Out-of-work search dog

Ares the German shepherd needs a job.

His owner Dale Lawyer is a paramedic/engineer with Central Emergency Services in Alaska. Ares, a trained search-and-rescue dog, was laid off when CES's budget was cut during union negotiations.

Read the story in the Homer (Alaska) Tribune by Jenny Neyman here.

“If there’s a 5-year-old child that’s lost right now, we can’t go,’” Lawyer said Thursday. “It’s just really sad for something that service area members paid for. Your tax dollars paid to get this dog in service, yet you have to go to some mom and say, ‘Yeah, you paid for all this, but we’re not going to use it.’ That’s just not acceptable.”

Normally, agencies buy and train rescue dogs, but Lawyer bought the dog himself and when they both were trained pitched the idea of bringing Ares on board to CES.

Lawyer said he’s planning to spend another 10 years or so with CES, and wants to have Ares with him the whole time, which is the average span of a working dog’s career. Lawyer wants to get him certified in water and land cadaver searches and avalanche searches, as well.

He is planning a presentation today to the borough Assembly to see if funding can be restored.

Let's hope Lawyer can convince CES's board to change its mind.

Some good news from Haiti

Bill Monahan and his border collie Hunter located three girls trapped in the rubble of Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Read the whole story here from PR Newswire.

Monahan and Hunter, who were trained by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, were searching the remains of a four-story building in a neighborhood near the Presidential Palace.

After criss-crossing the area, Hunter pin-pointed the survivors' scent under 4 feet of broken concrete and did a sustained "bark alert" to let Bill know where the victims were. Bill spoke with the survivors, then passed them bottles of water tied to the end of a stick. As they reached for the water one of the girls said, "Thank you." Highly trained rescue crews from California Task Force 2 pulled the girls from the wreckage and provided first aid.

In his report this morning from Haiti, SDF Handler Bill Monahan stated, "It would have been a reward to find one person alive. Finding multiple survivors is a huge victory for everyone on the Task Force. It's a giant team effort. From the canines, to the logistics team, to communications, everyone is working at full capacity, using everything we've been trained to do to find survivors. It's an honor to be here."

The National Disaster Search Dog Foundation is located in Ojai, Calif. Its mission is to produce highly trained canine-firefighter disaster search teams.

Here is their Web site.