Gina Hayes has never not had dogs. Growing up on a Midwestern farm, she was surrounded by animals, but she was most especially enamored of her father's pack of hunting dogs, a beautiful team of rangy, red Irish Setters. Unlike most working dogs in that time and place, the setters were allowed in the house and had an honored place in family life and kept in line and out of the parlor by a spunky Pekinese named Chipper. When Ms. Hayes' plan to study veterinary medicine conflicted with her parents' desire for her to honor convention and marry a nice farm boy, she packed her bags and hit the road with Cimi, a noble setter who was her devoted companion through years of travel and adventure.

 

A flatlander by birth, Ms. Hayes headed for the Rockies and a career as a ski bum. She managed a bookstore, took up rock climbing to overcome a fear of heights, and eventually moved East where she met and married New Yorker Eddie Hayes. After frequent trips to visit Vineyard friends, the couple decided to move to the Island to raise their two children, Ken, now a sophmore at Castleton State College in Vermont, and Elizabeth, a freshman at the regional high school.

 

"We had always enjoyed coming to the Vineyard, loved the boat ride especially." Ms. Hayes laughs in recollection. "I always assumed that we would drive over when we moved up, take the bridge. I had no idea that we were moving to a place that was only accessible by boat."

 

By then, Gina had developed an intense interest in the work of Bloodhounds and their handlers, a symbiotic relationship that is exceptionally useful to military and law enforcement in criminal investigation, search and rescue, and tracking. Bloodhounds themselves are compelling animals. Dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, they were bred for their extraordinary sense of smell and ability to track scents over great distances. Wonderful family dogs if kept busy and active, bloodhounds are also handsome and affectionate.

 

After careful research and interviews with breeders, Gina found a dog, a female named Tree, with whom she would being a years-long odyssey.

 

A week after the dog's arrival, Gina was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Told at first that the cancer was terminal, she made a deal that was to seal her fate.

 

"When you think you're close to death, you start to bargain. You look to your higher power, to God, to whoever, and you play 'Let's Make a Deal."

 

She gazes out the window of her big, homey, country kitchen in a house on a Tisbury hillside at the bright light of an autumn morning to collect her thoughts before going on.

 

"I promised that if I could survive, I would dedicate all this dog energy to helping people. I had no idea what I was getting into, but the drive for survival gave me the guts to go on."

 

After a second opinion and surgery, Ms. Hayes did indeed go on. She trained with top experts, such as retired F.B.I. agent Robert Swabe who, with his own dogs, had tracked James Earl Ray and the Atlanta child killer - just two of the high-profile cases he helped crack.

 

She attended Felony Manhunt School in Mississippi and worked with Glen Rembey of the New Mexico State Penal System Canine Division. She jumped out of helicopters, participated in mock manhunts through booby-trapped woods and swamp land, and learned to track escaped convicts, missing children, and rape suspects through any terrain, urban or wilderness, and to find survivors and cadavers in mountains of rubble.

 

"They didn't quite know what to make of me," she remembers. "I was the only woman, the only private trainer with my own dogs, but I was good at it, used to get an adrenaline rush from it all, and they were so topnotch. There was no prejudice; in the end, they treated me like a little sister."

 

Working quietly from her home base on the Vineyard, Ms. Hayes put in 17 years with her own three dogs, all females - Tree, and associates Rosie and Maggie - and others working cases up and down the East Coast. She was constantly astonished at the dogs' ability to pull a scent from the ground or the air and follow it for miles, never giving up, always willing to go on through whatever obstacles the terrain presented. They worked rape, narcotics, and arson cases, burglaries, abductions, and escapes. She became heavily involved in national organizations dedicated to Bloodhound training, care, and rescue and was on the road as consultant and board member as often as she was for the actual work of tracking. Eventually the demands of motherhood and Island life caught up with her and forced a shift in focus.

 

Today, Gina Hayes runs a companion dog training school called Canine Capers. Calling herself a "balenced trainer," her methods are based on the understanding that all dogs are different, no one model will apply to all dogs, that differences among breeds are many, and personality variation among dogs of the same breed must be acknowledged.

 

Many popular training methods today were originally designed by the military to train dogs for war or law enforcement. Veteran trainers who worked with dogs in Vietnam and in the riots of the 1960s and early 1970s introduced techniques that have proven inappropriate for family pets - a notion confirmed by the increase in bite incidents throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

 

Breed identification and assessment of traits and characteristics is an essential component of and the logical starting point for successful training, and Ms. Hayes is an expert.

 

"You also have to take into account the ability and personality of the owner as well," she says. "An elderly owner may be restricted in what they can do physically, some people just don't have it in them to use certain means to an end, so I work with that and adapt my methods to what is comfortable for them."

 

Many health and behavior problems, she asserts, are directly related to lack of exercise and stimulation. A perennial problem over the years has been overbreeding of popular breeds as well as a recent trend to adopt a companion pet based on its perceived chic; sporty retrievers and hardworking Border Collies who can and should run, jump, swim, and range the country o'er for the better part of the day get confined to kennels or staked to dog houses while owners pursue busy lives. Compromises can be made, though, and with some hard work on the part of dogs and owners, most difficulties can be overcome.

 

A new and increasingly popular outlet is obedience and trick clubs, and Ms. Hayes has a group up and running her on the Island. Meeting once a weekly, 15 dogs and their people are working at the novice level to master a wide range of tricks and behaviors, including dance patterns that are reminiscent of square dancing, agility jumps, and retrieving. It has proven to be a social outlet for dogs and people, and a wonderful way to keep the dogs, from the English Mastiff to the Jack Russell, busy and active.

 

Busy and active seem to be the key traits and breed characteristics of Gina Hayes. No longer a bloodhound owner, she continues to train and consult nationally and sits on the board of several national organizations, and has been nominated to the board of the International Association of Canine Professionals. She is a professional Bloodhound judge, belongs to "all the Bloodhound and setter clubs," and is an active member of the Irish Setter Rescue of Cape Cod. Her home is often full of "student" dogs and foster dogs rescued from a variety of circumstances, from the merely overwhelmed owner to the downright psychopathic. She has developed a matter-of-fact professionalism when reviewing her history as a dog person, but her eyes still fill up when recalling the especially poignant stories of the dogs she's known and loved.

 

Her pet project these days is to put the finishing touches on her book, tentatively titled, "Just When I Thought I'd Seen Everything: Different Dogs, Different Methods," which she hopes to see published by next summer. "The market is saturated with educational resources for owners, and many of these books have some good advice. I hope to put out a book with broad appeal and sound information based on real stories of my experiences with different breeds and different people."

 

Perhaps the greatest insight into what makes Gina Hayes tick is a story she tells about a wild ferry ride with her daughter Beth, a budding trainer herself. Still the farm girl these many years later, and in spite of her rock climbing/cancer survivor/helicopter jumping adventures, Gina is ever fearful of the often dangerous combination of boats and bad weather. On the way to Woods Hole one day, en route to an off-Island training session, Vineyard Sound kicked up a nasty swell and a near gale set the ferry on its beam ends (or so it seemed).

 

In spite of a valiant effort to remain calm before her 14-year-old daughter, she began to panic and confessed her terror.

 

"Well, Mom," Island-born Beth replied, "You know what you do with terrified dogs...put 'em in the kennel where they're safe and cozy. Why don't you go down to the ladies' room and lock yourself in a nice cozy stall."

 

She did, and to this day, in wild weather, Gina Hayes rides the ferry locked in the ladies room like on of her students, calmly confined to her kennel. Perhaps one day they'll build that bridge.