Posts tagged as:

search dogs

The Second Coldest Day of the Year

by Rita Argiros on January 18, 2009

Cold Spell
Image by diathesis via Flickr

“What sort of knucklehead runs away on the coldest day of the year?”  I said to no one in particular when I got the call at 10 AM.  Two boys had taken off from the chapel and were heading north west thought the woods.

It was a rhetorical question.  I love all the students at The Family Foundation School where I work, and I know that many of them act impulsively.  I wasn’t really surprised.  Just worried.  The remark was my way of letting off stress.  These kids could end up in serious trouble.  I knew that because I’m in charge of risk management at the school. I’ve been studying student “elopements” (as they are called ) for the past 5 years, and I am the human half of a K-9 search and rescue team along with my partner, Ripley.  Most of the SAR work we do is at the school.

Similar remarks would be made be everyone involved in the search all that day.  What struck me as funny at the time was the typical response.  I counted at least 5 people including myself who corrected the speaker–  “Actually, I think it’s the second coldest day. I’m pretty sure yesterday was even colder.”

What was this? Amidst all the events of the day, why were we compelled to correct one another and get this one thing right?

None of these editorial comments carried a trace of one-up-man-ship or know-it-all-ness.  And the person receiving the information –today isn’t as cold as yesterday– didn’t seem upset either.  On any other day, little exchanges like that can foster a slightly irritating background noise at work. This was different. For some reason,  the fact that it was 2 or 3 degrees warmer today than yesterday was important to all of us.  Perhaps we were trying to reassure each other that it could have been worse.

rip-rita-jan-18th-2008

Rita and Ripley

We tracked the two students throughout the day.  My team took the first and the third shifts.   At about 3 PM  we followed the boy’s tracks to a rail bed that proceeded down a corridor.  The Delaware river was on one side and mountains on the other.  The corridor came out just outside of Hancock.  We estimated they were about an hour in front of us and we sent people to intercept them and we caught up with them at the Hancock House Hotel.  They had made it out of the woods on the second coldest day of the year, but not safely.  Both were under dressed. One had on only sneakers.  He had to be admitted to the hospital where he was treated for frostbite.

Again, a weird mixture of responses.  Many expressed gratitude that it turned out as well as it did, and sympathy for a boy who will now have feet sensitive to cold for the rest of his life.  Others were less forgiving.

“Serves him right,”  my student-intern said that night as we were squaring away our gear. “He should have frostbite.  Who runs away on the coldest day of the year?”  I let the comment stand.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , ,

{ 2 comments }

Playing to Strength

by Rita Argiros on December 10, 2008

Intense teens work with Search and Rescue Dogs

Troubled teens, at-risk teens, difficult children, juvenile delinquents, angry and defiant kids. No matter the term, parents send their children to us at The Family Foundation School after they have tried therapy, medication, alternative schools, more discipline, less discipline, you name it.  Every semester between 15 and 20 of the 200+ students come to work with me in the dog training program, now entering its 5th year.

You may be familiar with other canine training programs, where prisoners train dogs, or where students interact with therapy dogs or where they train dogs to become assistance dogs for people with disabilities.

At my school, we train Search and Rescue dogs.  Not to knock assistance dogs. They do phenomenal work. They need to have great temperaments. They are smart and exceptionally well trained.  But the SAR dog is something else.

Your ideal SAR dog is “high drive,” a polite way of saying–you probably wouldn’t want this dog for a pet.  In fact, many search dogs are rescued from animal

Photo of a dog behind a chain-link fence at th...

shelters where they were surrendered because their clueless owners didn’t or couldn’t deal with their intense personalities. SAR dogs, with boundless energy are exactly what my kids need.

Students (and staff) in our dog-training program are a special bunch.  We tend to be a little less comfortable with verbal expression.  We have a hard time sitting still.  A substantial minority of us have trouble trusting other people.  None of that gets in the way of our work with dogs.    Dog’s don’t care if we talk, or not. Dogs are at their best when they are moving,  they crave exercise and, best of all, dogs can’t lie.

Training SAR dogs lets us play to our strengths.  Instead of talking, we observe canine behavior. A good trainer needs to learn to anticipate the dog’s next move and to read a dog’s mood.  We channel our energy into playing with our dogs.  Playing tug of war is one of the ways that the dogs are rewarded. Most of the training is based upon positive reinforcement. subject-found_-rewardOh yea, and we get to pretend we are lost–and hang out in the woods waiting to be rescued.  For many of my students, that’s the best part. Even though they know its only practice, it still makes you feel good to know that you have been rescued. I’ve been saved 100s of times by now and I still get excited every time a dog finds me.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tagged as: , , , , , , ,

{ 1 comment }