Expeditionary Service Dog River Roux and Melanie Boling on expedition in Olympic National Park, Washington.

Expeditionary Service Dog River Roux on expedition while handler Melanie Boling scouts the Northern Pacific Coast for the elusive Coastal Sea Wolf in the Northwest corner of Washington State.

Boling’s research is part of her Graduate Studies at Harvard University where she examines “extreme environments” and how they can have a potential negative impact on humans operating in the extreme environment. Implementing “expeditionary service dogs” are a way of mitigating negative variables such as abnormal behavior and abnormal psychology that can play a role into conservation team degradation.

Melanie Boling and Expeditionary Service Dog River Roux spent nearly a year in the field while training out in the South Cascades Mountain Range of the Pacific Northwest. This particular scouting trip to the North Pacific Coast of Washington was the first that Expeditionary Service Dog River Roux and Boling had accomplished together “on expediton “ over the course of a week in August of 2020.