Greetings to all,
As you think about disasters, being personally prepared is extremely important and I’m glad to see all the posts that are coming into the site. Keep in mind, many of the people you may deal with in disaster situations (including Katrina and tornadoes) are volunteers.
Many people do not realize it, but 95% of the search and rescue dog handlers out there are volunteers. They spend their own time and money training/certifying and even deploying to disasters. Only the federal FEMA teams and some of the state disaster teams have paid positions. However, you still only get paid for deployments, NOT for training.
This weekend, Dunder and I are off to some training and will be posting a few pictures next week of what we are doing. Dunder is a 16 month old yellow lab/golden retriever cross that was found in a shelter. We will be attending ‘drive’ training. (no he isn’t learning how to drive…he’s learning to want his toy more!) Basically, we are going to go play tug and let him bark at people. For us this is fun, for lots of other people they would find that annoying.
We do this type of training because a search dog’s job has to be fun for them, or they won’t do it well. Nintey percent of what I do is spend time trying to make the ‘training’ that Dunder and I do fun. It’s all a game to him with the biggest reward being that game of tug at the end. (I bet your boss wished you worked for something that cheap.)
Wags!
Robin and K9 Dunder (search dog in training)