Trained to detect chlorine in water, a rescued shelter dog now finds underground pipeline breaks, saving the city excavation costs and boosting employee morale.<\/p>\n
ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 Splash isn’t your typical city employee, but he might be one of the hardest-working.<\/p>\n
The almost 2-year-old dog is Arlington Water Utilities’ first working Water Leak Detection K9, trained to sniff out underground water leaks in the city’s distribution lines.<\/p>\n
Splash was adopted as a puppy from Arlington Animal Services and trained on water leak detection. His secret weapon is his nose \u2014 specifically, his ability to detect the chlorine found in treated tap water, which allows him to pinpoint leaks that aren’t visible on the surface.<\/p>\n
“The chlorine in the water is what they home in on,” his handler Richard Everhart said.<\/p>\n
The department starts with satellite imaging to map out possible trouble spots across the city, marking them as points of interest. From there, Everhart determines where they should utilize Splash to confirm what the technology is suggesting.<\/p>\n
During a training exercise, water was hidden in a field, and Splash was let out of his handler’s truck \u2014 a precaution, they said, to make sure he can’t “cheat” by watching where it’s placed. Given the command to search, it didn’t take him long to alert his handler that he’d found something.<\/p>\n
In real-world conditions, the stakes are higher. Arlington Water Utilities Director Alex Whiteway said protecting the city’s water supply is critical.<\/p>\n
“I say water is blue gold. It’s so important to us. We need to take care of that resource,” Whiteway said.<\/p>\n
Leaks can be especially hard to track down during the summer, according to Splash’s handler, Richard Everhart. He said extreme heat likely won’t cause a water leak, but it makes existing leaks much harder to find because of how quickly water evaporates in the heat.<\/p>\n
Since Splash started the job in January, Everhart said he was initially unsure how effective a dog could really be at the task.<\/p>\n
“I was kind of skeptical, I’ll be honest,” Everhart said.<\/p>\n
That skepticism didn’t last long. Everhart said Splash has accurately detected 16 leaks so far, saving the city both water and the cost of unnecessary excavation work.<\/p>\n
“It gets expensive very quickly. Just a panel in a road, that’s ten or 12 thousand dollars,” Everhart said.<\/p>\n
Beyond the financial savings, Whiteway said Splash has brought something else to the department: morale.<\/p>\n
“He’s a people person,” Everhart said.<\/p>\n
The shelter dog turned leak-detection K9 now has a home, a family and a community he’s eager to serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trained to detect chlorine in water, a rescued shelter dog now finds underground pipeline breaks, saving the city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":["post-383502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}