Nose to the snow, tail to the sky, trainee avalanche rescue dog ‘Orbit’ zigzags across the training ground, searching for the scent of his hidden handler, Whistler Blackcomb ski patroller Corey Brealey.
Suddenly the Collie/Greyhound cross stiffens as he catches a faint whiff of ‘Dad’ on the wind. Instructor Jay Pugh recognizes his reaction and begins moving up-wind, steering Orbit toward the smell’s source.
Seconds later Orbit is digging wildly at one of 10 snow caves set up at Fernie Alpine Resort for the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association’s winter training camp. He disappears inside, then reappears in a cloud of snow and fur as Brealey rewards him with ‘the loony drill’ – the game that motivates every avalanche rescue dog exercise, practice or real.
The loony drill is the game of tug that your dog dreams of – frantic, noisy and exciting, it is always performed with an old sweater or scarf, showing the dog that the fastest way to their favourite game is to seek out human scent.
Brealey gives one end of a sweater to Orbit and spends the next 20 seconds running around with the dog, whooping and praising him as they energetically fling the rag around. Orbit finally gets the rag and struts around, proud of his find.
CARDAThe Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association (CARDA) is a volunteer-led charity founded in 1978 in Whistler, B.C., and now has 35 certified dog and handler teams in ski resorts and mountain guiding operations across Western Canada.
A dog takes less than 30 minutes to search a one-hectare avalanche area – chances of survival drop to 30 per cent after 35 minutes and a team of people would take four hours to cover the same area.
If you ski at Fernie, Whistler, Revelstoke, Banff or Jasper, among others, a CARDA team is usually available to respond within minutes of an avalanche alert, greatly increasing the odds of survival. Importantly for ski resorts, a dog’s success does not rely on the victim wearing an avalanche beacon.
CARDA teams also work with backcountry ski operations and join RCMP-led searches.
Only one live rescue has ever been made in Canada, by a CARDA team at Fernie Alpine Resort in 2000, but the teams are often used to recover victims’ bodies.
THE PATH TO CARDA
A CARDA dog’s career begin
s at a spring course, when puppies aged eight months to two years are assessed for search instinct and training potential. Labrador and Golden Retrievers are common, as well as German Shepherds, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers and crossbreeds that include a hunting breed.
“In the end, it all comes down to a pretty simple question,” says Pugh. The evaluators ask themselves, “Do I want this dog searching for me?”
The handler’s background is equally important – they must have avalanche rescue qualifications and work or volunteer in the mountain industry before being accepted for training.
Over the summer, the trainee handlers introduce their dogs to basic search games with a human-scented rag, and the loony drill as a reward. The formal training begins the following January at CARDA’s annual winter training course.
At the 2011 course in Fernie Alpine Resort, B.C., seven rookie teams spent the week working toward ‘in-training’ status – Blackcomb ski patroller Corey Brealey, with Orbit; Nick Smith (also a Blackcomb ski patroller) with his Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever ‘Bidgee’; Canadian Avalanche Centre forecaster and ski guide Ilya Storm with his Toller ‘Skeena’; Revelstoke ski patroller Troy Leahey with his Labrador Retriever ‘Penny’; Ron Smeele and his German Shepherd ‘Paco’; Bree Korabanik of Castle Mountain Resort in Alberta and German Shepherd ‘Aurora; and Kicking Horse Mountain Resort patroller Adam Sheriff with ‘Brooke,’ a German Shepherd.
The teams are introduced to searches with the ‘master runaway’ exercise. The dog watches its handler run away and hide in a snow cave, then is rewarded with the loony drill for a successful find.
The dogs progress to finding strangers in open caves, then in sealed caves and eventually to finding buried backpacks that smell of human scent. These tasks are gradually made more difficult by increasing the time between the quarry running away and the dog’s release. Eventually, the dog is brought in to search without ever seeing the quarry.
At every stage, handlers and spectators are encouraged to cheer loudly when the dog finds its quarry. “We have to act like the rest of the wolf pack saying ‘Great job,’” Pugh tells the group. “When you watch a wolf pack howling on National Geographic, you see their tail come up and their ears prick up with pride. We need to appeal to that primal instinct in
our dogs.”
Common obstacles to the training are a low search drive or being easily distracted by the surroundings. “A few years ago we had a Labrador Retriever that, instead of digging through the snow cave, just took a running jump at it until it collapsed,” says Pugh. “That had to stop.”
During training the dogs also experience a helicopter load and ride, and learn to ride beside their handler on a ski lift and skidoo. The team also needs to learn how to ski together without the dog getting cut by the ski edges – usually the handler skies in a snowplow position with the dog running between his legs.
LIFE AND DEATH
Teams spend the next 12 months practisin
g their search drills, before taking the validation test – 40 minutes in which to search a 100-x-100-metre area for four scented backpacks buried 75 centimetres deep in the snow. Passing the test means they can join RCMP-led searches and operate as a rescue team at their place
of work.
CARDA dogs often work most of their life, and can make good companions at home while also being disciplined workers.
“A CARDA dog needs to be somewhere between a pet and a police dog,” says Pugh, “Life is not as regimented as that of a police dog, but much more structured than that of a pet. Sometimes people contact us and say they want to train to keep their pets amused. This is life and death – we don’t do this because it is something fun for the dogs.”
ACTIVATE YOUR DOG'S NOSE
CARDA’s training techniques can be used to exercise both your dog’s mind and scent-search skills.
Hide from your dog while out on a walk and praise him vigorously when he finds you.
Command your dog to stay, then hide a soft toy in the house, or bury it in snow. At first hide it within view, then make it a little harder each time. Play with him and the toy as a reward when he finds it.
When playing tug, never pull your dog’s head up and down – only side to side or back and forward to prevent neck injuries.
SMELLY SCIENCE - THE SCENT CONE
Avalanche rescue dogs have scented items buried up to 10 metres deep in snow, although most avalanche victims are recovered from a depth of two to three metres.
A dog has around 220 million olfactory receptors in its nose, while humans have only five million. These receptors allow the dog to smell scent particles that rise from the buried person through tiny gaps in the snow, spreading outwards as they reach the surface in what is known as a “scent cone.” The scent cone is also affected by the wind, so handlers note the wind direction so they can guide their dog up-wind toward the source.
CARDA instructor Jay Pugh teaches handlers what their dog is ‘seeing’ by comparing scent to campfire smoke. He says: “It has the same physical characteristics and is almost identical in the way wind and other factors affect it. In the dog’s brain they see the scent cloud as we would the smoke from a campfire. The ‘cone’ is the way the scent cloud spreads out from the source. When you see a fire, take note of how the smoke is drifting from it and imagine that it’s a live human body putting out scent. Our job as handlers is to work our dogs into these clouds.”
This article is dedicated to Sheilah Sweatman, a search and rescue volunteer from Nelson, B.C., who was volunteering at the 2011 CARDA training course. Sheilah, 29, died in July 2011 while searching a river for a missing person, the first B.C. search and rescue volunteer to be killed in service. Sheilah had just been accepted for CARDA handler training with her German Shepherd puppy ‘Freyja.’
By Rebecca Edwards
