-
- While their personalities are as varied as their names
suggest, each member of this pack share certain traits, including high
energy, drive, focus and independence.
-
- They love toys and go crazy over fetch, tug-of-war and
hide-and-seek. As puppies, they chewed everything in sight, barked at every
noise, tried to eat the family cat and munched on the drywall. To some,
they are the dogs from hell.
-
- But to search dog handlers they are heaven-sent.
-
- "These are qualities people don't like in a pet
and that's why a lot of them end up in the pound -- but they're perfect
material for search dogs," said Kim Hopkings, a dog trainer and co-founder
of K9 Search and Rescue Partners (K9 SARP), a small but growing Toronto
volunteer search dog group.
-
- These civilian dogs are the purebred and mongrel offspring
of generations of working dogs -- German shepherds, Labrador retrievers,
rottweilers, pointers, dobermans -- dogs bred for speed, strength, stamina,
intelligence and a will to work.
-
- Any craziness is simply born from boredom and frustration.
-
- "They're a working dog without work," suggests
Elizabeth Aldcroft, a K9 SARP handler and trainer.
-
- Liberty, a bouncy 18-month-old Airedale-shepherd cross,
was with the Adopt-A-Pet, Save-A-Life organization when Aldcroft saw her.
She has exceeded Aldcroft's expectations.
-
- Similarly, K9 SARP's Jennifer Beale found her shepherd-rottweiler
cross Buddy at the River St. pound. He had been returned twice because
of puppy shenanigans.
-
- But moves are now under way in Ontario to have these
dogs and others like them do vital police work, such as looking for bodies,
or even helping solve crimes.
-
- The OPP hopes to have a civilian volunteer dog program
up and running by the end of next year.
-
- Armed with an incredible nose that dog experts calculate
can detect scents as low as one part per trillion, the dogs of K9 SARP
and others like them form the backbone of a growing civilian volunteer
rescue dog phenomenon that is sweeping North America.
-
- While all dogs have incredible sense of smell, these
dogs are so driven by a desire to play they can be trained to pursue their
sniffer until they fall from exhaustion. Give them a preferred treat for
a job well done and they'll keep on doing a good job. For example, during
training, Oscar gets a piece of old garden hose, Buddy a knotted rope,
Radar a rubber hoop and Jasmine gets tennis balls.
-
- Basically, there are three categories of search-and-rescue
dogs: Air scenting, article scenting and cadaver.
-
- With each step human beings take, about 40,000 decayed
skin cells are released from the body. Air scenting dogs not only pick
up the scent but follow it to the source.
-
- An article dog uses the scent from a specific item while
a cadaver dog seeks out the smell of decaying flesh. Some handlers report
dogs have detected -- from the surface -- bodies submerged in 30 metres
of water.
-
- "We see life through our eyes, dogs see life through
their noses," one search expert told The Sunday Sun. Heel,
Buddy! Jennifer Beale struggles to hold back an enthusiastic Buddy during
a training exercise. -- Alan Cairns, SUN
-
- About 300 volunteer teams operate across America. Official
agencies use them in specialized roles in locales where police canine units
are either non-existent or overwhelmed by their workload. The civilian
teams are used to locate the living and the dead at air and rail disasters,
earthquakes, hurricanes and terrorist strikes such as Oklahoma City.
-
- While civilian dog teams have been almost uniformly welcomed,
they remain a mish-mash of independent groups that follow an assortment
of training and certification regimes.
-
- Canada has had the most progressive response to civilian
dogs. In Alberta, the RCMP oversees 29 certified teams.
-
- The six-year-old program is "very, very successful,"
says Cpl. Jim Galloway, who oversees the RCMP Civilian Search Dog Association,
a civilian body which has its own policies, procedures and board of directors.
-
- So far this year, RCMP-accredited teams have done 120
searches and spent 3,933 hours training. Dog handlers pay their own costs
but are reimbursed for travel and expenses. The program costs under $60,000
and is funded by volunteer efforts.
-
- "Why we didn't do this 20 years ago? I don't know,"
said Galloway.
-
- Ontario has been slow to embrace the dog teams. Until
recently, an official training and certification program had been discussed
but no action had been taken. In this vacuum, K9 SARP and similar units
-- Ontario Volunteer Emergency Response Team (OVERT) in Durham Region,
the Ottawa Valley Search and Rescue Association (OVSRA) and Pefferlaw-based
South Ontario Search and Rescue Dogs (SOSARD) -- have adopted RCMP or a
mix of American standards.
-
- Kim Cooper, a dog trainer from Orleans, Ont. and a founder
of the Ottawa Valley group, has conducted searches for both the Ontario
and Quebec provincial police and smaller police forces, including Hull,
Gatineau and Aylmer. Cooper says a major OPP concern has been quality and
liability. She shares those concerns.
-
- "Human life is at stake, so you have to be rigorous.
This is only a game to the dog," said Cooper.
-
- The Ontario Search and Rescue Council, an array of emergency
services stakeholders, has approved a recommendation by its civilian advisors
-- the Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer Association (OSRVA) -- to train
and certify 1,200 people in foot-search techniques and follow up with the
same for canine units and other volunteers, such as scuba divers. Peter
Lood with Oscar, and Kim Hopkings with Jasmine, on a training run in a
Scarborough ravine. -- Alan Cairns, SUN
-
- In the last month, the OPP has also moved forward. The
force has 19 dogs but sees the "bonus" of having extra search
dogs. Supt. Chris Lewis, head of the force's emergency management bureau,
has invited the RCMP's Galloway to Ontario to share his experiences.
