclear how the dogs would react, people in Virginia would be howling in protest.

Brian Naylor, NPR News.