Wag Reflex

Winter Safety Tips

Loki and I will be starting our annual Avalanche Rescue Dog training soon. For us, that means heading up to Snoqualmie pass once or twice a month to bury volunteers in snow caves up to eight feet deep and search for them. It’s a lot of fun for the handlers, even more fun for the dogs, and a valuable skill in a region where snow sports are so widely practiced, and a lot of people travel out of bounds. 

Our dogs love to play in the snow, but there are a few things you should watch out for with your dog during the winter. Dogs can tire out much more quickly than they would on a trail in the summertime.  Imagine how tired you’d get if you were wading through chest deep snow!

Dogs can also get hypothermia. Since they burn so many more calories than we do wading through the snow, it’s easier than you might think. We’ve actually had this happen to a couple of our search dogs on real searches, so it can happen to anybody. Watch for shivering, shelter-seeking, or lethargy. When a dog’s body temperature drops too far, them can become lethargic, or even unresponsive. This is an emergency!  You need to get your dog out of the cold environment and someplace warm quickly. 

Here in the North Cascades Mountains, our snow is often very heavy, wet, or icy, and can easily abrade or cut a dog’s pads. We carry dog booties (I use RuffWear’s Bark ‘n Boots) in our packs for days that the snow has a hard crust of ice that can cut their pads, or to protect our dogs’ feet if they do get cut. 

Have fun this winter with your dog. Stay safe and warm. 

Photo from mylilangel's photostream.

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

What Exactly is it That We Do?

So you’ve met Loki, and you’ve learned a bit about me. Maybe I should share something about the kinds of jobs our dogs do. 

Loki is primarily a trailing dog. That means that he does what you’ve probably seen the bloodhounds in the movies do. Bloodhounds have a pretty good reputation, but I’d put Loki’s nose up against a trained bloodhound’s any day--in fact we’ve done it a time or two, and come out looking pretty good. 

On a search or training, Loki sniffs an article of clothing, or something a person has handled or touched, and then he tracks that person. We like to use something with a lot of that person’s scent on it (pillowcases are favorites, as are hairbrushes and the insoles from shoes), but we don’t always have that luxury. Sometimes we use something the person has touched, like an empty Starbuck’s cup. Sometimes we’ll take a piece of sterile gauze and place it somewhere it can pick up scent, like on the driver’s seat of a car or under the door handle. Once another handler played a trick on me at training and gave me a half a ham sandwich as a scent article. It was touch and go for a second, there, but I got Loki started and even kept the sandwich intact. Another time, on a crime scene investigation, one of our dogs was able to run a trail from a piece of sterile gauze placed in the footprint of a criminal suspect. 

King County also uses airscent dogs. These are the area search specialists that are trained to search an area and find any person within that area. You could give an airscent dog forty acres of thick Western Washington underbrush to search, and it could do a good job of clearing it in about two hours. The same area would take forty or more trained searchers up to three times as long to search--so you can see they’re an incredible valuable resource. 

All of our dog teams certify in a primary discipline first--either trailing or airscent.  That process usually takes between 18 months and two years. That’s right--for a new member coming into the unit it could take two years of intensive training, twelve or fourteen hours a week, before they were ever used as a dog team on a real search. In the meantime they would support other, certified teams on searches, gaining valuable experience in the process. Once a team has been certified in a primary discipline, they can start training one or more secondary disciplines if they have the time and inclination (it’s not mandatory). In our case, Loki also works as a cadaver (or human remains detection) dog, a water search dog, and an avalanche search dog. Other disciplines include article search, often used in crime scene investigations. 

With all the snowfall we’ve had in the Pacific Northwest lately, we’ll be brushing up on our avalanche search skills. I’ll post some pictures from the Northwest Avalanche Dog School, where Loki and I will be spending some time in a couple of weeks. 

Be safe. 

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

A Little Miracle for the Holidays

I don’t know why, but it seems like every year, around Christmas, veterinary hospitals end up with more sad cases than any other time. Combine that with cranky shoppers, over-commercialization, and the malls playing Christmas carols two days after Halloween, and it’s pretty easy for a veterinary-type person to get a pretty bad attitude about the holidays.

I’m no exception. Ever since I had a boss who insisted on playing the “Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas” tape (versions one AND two) endlessly beginning the day after thanksgiving, I just haven’t had the stomach for Christmas music anymore. And as I mentioned above, we seem to have a lot of sad cases around the holidays.
 
I honestly thought Petey was going to be one of those cases. Petey is a seven year-old Labrador Retriever who snuck past his dad Raymond at the front door and ran away. Now Petey and his owner have a very special relationship – Raymond even brought Petey over from Taiwan with him when he moved here. When I watched the two of them interact it was clear that there was something between them beyond what most dogs have with their people.

