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Warricknews - News
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Dogs eager to take on search jobs
Posted: Thursday, Mar 17, 2005 - 06:26:40 pm EST
By Wendy Wary-Warrick Publishing Online
 | | Simon Owens, Shelby Gilliam and Abigail Lawrence watch as Rachel Ahrenholtz talks to Faith, a Newfoundland who works with owner Beth Boling as a Search and Rescue team for Vanderburgh County Emergency Management Agency. Homeschool students recently attended a presentation by the agency's search and rescue division at Fortress of Fun in Newburgh. Photo by Wendy Wary |
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"God put whatever's in the dog in the dog," explained Beth Boling of Vanderburgh County Emergency Management Agency's K-9 Search and Rescue team. "We just have to figure out what the dog is trying to tell us with the signals it gives us."
Boling and two other search and rescue dog handlers presented a program to more than two dozen home school students March 3 at Newburgh's Fortress of Fun. The homeschoolers belong to the primarily Warrick County-based group T.E.A.C.H., an outreach organization that provides camaraderie, group activities and resources to home school parents and children.
The students first learned about Quizzi, a 5-month-old German Shorthaired Pointer owned by Jennifer Ellison. Ellison explained that she's currently working to train Quizzi for searches. For the dogs, search and rescue is a game, she said, and it's something they enjoy and look forward to.
While Quizzi was busy snooping around the new environment at the park, Ellison talked to the families about how the dogs are trained, what techniques are used and why a well-trained dog and handler can cover more ground more quickly than hundreds of human rescuers. Using a plush bloodhound for demonstration, she explained a dog's nose, the drool that comes out of its mouth and even the folds of skin on its face allow the dog an advantage on tracking a missing person's scent.
Jill Hollman, the third presenter, said a trained rescue dog, its handler and a support person can cover one square mile in just three and a half hours, with a total of seven man hours exhausted. It would take 176 trained searchers spread 30 feet apart to cover the same square mile in the same amount of time, Hollman added, for a total of 616 man hours.
Virtually any dog can be trained to be a search and rescue dog, the presenters told students. Dogs can be any breed or mix, but must have a desire to work. The dog must also be strong enough to handle the physical aspects of the job, have good stamina, excellent scenting ability, a sound temperament and ability to work well with people and other dogs.
The three handlers and their dogs have put in over 1,700 hours of training in the program's first year, and over 1,300 hours just last year. The teams train in Kentucky, Virginia, Indiana, Tennessee and other areas. They train in all sorts of weather conditions and varying types of terrain to better prepare themselves in case of an emergency.
The teams are trained in first aid and canine first aid, navigational communications, lost persons behaviors and are First Responders and Community Emergency Response Team (C.E.R.T.) qualified.
Boling has two Newfoundlands, Faith and Jonah. The Newfoundland is known as the "gentle giant" because of its laid-back, friendliness, especially with children. They are also known for their capabilities in snow and water, said Boling. Newfoundlands have been known to rescue entire ship crews, she added, by instinctively pulling the men one by one to shore.
Faith specializes in cadaver searches, while Jonah prefers live rescue. Boling said she tried Jonah with cadaver rescues, but he didn't really enjoy it. She said it's important to recognize what type of activity the dog enjoys doing. If either of her dogs didn't enjoy search and rescue work, she wouldn't force them to do it, she added.
Hollman's dog, Wily, is an 18-month-old Australian Shepherd. Wily is cross-trained, said Hollman, and as with all of the dogs on the search and rescue team, is scent specific. That means by catching the scent of a specific person on an article of clothing or other source, the dogs are able to follow the trail of that person by his or her scent.
Before offering a demonstration of the dogs' abilities, the three women answered questions from the audience, allowed the students to pet the dogs and offered a piece of advice to all the parents.
"It's a good idea to take a swab of your child's DNA and keep it in the freezer," said Hollman. She suggested taking a Q-tip and swabbing the inside of the child's cheek. Once the swab is taken, Hollman said the parent should place it inside a zipper-seal bag and write on the outside the date the swab was taken, the color of the child's hair, the eye color of the child, the height and weight of the child and the age of the child. By keeping it in the freezer, the swab could be preserved and may prove useful if the child ever becomes lost or missing.
More information and tips on how to keep your child safe can be found online at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Web site: www.missingkids.org; or by calling your local law enforcement or Emergency Management Agency.
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