The promises made by the biosensor leadership at the outset of the program were many and the propaganda leaked to the media was filled with predictions of imminent success. This success was not to be, but it’s interesting to see how this program was pitched to the public.
In a press release from 1971, the chief at the Edgewood Arsenal made a bold prediction:
By 1980 we will have a remarkably superior dog. If you think the second generation pups are something, then come back in a few years and we’ll show you a truly superior dog.
The following year, Popular Mechanics ran this puff piece about the biosensor “super dog” operation:
Superdogs are made–not bornby Karl I. Olnas
Popular Mechanics: November 1972
FOUR-DAY OLD PUPS are spun in centrifuge for three minutes as part of stress training.
A LITTLE-KNOWN PROGRAM at Edgewood Arsenal, Md., has an unusual objective: to produce dogs of superior intelligence and superkeen sense of smell and hearing. Such canines, say Army experts, do a better job in combat, as guard dogs, and as “sniffers” of drugs and explosives.
The first step in the development of a “superdog” was to test various breeds. The German shepherd came out on top. Dog experts combed the country for outstanding recruits, narrowing the final selection to 4 males and 21 females.
Hundreds of dogs were bred from the initial group selected in 1968. After evaluation and training the very best are kept for breeding and most of the others are shipped out for active duty when they reach the age of 11 months. Currently, Edgewood has on hand some 250 pups and 50 dogs. About 500 “graduates” are stationed at military posts, and some are assigned to the Customs Service or the Border Patrol.
A young recruit is about to be placed in a test room. The dog comes from dark into brightly lit room where he is subjected to noises and lights. The animal's reactions are observed through peep hole by veterinarians and other team members.
Though results so far have been good, Army men say that by 1980 the program will have achieved a standard for a “remarkably superior dog.”
The development team consists of veterinarians, biologists and expert handlers. In evaluating a pup, the team looks for traits of obedience, alertness find an ability to learn.
They judge a dog’s ability to learn by using standard “fetch,” “sit” and “come” tests. In addition. the pooch is evaluated on his ability to escape from a maze, his reaction to loud noises and bright lights, his alertness to hidden decoys. his ability to read hand signals and his reaction to strict obedience training.
A SUPERDOG ON DUTY with the U.S. Customs Service gives packages "sniff test" for hidden drugs.
“We are doing nothing here that hasn’t been proven with poultry or livestock,” observes the chief of the program. “The only difference is that we’re using a domesticated animal. the dog.”
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The Popular Mechanics article wasn’t the only “media buy” used to promote the program. They invited the national news in for a featured story, but the plan backfired:
Incidentally, NBC Nightly News with John Chancellor did a 2 minute spot highlighting the early stress program. It showed the “tilt-a- whirl” device. The show started out with Chancellor saying something like, “We’ve just learned that the Army has spent 3/4 of a million dollars over the last 6 years centrifuging puppies and putting them into refrigerators.” You can imagine the congressional and presidential inquiries after that one. As I recall, that was the main reason we stopped using the early stress program before data could be developed.
– Dr. Jeffrey Linn, DVM, Deputy Commanding Officer of the Army Biosensor program
This public perception disaster was also noted by Dr. Eldin Leighton, who was a research geneticist with the biosensor program and later was the Director of Canine Genetics for The Seeing Eye, Inc:
An area TV station wanted a tour of the place and Col. Castleberry showed them around. They video taped the 4 puppies in separate compartments in a wash tub being spun around at 45 rpm and then being put in the refrigerator. The voice over said “….and those puppies that survived the centrifuge were then put in the freezer…”
This aired on one network and then the others picked it up and it resulted in presidential and congressional investigations which resulted in that project being closed down. Papers also picked it up. For awhile, that project held the record for generating more publicity than any other unit of government.
It’s not by chance that the biosensor program used centrifuges and refrigerators to stress the puppies, both of these techniques were stolen from the Russian space dog program of the previous decades which were employed to evaluate and expose Laika and the other astromutts to the conditions they would likely face during launch and in orbit.
In that application, the “tilt-a-whirl” and refrigerators have a direct applicability to the desired use of the dogs. There is little common sense in subjecting neonatal puppies to centrifuges and refrigerators as a means to make them smarter or socialize them to experiences they are likely to never have (orbiting the earth, rocket liftoff, reentry, etc.).
Captain Arthur J. Haggerty of the Super Dog program confirms both the inspiration for the inane protocol and its ultimate failure to produce results:
There was a certain amount of publicity in the general press in the early 70s. The best source of information that I would suggest is the Russian tests that were conducted probably in the sixties or earlier. The tests were bizarre including putting new born whelps in a centrifuge and exposing them to cold temperatures. The US Army did attempt to replicate these tests without the results claimed by the Russians.
I contend that the impetus for the “super dog” program and non-sequitor methods initially used to condition the puppies were a direct result of American scientists inferiority complex and anxiety regarding the success of the Russian space program to capture propaganda coups when they launched satellites, animals, and humans into space before the Americans.
In the context of a space launch, centrifuges and freezers make sense. In the context of producing bomb sniffing dogs, the protocol is clearly derivative, inappropriate, and sickeningly sycophantic of the Russian program.
This makes the entire endeavour bad science and it’s crystal clear why the public, and even the President, had serious issues with the super dog program and its treatment of puppies. The whole program would eventually fail for the same reasons: no clear focus, undocumented results, poor judgment by the research team, and a lack of concern for the objective of actually producing well adjusted usable animals.