Unfortunately, Petey was hit by a car while he was out, and he suffered severe internal injuries. We gave Raymond a grave prognosis for his dog when he brought him in, but he told us he wanted to try everything. Usually when a client tells me, “do whatever you need to, money is no object,” it’s because they have no intention of ever paying us. I could tell Raymond was different, though. When I went over an estimate for the cost of treatment, he looked at me gravely and in careful English said, “If I can pay you part of this now, can I pay the rest tomorrow? I’m a musician and own several expensive guitars. I can post them on Craigslist to sell tonight.” I’m pretty thick-skinned, but I have to admit to a lump in my throat when he said that. I made sure he knew that Petey’s chances were slim, but that we’d do our best.

Due to the trauma of being hit, Petey’s abdominal cavity was full of blood from ruptured organs. We spent most of the night trying to stabilize him so we could go in surgically to repair the damage, but he just kept bleeding. Usually I have between five and seven patients to care for per shift – that night I only took one. Petey finally reached the point where, even though we knew surgery might very well kill him, it was his only chance. Our surgeon came in at four in the morning on his day off, and I prepped Petey for an abdominal exploratory. Petey did well for the first ten minutes of anesthesia, but he soon developed a progressively worsening abnormal heart rhythm. Just a minute or two later our worst fears were realized when his heart stopped.

Now, when I teach CPR to new graduates and technicians, one of the things I stress is that the real world isn’t like Grey’s Anatomy.  When the underlying disease or injury is bad enough to make the patient’s heart stop, CPR rarely works for long. Dogs don’t have heart attacks. If they suffer a cardiac arrest from blood loss, they still have that blood loss even if you bring them back. Do your best, I always say, but don’t get your hopes up too much.

So I took my own advice. We jumped in with everything we had and performed aggressive CPR. Wonder of wonders, we got his heart started again. With no choice but to proceed with surgery, we re-scrubbed and got to it. I think it was one of the most stressful anesthetic cases of my career. Thank goodness our surgeon, Dr. Mison, is fast, because for the last twenty minutes of Petey’s surgery his gas anesthesia was turned off entirely, and I was just using a continuous drip of a short-acting pain medication dosed very, very carefully. Anything more would have killed him.

But it didn’t. And he survived the surgery. Raymond was overjoyed, but we had to warn him that Petey wasn’t out of the woods yet. The odds of him recovering were slim. Still, I couldn’t squash a little glimmer of hope, deep down inside. We were surprised he’d made it this far. Maybe? Just maybe?

I won’t tell you Petey made a miraculous recovery. He had a difficult, painful one. He had setbacks, and there were a couple of times we thought maybe he was done for. His dad never gave up, though, and neither did Petey. Ten days after we admitted Petey, Raymond brought him home. In one piece. Wagging his tail, and ready to take on the world.

Maybe the holidays aren’t so bad after all.

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

The Gear I Love

One of the joys of search work is that it provides a socially acceptable outlet for my love of gear, both for me and for my dog. Over the years I’ve gone through a lot of stuff, kept the gear I like and discarded the rest. Time and time again I find that I’ve ended up keeping gear for my dogs made by a company called RuffWear. One of the things I like about RuffWear is that it’s a small, privately owned company that targets a very specific clientele--active dog owners--and seems to work hard to put together a very good set of products. I think that deserves a little shameless promotion on my part, don’t you? Here are a few items I use a lot.

Palisades Pack
I’ve had one of these for my last three dogs and have used the heck out of them. They have an integral water bladder which makes keeping Loki hydrated quick and easy, and also makes it simple to keep the bags balanced on him, a big complaint I’ve had with other packs. The bags detach from the web harness in about two seconds, so you can take it off and put it back on with a minimum of fuss. Finally, and most importantly, after three years Loki has not yet destroyed his – the ultimate test.

Bark’n Boots
A lot of the folks on my search team carry these. Sometimes we have to work on rough or dangerous ground, or on icy snow which can cut our dogs’ paws. These boots seem to be tougher than any I’ve tried, and they stay on, which is more than I can say for a lot of other brands. Love ‘em.

K-9 Float Coat
We do a lot of water searches and other work from boats, sometimes in fast-moving water. I’ve tried several different floatation devices for Loki, and this is the one he tolerates the best. He’s got good freedom of motion to swim, and the integral handle is great for hauling him back into the boat. As with the rest of Ruffwear’s gear, it’s better made than anything else I’ve come across. This one stays in my truck all the time.

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

Why We Do What We Do

The catch-phrase for search and rescue groups nationwide is, “…these things we do that others may live.” We nicked it from the USAF Pararescue Parajumpers, but it does a good job of summing up why we spend so much time training, participating on missions, and away from our families, friends, and the pastimes most normal people engage in when they’re not at their day jobs.

