In my role as an emergency services Public Information Officer I used to suggest, with tongue firmly in cheek, that fire departments take small cuddly pets with them TO fires. Upon arrival they were to provide oxygen, let the animal appear to wake up, and they’d soon be getting positive national press.

The fact is, saving animals is almost better than saving people.

SAR teams, usually mountain rescue types, occasionally create ad hoc “training days” to help a pet owner whose beloved companion has gone over a cliff.

Such was the case for a Wolfe County, KY, SAR team earlier this week. As reported by TV station WLEX in Lexington, the team rescued a Jack Russell Terrier who’d gone over an embankment the previous night.

The dog is fine and the SAR team is getting major kudos in the press. We’re glad the pup is OK. Some dogs have a concept of falling and gravity, and some don’t. It would be interesting to see the dog’s reaction the next time it gets near a cliff.

Full story here http://www.lex18.com/story/31584545/wolfe-co-search-and-rescue-team-saves-dog.

This is a special edition of Throwback Thursday, on a Tuesday. It’s the story of how my search dog became a therapy dog.

Two years ago this morning the earth moved near Oso, Washington. 43 people died in and around their homes as an entire hillside collapsed and swept through the Steelhead Haven development.

I was honored to be asked to respond as a part of my day job at the Washington State Patrol. I spent three days getting a Joint Information Center (JIC) organized in Darrington. We’d expected that would be a small satellite operation, and was set up only because the slide separated the Darrington from the incident command post in Arlington. However, it was quickly apparent the media was at Darrington in large numbers, and needed managing. We tried to do that without stepping on the main source of information in Arlington. There were a couple of hiccups, but for the most part we kept things coordinated.

The work was emotional and exhausting. It would be overly dramatic to say I had PTSD, but at the end of my time there I certainly went home in an exceptionally sad mood.

Sometime later I was invited back with Magnum. I’d not been able to respond previously as a dog handler because of my day job. I went back still carrying some of the sadness from my time as a Public Information Officer. Magnum and I worked a very small and specific assignment in an area that had previously been underwater. We did not find anything but simply making a small contribution was amazingly helpful to my psyche.

In the end, working my dog turned out to be the best therapy for what I’d been feeling. Magnum’s not technically a “therapy dog,” but his performance at Oso had exactly that effect, and was exactly what I needed. Thanks, little buddy.

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Early in my SAR career I was at a trailhead in King County readying Sierra for a hike. We weren’t searching. The hike was conditioning for me, and getting Sierra used to the normal sights and smells of the woods.

As I was getting her out of the truck and getting my own gear ready, two women across the parking lot kept looking at me.

Of course, I was the manly SAR expert, with the special pack for me and collar for the dog. Finally, they approached. Were they going to ask me about trail conditions? Some critical piece of information for enjoying their hike or staying safe?

“Sir, we just wanted to let you know you have a dryer sheet stuck to the back of your shirt.”

I never missed a beat. “That’s right ladies, I do. The wilderness is unforgiving, and you never know when a dryer sheet will save your life.”

Not even Sierra bought that, much less the ladies. But we all had a good laugh. If there’s anything better than a hike in the woods with your dog, it’s hiking with your dog while laughing.

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….is stranger than fiction.

It’s no secret that in my first children’s book Sierra the Search Dog starts out being Sierra, the dog that wins at hide and seek.

Here’s a YouTube video showing exactly that. It’s an overload of cute to begin with, and then Ollie the dog dimes out Mom and Dad as they play hide-and-seek with Junior.

Note how Ollie puts his nose to the opening between the closet door and the floor. There’s no doubt he used his nose to help win the game.

This also requires the young man to have understood what Ollie was doing, and investigate by opening the closet door. And yet we adults have trouble reading our dogs’ body language. Hmmm.

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This whole children’s book thing has been immensely fun. As a writer, I’m used to painting “word pictures,” but I’ve never had to deal with real pictures.

“Sierra Becomes a Search Dog” is written, drawn and in the production stage. It’ll be for sale soon.  My artist Taillefer is now working on the second book in the series “Sierra The Search Dog Finds Fred.” In the story, Fred goes missing and his buddy Ted calls on Sierra to help find him.

The first question we have to ask is “What does Ted look like?” It’s called a character study, and we make sure each character’s appearance enhances their role in the story.

Taillefer dropped me the attached character study of Ted. Mary Ann and I laughed out loud (with joy) when we saw the picture. Grandparents reading the story will recognize Ted as an aging hippy, the kind of guy who might now work at a coffee shop or bakery. We think the kids will like his hair and moustache….and oh, those glasses.

Fred, however, will remain a secret until publication. After all, Sierra uses her nose to find him. If we plaster his picture all over like some kind of wanted poster, then just about anybody would be able to find him.

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Does your community have volunteers? Ever added up the value of their work? Kitsap County does.

At last night’s annual SAR banquet, county officials presented a document showing that Search and Rescue volunteers had contributed more than $400,000 worth of time on services in the county, and another $243,000 helping neighboring counties.

