By Deborah Burst
The CityBusiness North Shore Report
NORTH SHORE, La. — This isn’t your usual obedience class.
A feisty group of canines anxiously tugs on their leads, waiting their turn to trail a Covington training site for their next find. On a real mission, they could turn up anything from a missing person to a murder weapon to human remains.
The exercise is part of a drill for the Louisiana Search and Rescue dog team — a task force of finely trained animals and their handlers based in St. Tammany Parish that performs rescue and recovery missions on a moment’s notice for local, state and federal agencies.
LaSAR’s searches reach from Texas to Florida with some calls from Arizona, Alaska and the East Coast as well as American rescues outside the country.
The team meets early Saturday mornings, at a different location each week, under the leadership of founders and longtime North Shore residents Lisa Higgins and Dee Wild.
As a nonprofit, the organization accepts donations but relies mainly on the time and efforts of its members, most of whom hold full-time jobs outside the task force.
“You really have a calling for this, have a heart for it,” says Wild, adding that a good number of rescues take place in rural areas or inclement weather. “It’s more than knowing how to read your dog, but you must have good navigation skills as well.”
Higgins developed the idea to start Louisiana’s first search and rescue dog team in 1989 and contacted Wild, a certified obedience trainer, with their first call-out in 1991 — a drowning victim in the Amite River.
Wild and Higgins hold a long list of accreditations dedicated to land and water rescue/recovery missions, completing more than 600 searches. Each handler and canine partner are nationally certified, assisting agencies at no cost.
Barking orders
LaSAR saves civic and law enforcement agencies time and money, allowing the agencies to devote their resources to protecting the community or training their own canines for drug and bomb detection.
Fire Chief Larry Hess of St. Tammany Fire Protection District 1 in Slidell has relied on LaSAR for nearly five years. The district employs 150 career firefighters with about 13 volunteers who serve as dog handlers for what Hess calls the agency’s “canine division.”
As an all-hazards agency, District 1 responds to emergency calls, hurricanes and fires.
“It gives us an opportunity to expand our hazard concept we endorse here,” says Hess, who adds that the LaSAR dogs removed an element of danger from the firefighters’ post-Katrina searches of collapsed houses. “Our canine division is a tremendous adjunct and great service. “
Outside of St. Tammany, one of LaSAR’s recent high-profile cases involved two New Orleans teenagers who had been kidnapped. Community tips narrowed the search to an area near Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans, where LaSAR teams broke up their search into separate sections of the Uptown neighborhood. Tanner, a black lab, pulled his trainer Ann Dugas to the home where the teenagers’ bodies were located.
Other cases have happier endings. Higgins recalls a rescue mission involving a Covington man who fell into the Bogue Falya River.
“My dog Frosty started at the back door then went to the river and came back to get me, staring down at the river. I went in calling the man’s name and heard him answer. “
Since LaSAR’s searches can also take teams to out-of-state and sometimes international locales, the organization has to make accommodations.
Members who respond to long-distance cases often require last minute vacations and employers who can support their schedule. Sometimes the agencies pick up the tab in filling gas tanks or arranging for overnight accommodations, but not all have the resources.
“Sometimes we just have to absorb the cost ourselves and pay for all the expenses,” says Wild. “We don’t have a whole lot of time for fundraisers. “
The LaSAR Web site offers detailed guidelines for those interested in training their dogs. New members can expect one to three years of initial training along with several required courses and tests for the handler and canine. Although monthly calls vary, dependent on weather or seasonal increases in water sport incidents, a team can easily log 60 to 80 hours each month in training time.
Reaping rewards
Back on the training ground, Higgins positions the “source” — an item such as bone or human blood for the dogs to sniff out — in various containers assembled in a continuous line of stations. On a recent out-of-state drill, Higgins used dirt from a Confederate soldier’s grave as the source.
These drills provide repeated training and rewards when the dogs find the source. They also test the dog’s ability to recognize different sources and learn new ones, building their ability to detect a deeper spectrum of scents.
Two veteran members follow the handler and canine partner, advising the handler and praising the dog as the team makes its way through the stations and into the woods. Upon discovery, the dog is trained to communicate his find; some do passive signs such as laying down while others bark. Every positive behavior is rewarded with a treat or a favorite toy.
Members who are working their dogs toward certification often attend search missions as backups and assist in navigation and transporting equipment. LaSAR members Paal Liset, a Norway native who gained certification from another rescue group in 2003, and wife Denise, who is from Canada, are training their dog Nola, a female Belgian Malinois, for certification in human remains detection. The Lisets, who now live in Mandeville, say they are motivated by Nola’s enthusiasm and helping people in need.
“We wear certain clothes for training, and when Nola sees it she get gets all excited ready to go to work,” says Densie Liset.
“It’s so rewarding to see the dogs working during an actual search, to see all the time and effort spent on training to locate a missed one or give closure to families,” Paal Liset says.
Paal Liset works in training the live searches, in which someone from the group hides in the woods for the dogs to locate. Some dogs go directly to the missing person, while others stop and communicate the find a short distance away.
Blackcheck, an 18-month old German Shepherd mix, shoots across a grassy field and drainage canal and stops 10 feet in line with the missing “victim. " He returns to his handler receives recognition, additional commands and goes directly to the missing person. Meanwhile a 72-pound black lab, Hunter, makes a beeline across an open field down an embankment and directly to the target.
Dogs have acute sensory receptors that can detect human scents through multiple layers of soil or water. On LaSAR’s first search, Higgins and canine partner Frosty, a golden retriever now deceased, located a drowning victim in the Amite River buried under four feet of water and three feet of sand.
There’s an added benefit for both the dogs and the families in need; similar to therapy dogs, the LaSAR canines bring comfort. The dogs enjoy the affection, and the family members find solace petting and talking to the animals.
“We figured this all out on our own,” says Higgins, referring to the years of building the team. “We made some mistakes on the first go round but learned from them and continue to build the team. "
Copyright 2009 Dolan Media Newswires