We’re not actually much different from anybody else. We get tired of doing what we do sometimes. We grouse and complain. When the pager goes off at two in the morning on a night where the temperature is forty degrees and the rain has been falling steadily all night, the first word out of my mouth is often one my mother would rather I didn’t use. Sometimes SAR is fun and rewarding. Sometimes it’s dirty, wet, cold, and fruitless.

So what keeps us going through those times? Every so often we have a search that makes us say, “Oh yeah, that’s why I do this.” A couple of weekends ago a friend of mine had one of those searches.

In a case that got both regional and national attention, a young climber went missing on Mt. Adams October 12th in southern Washington. After four days, hope was beginning to wane, and search management was looking at calling the search off in a couple of days. They put out a request for resources from other counties to come and help, and King County Search Dogs was called in. Greg Varney, a structural engineer in Seattle, canine handler and search manager with KCSD rearranged his schedule to take the next day off of work and headed south. Long story short, after about eight hours of searching and after following physical clues he had seen, Greg called out the subject’s name, and was startled to hear a response.

It’s not my place to tell the story of the young man who went missing, but his ordeal was nothing short of heroic. He survived nearly five days alone on the mountain, and managed to drag himself for miles with a broken leg. Still, there is no doubt that Greg’s was a lifesaving find. When he was interviewed on the evening news, though, he deferred most of the attention to the young man and his remarkable journey. That’s typical Greg. It’s not about the attention; it’s about getting the job done.

If you’re interested in reading more about the search, go to SeattleTimes.com.

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

Trust is Worth the Work and Wait

Trust isn’t something you get overnight. Sometimes not even in a week, a month, or a year. Sometimes trust builds up in such small increments, over such a long period of time, that you don’t even know that you have it until you need it.

Here in King County, we’re fortunate to have a superb working relationship with the Sheriff’s Department. This is true largely because of the work some of our members with law enforcement backgrounds have done, and the high standards they have created for the entire unit. Not every search dog group has this. Law Enforcement is notoriously hesitant to work with volunteer groups, and often with good reason. If a department has a bad experience with a group early on, they’re unlikely to use them in the future. We’ve worked hard for our reputation, and work hard to maintain it. This gives us opportunities that not very many volunteer search dog units get.

Which is how I recently came to find myself sitting at the open door of a UH-1 Huey helicopter hovering 100 feet above a grassy field, clipping my dog into my harness and myself into the hook of the helicopter’s hoist, preparing to be lowered to the ground. If you’d told me a couple of years ago that Loki would trust me enough to let me buckle him into a harness, clip him to my waist, and swing out over 100 feet of nothing on a 5/16 inch cable attached to a hovering helicopter, I’d have been polite about it, but would have gently suggested that you were nuts.

Not that it came easily--we spent a lot of time on ropes work, hoisting, lowering, and practicing to reach this point. Still, I don’t know at what point Loki came to trust me enough to do this, anymore than I know at what point in the last twelve years the Sheriff’s Department came to trust our unit enough to include us in this kind of training. All I know is that in both cases that trust came incrementally, built up bit by bit over years of training, years of successful searches. Sometimes it’s worth working at something, even if you can’t see the results right away.

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

A Brief History of Loki

I got Loki when he was eighteen months old--originally from the Seattle Humane Society. My understanding is that he came in on stray hold four times. The first three times his owners came to pick him up again, and the fourth time they just left the little bugger. I figure he was probably a backyard dog, and spent most of his time re-landscaping the yard and figuring out ways to escape. By the time he was eighteen months old, he was just too much to handle, and his previous owners were all too willing to let him go when he ran off. He’s got a few bad habits that support this theory.

Loki was exactly what I was looking for. As I said earlier, I wanted to dog stubborn enough to ignore any mistakes I made on a trail and forge ahead, and I got that and then some. I quickly found that he was a dog who would test my patience and push my abilities as a trainer. I realized a couple of weeks into it that you couldn’t correct him. Not verbally, not physically…nothing. Short of resorting to the kind of violence that involves lumber or sports equipment, there was no negative stimulus you could give this dog that he would even notice if his attention was locked on something else. From the start, every bad habit I broke involved redirection, and every reinforcement was positive.

Don’t get me wrong, my dog trainer trained me well--99% of my training has always been positively based. But think of the things you do routinely--a leash jerk to get your dog’s attention when he won’t leave something. A verbal correction when he does an undesirable behavior, like…say…lifting his leg on your significant other. None of this had the slightest impact on him. We spent our first three months of agility training (most search dog handlers train agility to improve their off-lead control, and it’s just plain fun!) just watching from about thirty yards away--that was as close as we could get without him getting uncontrollably worked up when he watched the other dogs on the equipment. We gradually moved closer, but it was three full months before he could actually start working the equipment himself.

