And while I worry about the Japanese people and our friends in Japan, I also worry about the search and rescue (SAR) dogs and their handlers who have deployed to Japan. Working in those environments is going to be horrible and incredibly dangerous. I know that’s what they train for but I still worry.
My husband, Paul, and I did search and rescue work a number of years back with our two German Shepherd Dogs, Watachie and Michi. The training process was long and rigorous; for both the dogs and the people. However, I found the dog training portion of it easy; primarily because my dog, Watachie, was a hard working dog and if I could figure out how to teach him something, he was more than willing to do it. He was one of those dogs who couldn’t be distracted by anything. A deer bounding past us in the woods wouldn’t get more than an ear twitch.
My part of the training was more difficult. I had never used a compass in my life and although I had good camping skills, grew up running wild in the woods, and had never been lost; I had never had formal survival training, either. It was hard to set aside what I knew, “But I’ve never been lost!” and learn new skills.
Running a search and rescue base camp was all new to me, too. My Dad had taught me to read a map but that was a street map; this was entirely different.
I enjoyed the other challenges of SAR training. Learning how search rubble of various kinds, doing obstacle training, teaching Watachie to freeze in place without moving a paw, learning how to search from a boat; all of that was fascinating. Teaching the dogs to ride in a plane was easy – a helicopter was a little bigger challenge. Although Watachie took to it easily Michi had a little more unease. He kept looking up at the rotors, as if to say, “What the — are those?”
By the time Watachie and Michi were retired due to health problems – as well as growing older – they had participated in many searches. Some of the searches had happier endings than others but in all of the searches we felt that we – Paul and I and our dogs – as well as the other members of our SAR unit – had done a good job.
However, we had never been called to a disaster such as what is going on in Japan. My heart goes out to the people of Japan as well as all the search and rescue dogs and their handlers. Good luck, everyone, and be safe!
Photo credit: Michi, not doing SAR work here, but pulling his cart. Photo by Liz Palika.
No comments:
Post a Comment