We Asked Bert from Four Legged Views to tell us about his life as a Search And Rescue dog. Here's his story.
You asked me to talk about how I got into Search And Rescue. Well I guess I had no choice, since My Vickie picked me out from my litter mates for that exact reason. I passed all the tests that she gave me and I stood out from all my siblings. But what really made her choose me was because....I Chose Her....
She thinks it was her decision but I know better.
Now My Vickie has been doing search and rescue work for almost 25 years and she knew that she was only going to do it for 10 more years before she retired. She had three other partners before me and they were amazing. The very best of them all is Jamie and I have been able to learn from her for three years. She is an amazing friend and teacher, but she had to retire two years ago cause she is soooo old.....Now its my turn.
I love the work, I love helping others, and I LOVE KIDS.
Since cell phones, and GPS's and all the other modern stuff, we don't have near as many searches as they used to so I get to spend a lot of my time teaching children in the schools "How To Stay Safe" if they ever get lost.
I bet I get to teach 5,000 or more kids a year. I get to go into the classrooms, or auditoriums and show them how I can find them, by using something with their smell on it. I can find the trail they leave behind with falling "Rafts" that are dead skin particles that fall off your body by the thousands, every second.
Sometimes we let them hide some where in the auditorium. Then I go find them so all the other kids can see me work.
Sometimes, we take about 100 shoes from all the students and lay them across the stage in a long row. Then My Vickie takes a sock or something from one of the students who has a shoe up on the stage and I smell it and then I go through all those stinky shoes and pick out the shoe that smells like the sock. We call that "Scent Discrimination".
Well, that is probably more than you wanted to know but if you want to know more you can check out American Search Dogs website. www.americansearchdogs.org or just ask me in the comments section of my blog. Sometimes, not very often, because we need to keep some things a secret for a while, but you can read about searches we are on, on my blog. We have to be very careful that we don't give out some information cause some cases are not all solved.
So, again, Pam and Oskar, thank you so much for asking us.
Be safe everyone.
Thank you, Bert, for doing such important work & for sharing it with all of us. For more of Bert's adventures, make sure to check out Four Legged Views
You asked me to talk about how I got into Search And Rescue. Well I guess I had no choice, since My Vickie picked me out from my litter mates for that exact reason. I passed all the tests that she gave me and I stood out from all my siblings. But what really made her choose me was because....I Chose Her....
She thinks it was her decision but I know better.
Now My Vickie has been doing search and rescue work for almost 25 years and she knew that she was only going to do it for 10 more years before she retired. She had three other partners before me and they were amazing. The very best of them all is Jamie and I have been able to learn from her for three years. She is an amazing friend and teacher, but she had to retire two years ago cause she is soooo old.....Now its my turn.
I love the work, I love helping others, and I LOVE KIDS.
Since cell phones, and GPS's and all the other modern stuff, we don't have near as many searches as they used to so I get to spend a lot of my time teaching children in the schools "How To Stay Safe" if they ever get lost.
I bet I get to teach 5,000 or more kids a year. I get to go into the classrooms, or auditoriums and show them how I can find them, by using something with their smell on it. I can find the trail they leave behind with falling "Rafts" that are dead skin particles that fall off your body by the thousands, every second.
Sometimes we let them hide some where in the auditorium. Then I go find them so all the other kids can see me work.
Sometimes, we take about 100 shoes from all the students and lay them across the stage in a long row. Then My Vickie takes a sock or something from one of the students who has a shoe up on the stage and I smell it and then I go through all those stinky shoes and pick out the shoe that smells like the sock. We call that "Scent Discrimination".
Well, that is probably more than you wanted to know but if you want to know more you can check out American Search Dogs website. www.americansearchdogs.org or just ask me in the comments section of my blog. Sometimes, not very often, because we need to keep some things a secret for a while, but you can read about searches we are on, on my blog. We have to be very careful that we don't give out some information cause some cases are not all solved.
So, again, Pam and Oskar, thank you so much for asking us.
Be safe everyone.
Thank you, Bert, for doing such important work & for sharing it with all of us. For more of Bert's adventures, make sure to check out Four Legged Views