Search-and-rescue dogs serve on the frontlines locating people missing after natural disasters, lost children, injured hikers and others, being ready at a moment’s notice to bravely endure the elements and save lives. Supreme Master Ching Hai, world renowned humanitarian, artist and spiritual teacher, speaks of her admiration and concern for these devoted canines.

And I saw many dogs, you know, they used for rescue mission. Oh, they just walk in like nothing, but I feel so bad about them. The dogs walk in the sharp, broken glasses or anything like that, even chemical leaking or anything, or germs or danger. And these are precious dogs. They have been trained for years. And they even lay down their life for anyone at command. You have to protect that dog.

To show her loving support for search dogs and their human partners, Supreme Master Ching Hai has generously contributed over US$80,000 to search-and-rescue teams in 18 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, South Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Panama, the Philippines, Slovenia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Today’s program features one of these courageous groups, the Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association (VSRDA).

And so the motto is “Trust your dog.” And if the dog is very interested in something and wants to lead you somewhere, we’ve quickly learned to trust them and follow them.

Founded in 1977 in the state of Virginia, USA, the Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association (VSRDA) is the oldest air-scenting, wilderness search-and- rescue dog organization in the Southeastern United States.

The Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association is a non-profit group. We are made up completely of volunteers. We all have a love of the wilderness, helping other people and, of course, animals.

On call 24-hours a day, seven days a week, VSRDA members are professionally trained rescuers who locate missing persons chiefly in rural and wilderness areas. However some of the canine teams do specialty search work including human remains detection and water search missions.

What we do is we train our dogs to actually assist in looking for lost or missing people, primarily in a wilderness setting; it could be Alzheimer’s patients, missing children, hikers, that thing. What we are is basically an aid to the local law enforcement. It could be the state police, local sheriff’s office, any kind of emergency personnel that needs help in looking for a lost or missing person, we’re there to help out.

The Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association is a branch of the American Dog Rescue Association, which has six units in other US states. On average, VSRDA gets called out to perform searches 30 to 40 times a year.

Being a state resource, we primarily respond to searches within the state. We have been called to searches outside of Virginia, and our team alone has responded to searches in Pennsylvania (USA) and Maryland (USA). I myself went down to New Orleans (Louisiana, USA) after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita to help during that time period. But primarily our dogs are meant for kind of the searches that happen in our backyard.

Right now though, I can say that we have about 22 members on the team, of those 22 members we have probably close to 28 dogs at various levels of training and various ages. As far as operational search-and-rescue dogs that can actually go out, they’ve passed all their tests and can go on a search, we currently have six dogs that are able to do that.

To meet the unique demands of search-and-rescue work, it’s recommended that dogs begin their training from the age of 10 weeks to eight months.

From an early age we’re teaching them that when they find somebody, it’s a big game of hide-and-seek they get to play as a reward. When we place people out during training they’ll have the dogs’ toys, and it could be a Frisbee, it could be a ball, it could be a tug toy. Really these dogs have such a love of playing that they’ll almost play with anything. Because of the strong desire to play, they’re willing to work long hours in very hot heat or very cold conditions to help out us and the people that are missing.

Letting them off-leash in unknown areas presents risks to the canine team members, so it’s important for their human partners to be able to locate them at all times.

There are GPS units; one that we use sometimes is called the Rino Astro. And basically the dog would have his own little receiver or transmitter on back of his vest. And then I would have a GPS unit, and I can see where my dog is on my hand unit. But normally these dogs don’t range further than maybe 200 yards away from you at any given time.

Now we’ll join one of VSRDA’s teams, Autumn and Cooper of Unit 9, for a demonstration of their search and rescue skills!

And this is how the dog tells the partner that the dog has found someone. She’s going to release her dog and the dog is going to find a person, come back and tell her. She’s released the dog with a “Go-Find” command. Her dog Cooper has found a missing person, returns and tells the partner, “Hey, I’ve found a person that is missing. Come with me. Let’s go rescue them.” And together they run back and they play as a reward.

These dogs’ reward is playing. So it always ends with a nice round of play. This was a very basic scenario, just done in the nice, open field, so that you can see the full sequence of the dog searching, finding the person, returning to tell they found them and then getting the reward of play. Good job, Cooper, Autumn Manka. Thank you, Robin, for being the subject.

Search-and-rescue canines can be classified as either air-scenting or tracking dogs. In air-scenting or open-area searches, the dogs point their sensitive noses high in the air to search for the presence of a fresh human scent that’s not from anyone in their immediate party, such as their human partner or other team members.

Through this technique the dogs are able to locate any human in a given area. However, in trailing and tracking, the dogs need to smell an article with the missing individual’s scent and a starting point or last known location to find the person.

The advantage of using these dogs is that they can cover a large amount of area in a very short amount of time. These dogs are very fast, they work off leash and they use the wind to smell the person. These are called air-scent search-and-rescue dogs. Okay, right now, we are having our subject go off and get lost in the woods again, and search dog Cooper is about to go find her.

When this is done, Cooper runs very fast and will use the wind to smell the person. Once he’s located the person, he’ll return back to Autumn. Autumn releases her dog with a command, “Find.” Again, you see the speed of these dogs. Right now the dog does not know where the person is but it smells them, has gone in, found a person, is returning back to say, “Hey, I found a missing person.”

And they go back together and get the play reward. This is what the dogs do. It’s all about the playing. What you just saw was actually a very basic scenario, very short, and this dog is operational, which means this dog has passed all tests and is actually able to find three people in 160 acres within five hours.

How is the safety of search-and-rescue dogs ensured during missions?

When you’re actually working a dog on maybe a mission or at training, you definitely have to take into consideration the dog’s safety. The dog is willing to jeopardize his own safety for the job of finding somebody.

An example that I can use was several years ago I was working my first dog, and the humidity and the temperature was so hot. It had reached 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) here and the dogs could only work for maybe about 15 minutes. So I pulled him out of the search field for an hour so he could rest and cool down.

Canine team members sometimes work in contaminated environments. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the ground in New Orleans was covered with mud mixed with dangerous substances like oil, car anti-freeze, and household chemicals.

So when we worked them, they got checked twice a day, actually more than that, but they would get checked once before going out into the field to do some searching, and then they got checked when they came back out. And basically it was a very nice system where they set up a decontamination area.

They had taken tubs and filled them with Dawn Soap and water. And they had vet techs and veterinary assistants and vets there to basically scrub the dogs’ paws, check their temperature, check their ears, eyes, noses, throats, and make sure that they didn’t have any scratches, cuts or punctures. It was definitely a decontamination process that had to be followed every time.

Desiring that search and rescue canines always be safeguarded while performing their life-saving duties, Supreme Master Ching Hai provided the Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association with US$1,000 to purchase protective gear for the group’s marvelous canines. On Supreme Master Ching Hai’s behalf our Association members also presented some lovely gifts to the VSRDA including her #1 international best-selling books, “The Dogs In My Life” and “The Birds In My Life.”

To close, we give our heartfelt salute to the brilliant, courageous human and canine members of the Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association for their love, dedication and service to their fellow beings.

I would like to tell the Supreme Master Television viewers that I thank all of you for your interest in the work that we do with our dogs. And we pretty much love any type of activities or groups of people or companies or corporations or whatever that promote the peaceful working relationship between animals and humans. And I understand a lot of your viewers believe the same way. So I give thanks to you guys. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sirius.

He says thank you too.

For more details on the Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association please visit: www.VSRDA.org

Honored viewers, it was a pleasure to have your company for today’s program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. May Heaven forever bless all lives on our planet.