Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
SEARCH AND RESCUE
Bethel man and his dogs form team
BETHEL >> Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a way to quickly locate a beloved family member, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and had inadvertently walked away from their home and become lost? A group of search and rescue dogs in Pennsylvania has been trained to do exactly that, and they’ve recently scored some impressive results.
Bethel resident Keith Cox is the owner/handler of one of these dogs. Nakoma is a sixyear-old American Indian dog, who has been certified as both a Scent-Specific Trailing Dog and as a Human Remains Detection/ Water Search Dog. As a member of the Pennsylvania Wilderness Search And Rescue, Nakoma’s dual certifications mean that he can play a valuable role in both rescue and recovery operations.
Cox weighed his options carefully before choosing the American Indian breed to be his working partner.
He says he wanted a dog that would be more than “just a pet.” Nakoma’s short-hair, pale eyes, and naturally-pointed ears give him a unique look, while it is his intelligence and strong work ethic that make him an expert tracker. At 42 pounds, Nakoma is large enough to have the stamina for outdoor work, but small enough to be carried, if necessary.
The name Nakoma, pronounced like “Tacoma,” means ‘great warrior’ or “great spirit.” Nakoma is now a seasoned team veteran, while his six-monthold ‘sister,’ Sakari, whose name is pronounced like “safari” and means “sweet,” is currently in training to be a search and rescue dog as well. Cox got both dogs from the same breeder.
Cox and Nakoma have been working with a dozen other certified PaWSAR dog/handler teams in this region for the past few years. Each dog can alert in a different way to detection of a scent. Alerts to live rescues versus a recovery can even differ, making the handler’s interpretation of a dog’s alerts a mix of science and intuition.
The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency technically oversees search management across the state. But while search work falls under PEMA jurisdiction, they do not directly oversee PaWSAR teams.
PaWSAR teams eceive no direct funding from the government. Rather, they operate as a nonprofit organization, and set their own standards, without much formal PEMA guidance. This lack of SAR certification standards in Pennsylvania opens the door for under-qualified teams to participate in searches, which can bring on its own set of problems.
A great deal of training is required to develop a handler and a dog into an effective SAR team. Training courses such as Search Management and Lost Person Behavior are recommended for the handler. Cox said before any dog is ready for training, the handlers must be prepared to do search and rescue work themselves.
“You need to be self-sufficient on the scene, so that you’re a help and not a hindrance,” remarked Cox who spends part of virtually every weekend in field training, as well as attending monthly sessions with a master dog trainer. Despite the commitment required, none of the teams receive any compensation, and must buy all their own equipment.
Of course, the dog needs a lot of training as well, to enhance and fine tune its natural abilities to track and hunt – a survival skill for the dog’s wild ancestors.
“The dog is working for us, because he wants to be rewarded and all searches end with a reward for the dog,” Cox explained. “Even if it’s a negative result and they did not find someone, they still did the same job that we asked them to do, so rewards like praise are still given.”
SAR dogs essentially treat their work assignments as play time and an exciting game of hiden-seek. PaWSAR training sessions utilize ‘volunteer hiders,’ who pack a picnic lunch and get lost deep in the woods, then wait for the dogs to find them.
Roughly half of the searches that PaWSAR teams conduct are for live persons that have gone missing, as opposed to searching for a dead body. Of the live searches conducted, about half are for lost individuals, such as hikers or dementia patients, and half are searches for potential suicide victims.
“Looking for a deceased person is just as important to us, because you’re bringing closure to a family,” Cox explains about the recovery versus rescue missions.
Calling in canine trackers is generally the third step in a search, after the family and then police and/ or fire company personnel have had no luck in locating the missing person. This means that the search areas are always highly contaminated with the scent of previous searchers, which is where scent-specific trailing dogs have the advantage over other dogs, being able to focus on one specific scent only.
“A lost person case is treated as a criminal matter until you know otherwise,” Cox said while explaining why all searches must be conducted with extreme caution.
Scent-specific dogs often sniff a piece of clothing from the laundry hamper or a used pillowcase to lock in on the subject’s scent. A successful search might end in finding a missing person, either dead or alive, but just establishing a direction of travel can also be a vital clue.
“Learning where to search further, or even learning that there is no one in a certain area to rule out that area as ‘cleared,’ are both considered successes for our teams,” Cox explained. “SAR dogs can search an area faster and more reliably than a group of 25 human searchers could.”
Canine searches conducted with a 12 to 24-hour time frame generally yield “fairly reliable” results, but as time stretches out to multiple days, the scent left behind by the lost person becomes eroded, especially during hot and/or rainy weather. Oddly, while rain wipes out scents, dense fog can actually help to preserve a scent trail.
“The dogs are not 100 percent (accurate), and some of the time it’s the handler,” Cox shared. “It’s not as cut and dry as most people think.”
Cox laments that many local police and fire departments are either unaware of the availability of PaWSAR teams or they have had a bad experience in the past and are now hesitant to call in search dogs. Moving forward, PaWSAR teams would like to work more closely with other first responders, including joint training sessions.
Although Cox has only formed a team with his SAR dogs in recent years, he is no newcomer to search and rescue. He formerly was part of a SAR diving team, with his father Keith and stepmother Carol, working out of the Chester Heights Fire Company about a decade or more ago. Carol donned the scuba gear, while Keith Jr. and Keith Sr. operated the boat. The Chester Heights Dive team has since dissolved, but his efforts in those earlier search and rescue missions helped to lay the foundation for his new SAR canine/human team.
Cox thanks Sperr’s Fuel Oil & Heating of Glen Mills for their ongoing fiscal support, and the Bates family of Edgmont, who allow their Arasapha Farms property to be used for training sessions.
“Being able to bring a loved one home to their family – that’s the end goal,” Cox shared. “It’s the feeling you get when you help, not just one person, but an entire family. Plus, I thoroughly enjoy working with dogs, and the people that I train with are great.”
Donations can be made to Pennsylvania Wilderness Search And Rescue at www. PaWSAR.org.