Jan. 23, 2010  Dog News – The Haiti Dogs Rescue People Under Rubble

The Haiti disaster on Jan. 12, 2010 has been a disaster of untold consequences to human life.  The problem is the rubble and people trapped under mountains of concrete and the US has send search and rescue to dogs to help save Haitians. 

These dogs sniff for human life and are finding people alive in Haiti and some are from the Search Dog Foundation in the United States. This organization was started in 1996 for disaster and is a non-profit and non-government organization which has helped firefighters find people in disasters.

The search teams are based in Florida and California and provide life saving searches for people. You can donate to this worthy organization by going to : Donate to Search Dog Foundation to save even more lives.

TAGS: dog news, working dogs, Haiti Dogs, Search dogs in haiti, search dog foundation, working dogs, dogs save lives, sniffing dogs, training dogs to sniff, dog rescue in haiti, dog health.

Jan. 06, 2010  This is a True Story of a Dog’s Courageous Protection of its Owner – a Young Boy who was saved from being attacked by a cougar.

A brave retriever named Angel saved a young boy in Canada from a vicious attack from a cougar and saved the boy’s life.  It happened in Boston Bar, British Columbia a small town when the boy Austin Forman who is 11 years old was in the backyard gathering firewood at dusk.  His dog Angel was strangely acting up and must have sensed the presence of a threat in the area.

Angel started to pace and followed the boy closely as is the instinct of a dog trying to protect the boy when all of a sudden the dog starting running towards a charging cougar to fend off the attack.  Angel got right into the thick of it and stopped the cougar from advancing towards Austin.

Photo courtesy of Canadian Press

Austin ran into the house while Angel fought off the cougar and called 911 and when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived they found the cougar had captured Angel and was chewing on the neck area of Angel.

The police officer Chad Gravelle immediately shot the cougar and found Angel had been badly injured by the attack.  Blood from the wounds where the cougar had chewed on Angel’s head and neck showed puncture holes and also on the dog’s leg. She remained lifeless but suddenly got up and was coughing up a bit of blood.  Angel was taken to the vet immediately and is recovering just fine.

Some may say it is mankind who are living closer to the natural habitat of wild animals and they are forced to try to find food where ever possible.  The cougar was a young and skinny female looking for food.   The home where Austin lives is near the wilderness area and the Trans Canada Highway.  Angel  is recovering away from the home for now and Austin is not collecting firewood at night but is leaving his chores for the daylight hours.

Angel is a beautiful dog that the Forman’s adopted although Austin’s father did not want the dog -he can’t say enough about the dog now that she saved his son’s life.

TAGS: Dog saves boy from cougar attack in canada, Angel the lifesaver, Angel saves boy, Angel saves boy from cougar attack, Cougar attack in canada, Angel the dog saves boy from cougar.

The training of a search and rescue dog must include obedience training as they must perform tasks that require strict controls on their behavior. 

These dogs are there to do a job and handlers must be able to direct the dog to complete the tasks of heel, jog at the heal, sit and down at the heel.

They must also be trained to sit at a distance of 10 meters, and recall from a distance of 10 meters.  Obedience training of search and rescue dogs is vitally important and these dogs grow up with the mission of saving lives. 

Dogs as we know are well armed by nature to track scents with their receptor cells being 17 times larger that us, and each receptor has numerous cilia bonds to odor molecules.  At the Auburn University Institute for Biological Detection Systems the director of research states that a dog’s ability to scene is 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than humans.  This attribute makes a dog successful trackers of people, drugs and bombs.    As soldiers are boots on the ground, dogs are nose to the ground and can track people under snow avalanches which are common in the Rockies.   As police dogs they can find evidence and find missing people, the search and rescue dog follows the scent of the missing in parks, and snowy mountains.  

Searching Dogs:  A dog is trained to search by air scenting to locate a person’s whereabouts.  This differs during tracking where the dog’s head is low and to the ground following a path of scent particles left by the missing person in their foot prints.   

A change in wind direction can carry a scent to the dog by the wind itself or carry it away.  The handler must be aware of wind direction to be leading to the scent of where the person was last seen or the direction they were heading towards.   Usually a personal effect usually clothing if available is given to the dog which it knows is the subject of the search.  Search and rescue dogs are highly trained to find their subject quickly despite what the effects of wind, rain, snow and humidity can do to a trace of odor. Trained search dogs are also trained to ignore the scent of everyone else at the scene except for that left by the missing person. 

