Heroic tales of rescue dogs

For anyone who might become trapped in a collapsed building, rescue becomes a thin line between life and death. For some trained to rescue them, it's a game.

Wednesday morning, two trained rescue dogs, Malachai and Charlie, demonstrated at Southeast Missouri State University how their ability to focus intensely on a toy makes them ideal for finding and rescuing people trapped under debris.

Malachai and Charlie and their respective owners, Cathy Schiltz of Columbia, Mo., and Erin Venable of Scott City, are volunteer members of the Boone County Urban and Rescue Task Force with headquarters in Columbia. The task force, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Department of Homeland Security, is one of 28 task forces in the country. That Charlie is based in Scott City and Malachai in Columbia makes no difference. The four dogs and the 62 people who make up the task force stand ready to respond to any disaster that can be reached within three hours. Most task forces have on average two dogs, Venable said. Each task force needs 12.

The dogs are not drug dogs, cadaver dogs, and, although they are friendly and sociable, they're not good pets, Venable explained. They are trained to do one thing: find people who may have been trapped in a building that had been hit by a tornado, leveled by an earthquake or attacked by a terrorist enemy.

"Basically they are fearless," Venable said.

Finding a toy

Successful rescue dogs focus their attention on a toy. During their training, someone posing as a victim hides in rubble with the toy, and the dog is trained to associate the toy with human scent. Once the dog learns to associate the toy with the scent, it then learns through training that if it barks incessantly at the scent of the hidden person and alerts its handler, it will be rewarded with a chance to play with the toy. Eventually the dog begins to associate finding people and barking with being rewarded.

The dog also learns to ignore people who can be seen and search for someone it can smell, but not see. Its focus must be so intense that it will ignore food, other dogs, sirens and other distractions and concentrate on sniffing out the missing person. The dogs learn to detect the individual scents of various people who may be trapped in a building. To dogs, children have a different scent than adults, Venable said. Men and women smell different.

"We're all different," she said. "When a person walks into a room, he smells soup cooking. When a dog walks in, he smells potatoes, tomatoes, corn and peas."

In a real emergency situation, the dog's handler will reward the dog with its favorite toy, not with food, every time it finds a victim. Donated food at rescue sites confuses the dogs, so the reward is the toy. What may be a terrifying situation for a person in a real disaster remains a game for the dog.

Rescue dogs must be very sociable and get along with other dogs and not be wary of strangers. Trainers look for very energetic, independent dogs who will respond to commands off leash. They learn basic obedience commands and learn such specialized skills as walking on two planks simultaneously, climbing a ladder and walking on rubble.

Venable found Charlie, a 2-year-old mixed breed, at the Columbia Humane Society. Venable said she walked up and down the kennels bouncing a tennis ball, looking for a dog who wanted that ball more than anything else. Charlie wasn't in the kennel at the time. He was out being walked. Disappointed that she hadn't found a dog who would respond, Venable bounced the ball one last time as Charlie and the person walking him entered the building.

"He almost dragged that guy to get to the ball," Venable said. Charlie, age 2, is expected to take his certification test in May.

It takes approximately two years to train a dog. Generally, Schiltz said, they start with a young dog about a year old. Dogs generally work about five years, and then are retired.

Schiltz chose Malachai, a 5-year-old Belgian malanois for the breed's temperament, size and agility. The handsome, intelligent dog is certified at the highest rank a dog can be certified.

"He has tested at the highest standard FEMA has," Schiltz said.

Rescue dogs are re-certified every two years. Both handlers spend several hours daily working with their dogs. Neither dog has been involved in a rescue, although Schiltz and Malachai were deployed two years ago to help when Hurricane Isabel landed, but were not needed. Schiltz responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, with another dog who was cross-trained as a cadaver dog. They had hoped to do rescue work, she said. It turned out to be recovery.

"We never know when we're going to be called," Schiltz said. "We're trained for that. It would have been hard to stay home and watch. At times like 9-11 you really want a dog who can search an area like that."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160