It took almost a year for Loki and I to really bond and hit our stride. Now we’re inseparable. He’s on the couch with me, head on my lap, as I write this. I think the more effort you put into something, the more important it becomes to you when things work out. Don’t get me wrong, Loki is still a challenge sometimes, but he’s my partner. He watches my back and I watch his. Sometimes I’m not sure which one of us has taught the other more.

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

Beware of Dog...Owner's Pranks

Sometimes when you need it most, the universe comes through for you.

We have a client here at our hospital named Darlene. Darlene is about eighty, and one of those people to whom telling stories comes as naturally as breathing. Today was no exception. She interrupted a grumpy mood and a desk full of frustration without so much as knocking on my door.

"Jon," she said, "my son-in-law is quite a card." Imagine that.

"He's got a dog, a Doberman Pinscher, named Belle. Every day he takes Belle for a walk in the morning, and nearly every morning his neighbor leans out her window or peeks out her door and yells at him. She's convinced that his dog is pooping on her lawn. Now I know my son-in-law; he may not be much of a husband, but he takes better care of that dog than he does himself, and he always has a plastic bag or three with him to pick up after her."

By this point, the technician was ready to take Darlene into the exam room with her dog for her appointment, but after she was done she marched into my office to get the rest of her story told, and I was glad she did.

"So anyways," she says, "last weekend Dave had just about had enough of his neighbor for one lifetime, so he figures he's going to do something about it. He gets up at about four a.m. and goes to the kitchen for a jar of Skippy. Out he creeps onto her lawn and leaves a big dollop of peanut butter on the grass, then goes back to bed."

"At his usual time, Dave takes Belle out for a walk and deliberately cuts across his neighbor's lawn, which brings her out on the front porch shouting at him that his dog left another mess in her yard. Without missing a beat, my Dave leans over, takes a big finger-full of Skippy from the grass in front of him, eats it, and says, 'Nah, couldn't have been Belle. Tastes more like a retriever, maybe.'"

"Dave says the neighbor hasn't so much as looked at him since."

Into every dark day, somebody like Darlene should come. 

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

Meet Jon Wieringa and Loki

I suppose in an introduction is in order. I’m Jon, and my life pretty much revolves around animals. I work at a specialty/emergency/critical care veterinary hospital as an emergency technician and anesthetist. My loved ones would probably tell you I work there too much, in fact. In my spare time, I’m a K-9 handler and search manager for the primary response search and rescue unit for the most populous county in Washington State. That means I’m on call, along with a bunch of really amazing, committed people, 24/7, to look for missing persons. My family and girlfriend would probably tell you I spend too much time doing this, too. On average we respond to about sixty missions a year, or a little more than one a week. Not that I get to every mission, you understand, but when you train as much and as hard as we do, you do everything you can to respond whenever you can. When a ninety-year-old Alzheimer’s patient goes missing on Thanksgiving evening, off we go. Missing eight-year-old autistic child on your girlfriend’s birthday? Lost big relationship points over that one. We all tend to have very patient families and loved ones.

We train as often as we can. Most of us have a deeply rooted fear that we’ll encounter a situation on a search we haven’t trained for and will miss a subject because of it. We’re all volunteers, and have to hold down day jobs. Our members train every Saturday, every other Sunday, most Wednesday nights, and the occasional Friday night, and it doesn’t leave a lot of time for an active social life. Did I mention my loved ones are very patient? I would absolutely kill for about six more hours in the day.

I work with a five-year-old Australian Cattle Dog named Loki--my second search dog. He’s a real stinker sometimes. Some of the traits that make for a good working dog don’t always make for a good hang-around-the-house-dog. Most of the mistakes on a search dog team are made by the handler, so after my first search dog passed I went looking for a new search dog who was a high-energy, hard-headed, stubborn, uber-intelligent dog who, once trained, would be happy to tell me to go to heck if I tried to pull him off the correct track. Be careful what you ask for. Loki is absolutely devoted to me, which I admit is gratifying, but that didn’t come easy. And while he loves people, he can be absolutely indifferent to anybody else’s authority. Still, he’s a heck of a working dog, and does a good job of making it look like his handler knows what he’s doing.

I’m new to blogging. I figure it’s a good forum to share some stories about the training we do and some of our missions in search work, pass along some of the cases and stories we come across in our work at the specialty hospital, and talk a little about the gear we use and maybe make a recommendation here and there. I’m looking forward to your comments to help guide me in this--I’d hate to be doing this all for my own benefit!

--Jon Wieringa
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Jon Wieringa is an ICU veterinary technician, a search and rescue K-9 handler, and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.