Search and rescue dogs are capable of finding bodies in the water and drowning victims.  They search avalanches for buried victims and search for trapped victims in disaster areas left by tornadoes and hurricanes. 

Certification of a Search and Rescue Dog: 

All Search and rescue dogs are certified and have met the standards of SARDOC which is Search and Rescue Dogs of Colorado in that state.  Most often these dogs have been trained for two years and undergo a difficult tests. One test is that a trailing dog must be able to follow a 24 hour old trail which is contaminated with other scents to throw it off track.  In air testing there are three separate tests involved which consists of a 1 square mile test, a night search and a search for multiple victims at the same time. 

Another important fact is that rescue dogs can rule out areas of land searches quickly and actually this hastens the victim being found sooner. Many victims owe their lives to trained search dogs including the elderly.  In Washington

Searchers had spent nearly 19 hours looking for the woman so they called Marcia and her dog Coyote.  The woman was found 10 minutes after Coyote was given an article of her clothing.  She was lying down in bushes a quarter mile from the residence and was still alive.   Written by:  Teri Salvador 

Tags: Search and rescue dogs save lives, search and rescue dogs, rescue dogs,  Trained search dogs, trailing dogs, SARDOC, Certification of a search and rescue dog, Searching dogs, obedience training. 

 Posted In:  working dogs bed bugs, working bed bug sniffing dogs, blood sucking bed bugs, dogs control bed bugs

You have to hand it to dogs for here is just another amazing good deed that dogs do for us humans. Before you make reservations you may want to read this article!

A particular hotel in Boston using the services of “ Advanced K-9 Detectives LLC,a company that has trained dogs who can “ detect and pin point the exact area of infestation” of bed bugs. The dogs are quick, accurate and can do the job in 2 minutes in a hotel room. This method has been approved by Boston’s Department of Health Inspectors!

The hotel chain Jury’s Boston Hotel a swanky 225 room hotel has not had bugs for almost 4 years as they have been using the Advantaged K-9 Services.This hotel has it all down to a science, if after the dogs locate the bugs the room is fumigated, and the mattress is burned. No fooling around here.

The dogs used are mixed Labradors on duty for a hotel search every 3 months at Jury‘s Boston Hotel, which indicates to me this is an ongoing problem but they are being pro-active.

As my article on Dogs Detect Cancer in Humans indicates dogs have an incredible sense of identification and can detect parts per trillion of small particles and can also detect cancer in humans. There are bomb dogs, drug dogs, arson dogs, and now they are experts in locating and sniffing out blood sucking bed bugs.

There is nothing worse that getting bugs in hotels, and do not be fooled by paying at a high priced hotel, they get infestations just the same as the cheaper hotels.

As Nicole Wong points out even the Park Plaza hotel has had the bug problem and in warmer climates the bugs just thrive on human blood!! I find it horrible just to think about sleeping in a hotel bed and being eaten alive by bed bugs!!

Apparently there is a “ bed bug epidemic” out there in the hotel industry, which requires hotels to keep spraying their beds with insecticides which is even worse.

Over 50 years ago this problem was not so widespread thanks to a pesticide called DDT which is now banned. Now bed bugs have resurfaced to plague even the most elegant hotels as more people are traveling internationally.

These blood sucking bed bugs are becoming stronger as they can survive between blood meals for one whole year!  Bed bugs can spread in a building, hotel or other accommodation establishments very quickly.

When you get bitten by a bed bug you will develop irritated inflamed bumps and a white welt may develop with infections.  Bed Bug infections cause severe itching can also cause allergic reactions in people and it is suspected that these bugs can spread Hepatitis B, and also cause asthma attacks. If your traveling this winter, be wary of hotel beds that do not have a protective cover on the mattress, which can stop the bugs from getting to your body.  Its not foolproof but it’s a start unless they hire dogs that control bed bugs you have to ask a lot of questions before you book.In Toronto they use a dog named “Inspector Kody” for a hotel resort in Vaughan, Ontario.