Toy fowl kept cyclone hero dogs sniffing
● A squeaky toy named Chicken had to boost the spirits of search-and-rescue dogs Oreo, 5, and Bella, 3, sent in to help find missing bodies after Cyclone Idai hit Zimbabwe in mid-March.
Trained to find bodies, the border collies would grow despondent if they did not manage to sniff out any bodies for a prolonged period.
Their respective handlers, Helen Perry, 53, and Leigh Roos, 54, would then call in help of their own — Chicken the squeaky toy.
“The dogs can also pick up on the despair of the family members who were helping us search. Oreo gets a toy reward, a squeaky toy named Chicken, when he finds something. Sometimes when he got despondent from not finding anything, or when the intensity of the families helping in the search got too much, I would hide Chicken in the rubble for him to find,” Perry said,
The specialist K9 search-and-rescue team from Johannesburg returned home from recovery operations last week.
Their task was to search in Chipinge, the business district of Chimanimani, one of the hardest-hit regions in eastern Zimbabwe, close to the border with Mozambique.
At the beginning of April, Zimbabwe information minister Monica Mutsvangwa said the death toll was expected to rise further from the 268 recorded at the time.
With an estimated 200 people still missing in the area, the recovery process may still take months as the pile of debris is up to 200m deep in some areas, Perry said.
Perry and her team were assigned to a pile of debris downriver.
“We spent three days searching the huge pile of debris, slowly making our way downriver towards Mozambique.
“We found two bodies exposed. A SAPS K9 unit found a number of points of interest and our two dogs indicated a few points of interest. The authorities will excavate in those locations.”