They added up the total hours worked, and assigned a typical but conservative salary to those hours. Then they did the math. It’s amazing what volunteers do for their community, and we’re just SAR. Think of all the other volunteer groups with their varied interests and what we all bring to the places we live. It’s got to be in the millions of dollars just in Kitsap County alone.

Also at the banquet I had the pleasure of hearing some great remarks from Bainbridge Island, WA Police Chief Matthew Hamner about the value of volunteerism.

The Chief spoke not of financial benefit, but benefit to others. Human benefits. The ones that really count. He spoke of the solace received by the family of a man for whom we’d searched. The outcome wasn’t what anyone had hoped for, but the family took comfort in knowing that so many in the community were trying to help.

SAR members don’t volunteer for the adoration, but if you’re going to put out that much effort it’s nice to know it’s noticed and appreciated. The staff at Kitsap County DEM, the Sheriff’s Office and BIPD have a history of taking care of their volunteers. Last night’s banquet was one example, but they do it every day. They say thank you at the end of each mission, and when we have a need for something they do their best to help fill it.

I’m personally lucky to have bought a house and decided to live in a county where local government behaves so honorably and professionally.

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When new people come to the K9 SAR world, they’re all about having their dog search. That’s actually not the hard part. Dogs search for things all the time.

The trick, at least with off-lead air scent work, is teaching the dog what to do when it finds the subject. It has to go back, get the handler, give a specific indication that means “found ’em,” and then lead the handler back to the subject.

Ruger does that just fine, so long as he knows where I am. Ruger is a little more thoughtful than either Sierra or Magnum (my first two dogs). When he finds someone he gently tags them with his paw (very cute, I’m told), turns, goes about 20 feet and stops. Subjects are universally convinced he’s listening for me to come crashing through the bush. They report he’s looking for me, and not fooling around.

To an evaluator, that might look like NOT coming back to get me. The solution? Bell on Bob.

Now that Ruger can hear me, he has no trouble coming back and letting me know “found ’em.” He comes screaming up, veers a little to my left, makes the beginning of a U-turn, drops his butt into a momentary sit right in front of me and then is off to the races before I can say “show me.”

I am hopeful that as Ruger gains experience, and some confidence that I’m not going to leave him, I’ll be able to dispense with the bell. I feel a little like Red Buttons in the Longest Day, hanging from the church tower with the bell going “ding-dong, ding-dong” in his head. But it works.

“No, really. I mean what’s ‘up?'” Magnum confessed one day during his early training. We were chatting about how he uses his nose to find people, and he admitted he wasn’t sure what “up” meant.

I told him I admired his courage for admitting a problem, and it wouldn’t require 12 steps to fix.

Dogs don’t really have a concept of up (or down, or beneath.) Their world is what they smell, modified by their lesser sense of vision. If they smell something they can’t see, it can confuse and frustrate them. We fix that by hiding subjects (or cadaver source) well above ground level, and gently directing the dog’s attention “up.” Once a dog learns the concept, it doesn’t need perpetual reinforcement. It’s kinda like riding a bicycle.

The same is true for water or snow searches. The dog has to learn that subjects can be under water or buried in snow.

However, dogs aren’t the only ones that need to be taught to look up.

I once missed spotting a missing subject at night, even though Magnum had taken me to the edge of a steep ravine and been very animated. I could read Magnum well, and was totally sure the subject was at the bottom of the ravine. We hoped he was alive, and had merely fallen.  I called Mountain Rescue to go down.

By the time the climbers arrived it was daylight.  They could easily see the poor man had taken his own life by hanging. His remains were hanging from a tree just off the lip of the ravine, exactly where Magnum had alerted. I had such focus on seeing the bottom of the ravine I didn’t look up, or out.  I’d probably swept my flashlight just underneath his feet. I was embarrassed, and greatly relieved it was trained searchers who found him and not a family member or other hiker.

Now, Magnum and I both remember to look up on searches.

As many of you know, I’ve not only taken the leap to become an author, I’m doing something not many other rookie authors have done. I’m writing a spectrum of books for all ages, but with the same characters. Children will fall asleep listening to Grandpa read Sierra Becomes a Search Dog. When they learn to read for themselves they will hopefully enjoy the chapter book Bryce Bumps His Head (working title).  Then, when they’re teens, the darker novel Digger will go into the work of cadaver dogs and catching serial killers.

Although I’m told that’s a great marketing scheme, it’s also confusing as heck. And you know what? The darned childrens books are more confusing that the murder mystery. I’m completely flummoxed writing a book for…..four-year-olds.

My artist, Taillefer Long, is saving my bacon. For example, we ended up adding one of the best scenes in the book to save an error I made. Instead of merely fixing the error, we turned it into a positive. I let a friend glance at the book, and saw the delight on her face when she got to the page with the “fix.” She wasn’t aware of the drama about that page, so her reaction was incredibly valuable to me.

I hope that when you read Sierra Becomes a Search Dog you’ll let me know your favorite scene. We’ll see if it’s the one that ended up in the book only because of my bonehead mistake.

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