A search-and-rescue start Sometimes trainers venture into uncharted training territory without realizing how novel or new it might be. I have been teaching a graduate course on animal training at Western Illinois University since 1995. One of the students in my very first class was a firefighter named Bill, who also trained search and rescue dogs. Throughout the semester, he …
A Mysterious Change in Behavior A few years ago, a search-and-rescue trainer named Sharon asked me to help problem-solve a perplexing case. Her dog, an energetic five-year-old Lab mix named Carson, suddenly stopped alerting when he found a person during search trials. Sharon and Carson were a FEMA-certified team that successfully found and helped rescue dozens of people over a …
