Murrysville Boy Scout creates 'scent wall' for search-and-rescue dog group
Eagle Scout projects fall into a wide variety of categories, but many are aimed at beautifying the towns in which they take place, or fixing up a feature that has fallen into disrepair.
Liam Rhea of Murrysville jumped at the chance to take on a project that could potentially help locate missing persons in the Pittsburgh area.
For his Eagle project, Rhea, 15, of Boy Scout Troop 205 in Murrysville, built a scent wall for the Western Pennsylvania Search and Rescue Development Center in Penn Hills.
“It’s a wall that has tubes that alternate in height, so the dogs have to go up and down to search,” said Rhea, a freshman at Franklin Regional Senior High School. “Some of the scents are a distraction, and the dogs are meant to find the scent their handler gave them.”
The scent walls are 4 feet high and 8 feet wide, with PVC pipes that conceal a number of different scented objects. Prior to its construction, trainers used cardboard boxes or did outdoor training.
“The boxes would (retain) scents, and so they couldn’t easily re-use them,” said Rhea’s father Todd. “The other problem was it only taught the dogs to sniff at the ground.”
Cynthia Garfold, executive director at the center, said the wall is a perfect environment for training, especially for the center’s focus on cold cases and cadaver work.
“We can work on the dog’s alert to the scent much better in a controlled environment,” she said. “It’s a wonderful tool and has solidified our training foundation for cadaver work.”
Rhea began work on the wall in late summer 2019, finishing just before the start of the new year.
“We also welded a cart to carry the wall,” Rhea said. “It’s really, really heavy. It would be hard for people to carry it around easily.”
The completed wall went to the center’s Frey Road facility in Penn Hills.
“I was able to meet the dogs during the project, and that was neat,” Rhea said. “And I certainly want people who are missing to benefit from it.”
For more on the center, see WPSARDC.org.
Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com.
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