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Humane Heroes

Search and Rescue Dogs

Cindy A. Adams

The Art of Heroism

Aspen and Anthony Fernandez have covered a lot of ground together. They’ve been through almost every glade in Dade County, FL, searching for missing persons and homicide victims. They have been to Cali, Columbia, in the aftermath of a jet crash, and to Puerto Rico after the collapse of a 6-story building. They also traveled together to Oklahoma City after the Alfred P. Murrah building was bombed in April 1995.

Based in Miami with the Metropolitan Dade County Fire Rescue Department, Aspen and Fernandez entered each place at its worst moment, braving scenes of confusion and anguish to offer help while tragedy was fresh. The two are partners in the work of urban canine Search and Rescue (SAR). They are members of one of 28 national Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) task forces, and work with the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, responding to man-made and natural disasters.

Canine SAR began years ago, with fairly informal teams looking for lost campers and hikers in wilderness settings. A new aspect of this collaborative, life-saving work was born more recently, as dogs and their handlers began to be formally trained in urban SAR, helping locate and rescue victims of building collapses, earthquakes and bombings.

Aspen and Fernandez may become something of SAR celebrities now that internationally acclaimed artist Fred Stone has committed their Oklahoma City experience to canvas (see sidebar, right). In Aspen’s eyes and Fernandez’ embrace, Stone captures the sense of safety that man and animal draw from one another in the face of the sheer bewilderment of the scene before them.

Fernandez, talking from home with 5-year-old Aspen napping at his feet, explains that urban SAR was just beginning to emerge at the end of the 1980s when he was looking for a new challenge. Now, the ex-Marine is coordinator of the canine SAR unit in the Metro Dade department’s Special Operations Division. Aspen, recipient of many awards and citations for her 4 years of service to date, is one of 12 SAR dogs in Metro Dade Fire Rescue. The Oklahoma City bombing was her first mission; she had just completed a course in body recovery, and helped find 8 bodies in the bomb’s terrible aftermath. All told, canine searchers recovered 169 bodies in Oklahoma City, and found the last living person buried in the rubble.

The right stuff

Fernandez defines the mix of drive and temperament that successful urban SAR dogs have. They must be obedient, agile, directable, able to search and able to give a strong alert. “Nothing is swifter or surer than a dog,” adds Wilma Melville (above right), an urban SAR handler and trainer based in Ojai, CA, and a member of a FEMA team based there. This powerhouse also served in Oklahoma City with her black Labrador, Murphy. Melville began doing wilderness searches with her German sheperd Topa a decade ago. Now, as president and founder of the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, she adopts specially chosen shelter dogs, looking for a great willingness to hunt for a tossed toy, together with a couple of traits that might turn other shelter adopters away: boldness and a high prey drive. Melville, who works with the California State Office of Emergency Services, offers a program that differs from traditional SAR in that it is formal and finite; 5 months at a training kennel, compared to the few years of more sporadic training undertaken by most SAR volunteers. By that point, many are ready to retire their dog.

“Wilderness searching is atmosphere-friendly to dogs,” adds Melville. “But in urban SAR, they’re working in unnatural surroundings, amid rubble, pipes, ‘tippy’ things. They need to train more in obstacle course type work than standardized work in agility. We use things like planks, sawhorses, plywood, ladders, rolls of cyclone fencing, pallets.” Melville travels to train the dogs with their handlers, usually fire department or Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers. Often when she arrives at a new site, she makes a trip to local recycling centers or sites where buildings or bridges are being taken down for materials.

“SAR is a young dog’s game,” comments Fernandez. “It can be stressful.” Aspen, who had Fernandez’ first SAR dog, Sierra, as a mentor, will “retire” before too long from disaster sites to the less taxing work of body recovery. And she, in turn, will help teach a new member of the team, Guidon, brought into the Fernandez family this spring.

The special care taken to choose and train these heroic partners is richly rewarding to individuals like Melville and Fernandez, and no doubt to the canines who share their lives. “The worst part of it is having to deal with the circumstances of a tragedy,” says Fernandez. “The best is knowing that the program and the training worked.”

Artist Fred Stone has created pieces that adorn the homes of notables such as Queen Elizabeth II. Now, this master of detail in watercolors and acrylics hopes to start a groundswell of publicity around the need for more SAR teams with “Partners,” which graces this issue’s cover. Stone, whose paintings of thoroughbreds have been prized for more than 20 years, was encouraged by his wife Norma to paint the spent Aspen and Fernandez. He became intrigued with the world of SAR, and with little more than sheer will, marshalled the printing and production of posters that salute these partners. Half of all sales will go to animal welfare and canine Search and Rescue organizations. Please see p. 58 to order your own artful rendering.

Courtesy of
ASPCA
424 East 92nd St.
New York, NY 10128-6804
(212) 876-7700
www.aspca.org

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