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, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Panama, the Philippines, Slovenia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA.

Today, we’ll meet one of those teams, the Ontario Volunteer Emergency Response Team (OVERT), which provides timely search and rescue assistance during such events as natural disasters in the province of Ontario, Canada and elsewhere.

My name is Glen Turpin. I’ve been a member of the Ontario Volunteer Emergency Response team since 1994. We’re based in the greater Toronto area of southern Ontario. And we provide skilled search-and-rescue personnel to assist in the location of lost or missing persons. And a big component of that team is our canine unit, the dogs. We currently have six dogs in our team. And we’re tasked to assist with the location of missing children or persons and utilizing our dogs to help us to do that.

The Team’s goal is “to create a better way to train and integrate community volunteers.” Since its humble beginnings in the 1990s, the group has worked with more than 50 Ontario agencies during its missions and has gone abroad to aid people in various nations following major calamities like earthquakes.

Everybody on the team are volunteers. We all have a profession of some sort that pays bills day-to-day, and then we put all our other efforts into our humanitarian search-and-rescue efforts. I would say some people on this team probably put more time into the volunteer side than they do their actual professions. We’re out every week training with the dogs; there are obviously administrative aspects to, to the team.

And we’re doing public awareness, and prevention education as well. So we cover a lot of different areas, and it’s time consuming, but, at the end of the day it’s the right cause. And people don’t see it as time consuming. There’s a hundred members in the organization, and we cover a large geographic area of close to 5,000 square kilometers and 4.5 million people as far as the population is concerned. And so within the team we have a number of specially trained personnel, and the dog unit is one of those specialty units.

This is Barrick he is a five-year-old sable-coated German Shepherd. We've been partners together since he’s been about two years old.

What does it take to become an OVERT team member? We asked Mr. Turpin for his insights.

We’ll teach the people basic ground search-and-rescue techniques, so how to search within a team. We’ll teach them how to do basic first aid and CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) beyond their initial levels, communications and so on and so forth. And then within the team we have other specialties. We have our rope rescue team, so they can do technical rescue. We have our canine unit, our communication staff, and all those units have more training regarding their skills.

So how long does it take to become trained or certified?

The basic course is 30 hours for new members, which would include classroom and field time, and then after that you’re deployable as a ground search-and-rescue member. For the canine unit, for example, it’s a 14-week process for a dog team to become certified.

Let us now watch a training exercise that helps the search and rescue canines keep safe during their work.

So one of the components of our training is obedience work. Having control of your dog is important. It’s not for competition reasons but just for the safety of you and the dog, and your partner. You may see hazards out there and the dog needs to be stopped or you just need to get from point A to point B. So you can see Jason’s doing what we call “heeling.” So the dog is walking at his side. He will be taught to sit, down, heel, recall, be on-line or off-line. So it’s all about the dog working with his partner in a controlled situation.

Being able to down or stop your dog at a distance is critical, especially in some of the disaster situations or if you’re working in a, dangerous or hazardous location, to ensure the safety of the dog. You notice Justice’s focus on his partner, on Jason; he’s looking for that interaction and direction from his partner. Again, at the end of it, it’s always a positive, fun experience. Every training session that we do is all about having fun. Good boy Justice!

Here is the valiant Justice honing his skills in finding missing persons.

So what Clint will be doing is hiding behind a tree, so that Justice can’t see him, and then he’ll be required to use his nose to follow Clint to where he is. He’s just going to tuck in behind a tree over there. And when Justice finds Clint, he’s going to go in and he’s going to sit down and he’s going to bark at him, not out of aggression, but because he wants his toy. We basically teach the dogs to speak for the toy. And then once the partner gets to where our victim would be, then he’s rewarded for finding that victim.

Initially, OVERT was only a ground search-and-rescue team. Over time the organization evolved and now can provide assistance in a wide range of situations such as floods, fires, evacuations, fast water search operations, extreme heat and cold alerts and others.

So how do you guys keep ready?

We train on a regular basis. We have scheduled training throughout the year, with that we work on the skills that you were originally trained with to keep those to the forefront. We may go months without a call-out, but we still have to keep our skills at the highest level, so that when we’re deployed to look for somebody who’s lost, we’re bringing the best that we can to the table.

So what keeps your team together? What is the driving force to keep it together?

I would say it is a true desire to help their community, to help their fellow man. Some of the team members are emergency service personnel, but most are not. So this is a very tangible way to contribute to the community in very desperate circumstances. What is your mindset when you hear of a disaster? What goes through your mind and how do you prepare the dogs? We started as a ground search-and-rescue team, but we started seeing that our skills could be used to assist in disasters, and we essentially evolved into that area. So one of the areas that we look at is searching for missing persons, whether it’s in collapsed structures or as a result of landslides or other devastations that happen to the region. So the first thing you’re thinking about is, “How badly affected are the folks that are in this area, and what resources do they have to help them?”

A lot of countries that we go to don’t have a lot of internal resources, and so I think it is incumbent upon us to respond to help them. And so having the skills, the abilities, the dogs and the technical capability, it sits on your mind quite a bit when you hear of these disasters that we can go and help. Getting there sometimes is a problem due to finances.

We are again a charitable organization, so we have to finance all the travel ourselves, our teams over there. So we’re starting to get together our equipment that we are going to require in that country. What hazards may be there, whether it’s natural hazards, it’s environment, weather, or disease, so we have to prepare for those and the dogs as well. Are we going to be dealing with heat, or is it going to be cold? So we have to prepare our equipment and look at those different components.

What are some of the places in world the Team has previously traveled to in order to provide help following a natural catastrophe?

The first international deployment that we did was to Peru in 2007, as a result of the earthquakes in that area. It was my first time being exposed to catastrophic disaster in a community. It was a very, very significant earthquake. So we assisted in search-and-rescue operations there and delivering of humanitarian aid, water systems, purification units, medicine, to the Peruvian community at that time.

And then I’ve also been to Myanmar or Burma after Cyclone Nargis. We actually trained persons in Thailand on the border to get them water systems in that area. Then I was in Haiti in 2008 after the three hurricanes that went through that area that devastated the community. So we were down in that country for 10 days. In October of 2009, we were in the northern part of Sumatra Island (Indonesia), the city of Padang, and that region was affected by massive earthquakes.

Glen Turpin and all human and canine OVERT members, we laud your large-hearts and readiness to help humankind in times of need. May Heaven always bless and protect you during your missions.

Valued viewers, please join us again tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the second and final part of our series on the Ontario Volunteer Emergency Response Team, where we’ll meet more members of this fine group and see other training exercises conducted by the canine unit.

For more details on the Ontario Volunteer Emergency Response Team, please visit

Thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May the love of Heaven always fill your life with peace and happiness.