-
- OPP program
-
- "We don't want to reinvent the wheel," said
Staff Sgt. Larry Bigley, head of the OPP canine unit.
-
- "Cpl. Galloway is very enthusiastic about it. I'm
sure the civilian teams are performing well, or he wouldn't be."
-
- Bigley said the OPP hopes to have a province-wide certification
program operating by the end of 2000.
-
- "We want to make sure we do it right," he said,
adding the program will likely feature OPP standards tailored to civilians.
-
- Training dogs and handlers will be much more difficult
than training ground pounders, says OSRVA president Sharon Porteous of
Sault Ste. Marie. She said it will not only take time to establish the
programs but will also need agreement from the OPP and more than 100 provincial,
regional, municipal and native police forces in Ontario.
-
- Even within the dog community, she said, the guidelines
for search dogs are "extremely controversial."
-
- American training standards being adopted by some Canadian
dog handlers are being questioned as techniques evolve with experience.
-
- During the Hurricane Floyd flood search, for example,
cadaver dogs which had practised on pig parts -- on the well-established
notion that pig corpses smell something akin to human bodies -- led divers
to the submerged remains of not humans but pigs and horses.
-
- "Rescue divers were put into unsafe situations because
the dogs couldn't tell the difference ... this is life-and-death stuff,"
said Julie Saul, who helps recover victims in disaster situations.
-
- Her husband, Prof. Frank Saul, commands the U.S. National
Disaster agency's medical assistance arm in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin,
Indiana and Minnesota. The Sauls have been at several disasters, including
the 1997 crashes of a Comair jet in Michigan, with 29 fatalities, and a
Korean Airlines jet on Guam, with 226 dead.
-
- Frank Saul said not only is there a need for uniform
certification but also top-notch standards.
-
- "We've got all these enthusiastic people who are
really well intentioned but putting people at risk 'cause their dogs cannot
do what they say they can do," said Saul. Scarborough trainer
Elizabeth Aldcroft and her air scent rescue dog Liberty.
-
-
- Saul said he believes in civilian search dogs only because
of the "good work" of Sandy Anderson and her short-haired pointer-doberman
cross Eagle, yet another pound dog rescued from death row. Anderson, a
former U.S. army officer who founded Great Lakes Search and Rescue of Michigan,
has taken seven-year-old Eagle on 400 emergency missions. Eagle is her
third search dog. She has worked air crashes in Detroit and Pittsburgh.
-
- Victims deserve "better than adequate" services,
she says.
-
- She stressed good.
-
- Hoping to offer dog handlers a chance to better their
knowledge, Anderson works closely with search-dog expert Bill Dotson, who
decades ago helped pioneer civilian search teams when he started the California
Rescue Dog Association.
-
- CARDA credits its dogs with saving California taxpayers
$3 million in 2,000 searches in the past decade.
-
- Now living in Virginia, Dotson has helped merge five
search-and-rescue dog units under one umbrella "council.
-
- "Each state is a hodge-podge, but it is moving from
the grassroots up," said Dotson, whose dogs helped in the earthquakes
that struck Mexico City in 1985 and Armenia in 1988. Dotson's dogs also
helped probe the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995.
-
- Dotson and Anderson have formed Canine Solutions Inc.
(CSI), which not only supplies top-notch volunteer dog teams to disaster
zones but also teaches student dog handlers. In July, Dotson and Anderson
gave a Pefferlaw seminar at the invitation of SOSARD's Dora Smolik and
her husband John.
-
- Anderson was thrilled at the "high level of"
of the dogs.
-
- "All of them were doing advanced work, not just
basic stuff."
-
- At this seminar, Anderson invited Peter Lood, a Toronto
currency trader, and his K9 SARP cadaver dog Oscar, an English Labrador
purebred, to work with her on field missions. In September, Lood was part
of a cadaver dog team that found skeletal remains in a tributary of the
Flint River in Michigan.
-
- This year, a CSI volunteer dog helped American police
sniff out a 12-year-old girl who had been missing for three days. Upon
entering a pedophile's house, the dog barked a warning that something was
behind the attic drywall. The girl had been bound and tied to a post. Doctors
said she had only hours to live.
-
- Lood, who founded K9 SARP with Hopkings and Aldcroft,
said he hoped the CSI will help the group establish a strong professionalism
it can offer Ontario police forces and other emergency agencies. Lood acknowledges
K9 SARP is not yet field-ready but will work at it.
-
- "This will not happen overnight. We believe we can
offer an extremely valuable tool, but we have to establish credibility."
-
- With the K9 SARP team and working closely with CSI is
Toronto ambulance acting supervisor Steve Urzenyi, who is creating a paramedic
canine unit for urban disaster use.
-
- Urzenyi said the unit will be similar to those established
in 27 major U.S. cities and in Vancouver, B.C. The American units have
64 members -- canine handlers, engineers and paramedics -- and can spend
72 hours in the field.
-
- "Dogs really are an underutilized and underdeveloped
resource," said Urzenyi.
-
- What's the scoop?
-
- Characteristics of a good search dog: Energy, drive,
focus, agility, prey and play instinct. Obedience and socialization from
the puppy stage. A desire to please and a willingness to learn.
-
- Requirements of a search dog handler: A love of dogs
and the outdoor environment. Compassion to help people by finding their
loved ones, either dead or alive. Ability to work in a team and see the
bigger picture. Commitment to spending thousands of hours training the
dog in obedience and search skills.
-
- Anyone looking for information about K9 SARP can reach
the group at 410-1-SAR, or toll free at 1-877-5K9-SARP.
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