PhD Battaglia insists that this program “developed a method that still serves as a guide to what works” when the truth is that it failed both conceptually and practically. It didn’t demonstrate the efficacy of neonatal stress, its bizarre protocol offended the public. It didn’t serve as a guide to what worked, it’s a clear example of a government program that failed spectacularly. Not only did it not produce super dogs, it didn’t even produce well adjusted, fearless and healthy normal dogs.
All posts in this series:
Bio-Sensor is Bad Science: QuackeryBio-Sensor is Bad Science: True Biosensor
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There’s a lot of “folk wisdom” out there about introducing young dogs to various surfaces, sounds, people, etc. There are some studies out there regarding MILD stressors having some benefit. And it makes sense that the DOD would have tried such a thing (typical of the DOD is that the program probably stipulated things that were “the general wants it” or “someone else did this” rather than real ideas that “this will help dogs track, etc”). It is, I believe, one of the few studies on dogs out there (the only others would be some of the stuff from Fortunate Fields and some of the findings by Scott & Fuller that were incidental to their genetics study). Personally, I could wish the study by Battaglia WAS good science — a lot of folk would love a “do this and you will have a super dog” protocol and you can, in fact find some things based on development stages in most “puppy raising” handbooks. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a “paint by numbers” for dog raising, any more than there is one for losing weight, raising a kid to be summa cum laude at MIT, etc. There have been similar efforts with horses, but I haven’t heard of any of them that were “guaranteed success” – the best one can say is that early acclimation to various things can be beneficial but that it isn’t any guarantee. Nor is there anything I’ve seen so far that would indicate “bio-sensor” is any better than Lithgow’s ideas.
Battaglia is to stressor science what Deepak Chopra is to cancer science. He talks a lot about it, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.
There probably is value to desensitizing dogs to scary stimulus and exposing them to as many mundane things as possible throughout their infancy and adolescence.
Don’t let my take-down of Battaglia poison the well for all educational/developmental things people do with dogs. I’m particularly offended by Battaglia’s “biosensor” because there’s just so much fraud involved. Secret governmental tests, promises of amazing results, protocols that were pulled out of thin air, etc.
No one is going to kill a puppy by tickling its toes. It’s probably impossible to even harm the puppy doing the Battaglia protocol, it’s so limited and benign.
But it’s not going to don a cape and fly around either.
Can anyone tell me who was responsible for the Bio-Sensor method the 5 steps with the 3 day old puppies, was it Col. Castleberry?
No, it wasn’t Col. Castleberry. The military program didn’t have ANY neo-natal protocol at all! The puppies in that program were weeks older before they were subjected to stimuli like being placed in a refrigeration unit and placed on a centrifuge. The “Bio-Sensor” method is entirely the invention of Carmen Battaglia. No one in the military ever tickled a puppy’s feet with Q-tips or tilted newborns around in their hands JUST-SO for JUST-SO many seconds or took a cloth at just this temperature and placed the dogs on it, etc.
That’s all made up by Battaglia and has no scientific backing at all. He just invented it out of the blue and claimed that it was the program used by the military and that the military program was successful. Lies!
It sounds as though you are very upset with Battaglia, I worked with BIO-SENSORS in the early 70’s as a Dog Handler in the US Army and have 30+ years working in the K-9 field. In my experiance with BIO-Sensors I found them to be very interesting dogs. From the dogs I worked with, I would agree with your assement the dogs were not subjected to this method at birth. The wide arc of behavior I saw in these dogs was noticable . The first batch were large German Sheppards and didn’t seem to care for attention/affection such as praise and playtime. These dogs were not skittish are afraid and seemed to be easy to train. As other dogs were introduced into the program they seemed to get smaller in size and more skittish. The one thing I noticed in working with over 150 of theses super dogs was they were either a great Police dog are something that you didn’t want at the end of a leash. I can say without hesitation they had the best tracking and contraband sniffing nose’s I have ever seen.
I am looking to purchase a sheppard and the website for the kennal referred to the Bio-Sensor method of introducing the puppies after the third day of life. It peeked my interest, having worked with a lot of these dogs, and hope I have some usefull informatiion that could help answer some questions. Thanks for your response
When I was teaching vet anatomy at UPenn in the 1980’s Dr Peter Jezyk told me some anecdotal tales of the Superdog project. Dr J said that in their breeding program there were three correlations they could not break – a positive relationship between lighter eyes and greater success in training, a positive relationship between strong fore chest and better overall health and a positive relationship between stable temperament and the high carried sickle tail. Since dark eyes and the low carried tail were beauty features in GSD’s the GSD people associated with the program were not happy.
It makes you wonder if those correlations were the result of true causation [i.e. something that would hold generally] or simply due to the rather smallish original gene pool and perhaps certain genes were on the same chromosomes (thus more likely to get transferred together) as the genes responsible for health and temperament, etc.
In relation to early puppy testing. In my own experience with 30 years of Borzoi litters, I have not found responses before 8 to 10 weeks of age to be very predictable. I even had an instance where puppies separated from their mother at 5 weeks of age completely forgot who their mother was. Normally we leave pups with the mother and just let her wean them and the pups seem to have a life long relationship with their mother.
I’ve always put ENS in the half hog wash, might help category.
I do it because it doesn’t take much time and I don’t think it hurts anything.
But believe in it……… probably not.
Just like children who are to be unfolded not molded for well adjusted adult or canine. Believe like Bonnie a stress free period with mother and siblings in my opinion, experiences and observations provides the best pre-training environment for a Super Dog.
This sounds all to much like socialization theories on how to make a winning show dog champion. Believe me buying a champion is more like paying for a Rescue.
The greatest stresser a litter can have is letting young children play with the puppies, especially if they use them as toys.