Today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants will be presented in Cantonese, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

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, they used for rescue mission. 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 than US$80,000 to search-and-rescue teams in 18 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Panama, the Philippines, Slovenia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA.

They are animals with an acute sense of smell and hearing; therefore, over hundreds of years, people make use of their natural endowments, and train the appropriate ones as rescue dogs.

Known as man’s best friend, these canine wonders have for centuries selflessly assisted humans in numerous precarious environments.

Actually, dogs’ rescue ability was discovered as early as 950 A.D. There was a monastery located in the mountains between Switzerland and Italy, and a monk there trained a dog to rescue people trapped by snow in the mountains. This was the first search-and-rescue dog.

Today, we’ll meet some of these modern day dog heroes from the Hong Kong Search and Rescue Dog Association or HKSARDA, a volunteer, non-government organization founded by a group of British veterans with extensive backgrounds in dog training. On-call around the clock, the group provides free search-and-rescue services to the public.

Most of our members are working in the disciplined services and are professionals, with backgrounds of British veterans, so we have abundant knowledge and hope to apply our knowledge in training our household dogs to serve Hong Kong’s people. Our Association was founded with the goal to introduce and promote the training and service of search-and-rescue dogs, so that our household dogs can help whenever disasters occur in nearby places, or search for missing people in mountains.

Typically, Hong Kong Search and Rescue Dog Association volunteers work in conjunction with police and fire departments as well as other emergency agencies on rescue missions. The team responds to requests for aid within two hours of being notified of an emergency.

When we do the rescue work, we may need to spend a minimum of two hours to a maximum of eight hours, it depends, and we have to stand by at any time to serve the community.

All in all, we play a voluntary and auxiliary role, provide a community SAR dog service and operate in conjunction with the normal services of conventional forces.

Founded in 2007, the Hong Kong Search and Rescue Dog Association is comprised of kind-hearted volunteers, both human and canine, who wholeheartedly serve the community.

Our Association now has four search-and-rescue dogs; two have gone through qualified training, and the other two are trainee SAR dogs. We will assign these four dogs to work at different days of our monthly working schedule.

The Hong Kong Search and Rescue Dog Association applies the standard guidelines of the National Association for Search and Rescue (NSASAR) in the United States and makes amendments compatible with the unique environment of Hong Kong. Having mountainous terrain where people enjoy hiking, wilderness search work is widely applied to locate lost hikers.

All search-and-rescue dogs are assigned to different rescue tasks. For example, earthquakes and collapse of buildings belong to disaster training. Other trainings include wilderness tracking, avalanche rescue and water rescue.

Not all search-and-rescue dogs perform the same type of task.

Based on their training and experience, the intelligent canines can be generally classified as being either air-scenting dogs or trailing-and-tracking dogs. Air-scenting dogs work by pointing their sensitive noses in the air to search for human scents in large, open areas, whereas trailing dogs sniff the ground looking for the scent of the missing person based upon an item previously worn by the person, such as a hat or t-shirt. Some canines are versed in both skills.

Wilderness search work is divided into tracking and air-scenting. For tracking training, we use a long rope to lead the way for the dog, while the handler follows him in locating the missing person.

　 Air scenting relies on the initiative ability of the dog himself. No leading rope is used. The dog takes the initiative and finds the target by following a scent which is airborne.

If it is wilderness searching to find a lost walker, it is better to have the scent of the clothing of the target, so the dog would know who he is looking for. But when the dog is in a specified environment with constraints, such as disaster areas, snowy land or at sea, the specific scent is not required, because the survivor/victim is confined within a designated area.

As with many other search-and rescue dog organizations around the world, HKSARDA is comprised of human volunteers and their loyal canine companions. Oftentimes, the beloved dogs have had no previous experience in such rescue work. They live as faithful members of the family and enjoy the comforts thereof. So how do these household canine companions become super hero dogs?

My daily duties include taking the dogs out for search work as well as search training.

: We’d conduct an assessment to see if a dog is eligible to be a SAR dog. The assessment is done through “lost-and-found” games. We’d also take the dog to various environments, such as mountains, streams and rock beaches, etc., to see how courageous he is and his ability to adapt to various environments.

After the assessment, if a dog is eligible for training, his caregiver should participate in the training together with his dog.

During the training process, the dog caregiver can acquaint himself with the traits of his dog and what he needs to pay attention to, and take note of the different reactions of his dog in different situations.

Therefore, the human caregivers are able to apply their dogs’ devotion and love to train them to carry out these life-saving tasks as a pleasurable activity for the canines. The dogs are always handsomely rewarded with much praise and quality time with their human companions.

We will arrange a “happy ending” for search-and-rescue dogs in each training session or at the end of each operation. When approaching the end of training, we will arrange a short search training and will reward him by giving him a toy to play with or praise if he finds the target person. It is to deeply impress in him so that the impression lasts until the next search training and helps to continue the whole process.

Since your rescue teams need to work closely with your rescue dogs, do you think it’s important to communicate with your rescue dogs and how do you do it? Also, how do you establish a tacit understanding with them and respond to their needs?

Firstly, we treat and care for our search-and-rescue dogs as our brethren. Since they are quite different from the working dogs of the disciplinary force, we treat them as household dogs and train them likewise. Besides taking care of them at home, we also teach them rescue techniques, and therefore we pay much attention to their education, living conditions, games and commands. Since we have a good tacit understanding with each other, we can be aware of his special behaviors or expressions, whatever happens.

Since the dogs live at home with their human family, a strong bond of trust is forged that is important when the partners collaborate in rescue work. There are actually no particular dog breeds that are more compatible with this type of work; all dogs have the capability to be excellent search-and-rescue dogs.

We hope to find dogs among local dog shelters that are suitable for training, including mixed breed dogs, and train them to be rescue dogs. As the concept held by HKSARDA is not to distinguish purebred dogs from mixed breed dogs, as long as the dog has undergone adequate training, its breed would not make any difference at all, just like humans. Any dog can become an outstanding rescue dog with appropriate training and education.

The most important is that the dog must have a desire to search; this can be motivated through games; plus, he has to be very friendly to humans. Then he is likely to become a search-and-rescue dog.

In part two of our program tomorrow, we’ll meet some of the Hong Kong Search and Rescue Dog Association’s dedicated dogs and their loving human caregivers.

For more details on the Hong Kong Search and Rescue Dog Association, please visit

Thank you for your company today for this episode of Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television. May you always be illuminated with the inner brilliance of Heaven.