Previewing Blue-Collar Dogs

George Washington owned a dog, ten in all, Abraham Lincoln owned two of them himself. In fact the seventeen last presidents had a four legged friend to keep him company all the way up to Bo who currently resides in the White Dog House. But tonight on Nat Geo Wild, the channel will premiere a show that highlights dogs that go even further than being the best friend of the Leader of the Free World.

Blue-Collar Dogs follows dogs are more than man’s best friend but help their owners do some tough jobs. And tonight starting at 8:00 Nat Geo Wild will air three straight episodes starting with Canine MD. Sure we are all familiar with Seeing Eye dogs for the blind, but some do even more than guide their owners. Watching a dog open the refrigerator , grab a Sprite, give it to his owner with a degenerative muscle disease, then close the door is a sight to be seen. And the medical field is also putting a dog’s nose to good use by having them sniff out cancer and one dog that helps her owner by predicting her blood sugar crashes.

At 9:00 is Border Hounds which views like the best dog segments from Border Wars on its sister station but goes deeper into the training that goes on to making a drug sniffing dog. And the “Don’t Touch My Junk” guy may want to skip this episode because one of the dogs smells something a suspect’s crotch area as we get to see an agent go in and fish it out of the hiding area. But the best visual is a dog training to be dropped out of a helicopter getting strapped to an agent’s back and repelling down a six story structure (as seen above).

Rounding out the night is New York Police where dogs are trained to protect the world’s busiest city by sniffing out bombs, which they did to keep the scene safe during the Times Square Bombing attempt, attacking criminals in the subway, and as part of a search and rescue squad. Some of New York’s finest four legged officers went down to Haiti to find people stuck in the rubble after last year’s earthquake. And how New York is it that even police dogs need to be issued credentials just to sniff for bombs at the US Open tennis tournament? The most interesting part of the episode doesn’t even take place in New York, but across the river at a woman’s prison in New Jersey wear inmates actually help train puppies to become bomb sniffing dogs and even lives in the inmate’s cell. Check out a clip of that below:

Puppies Behind Bars