That article, of course, led me down the "rabbit hole" and I found numerous wonderful stories about these amazing dogs and what they have to go through to be called search and rescue dogs, as well as the type of work they are trained to do. I also read about the health hazards and dangerous activities they willingly take on to do the job they love. You can read about that here.
Dogs are truly a remarkable thing. I have said before, and I will repeat here again, the dogs truly are a gift from God.
These dogs are trained to find missing people, like an 82 year old Alzheimer patient that wandered away from his home in 33 degree temperatures wearing only a thermal top and pajama bottoms. He was outside for approximately 7 hours in the weather before Tick, the search and rescue dog, found him and barked to alert his handler. All that man could remember about his experience is being licked in the face by a dog! Amazing.
Tick was a stray that had been picked up by police and taken to a shelter but the officer noted that he wanted to adopt him if no one came to get him. Once Tick was with the officer, he underwent rigorous training and became the search and rescue dog that saved this man's life. Here is a link to the article about Tick.
Not only do the dogs undergo rigorous training, but the handlers must also be trained to interact with the dogs in such a way that it encourages the dogs to do their jobs without distractions. Here is a story about one of those handlers and all she had to do to become a search and rescue dog handler.
Search and rescue dogs find missing people, dead bodies, crime scenes, disaster victims that are buried in debris, they also find bombs in war torn areas. Here is an article about Children against Mine Programs where a little girl in New Hampshire helps to raise funds to train mine sniffing dogs. This is an amazing program and I was totally unaware of it before reading here.
This was an amazing "rabbit hole" adventure that I thoroughly enjoyed and I hope you will too. Below, I have listed several videos about these dogs for you to enjoy.
