Welcome, gentle viewers, to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Throughout history, dogs have shown their noble qualities and worked miracles by risking their lives to save humans out of unconditional love. The acute sense of smell, swiftness and agility of dogs trained for search and rescue work can often make the difference between life and death for lost or injured humans.

In his book “Wilderness Search and Rescue,” former US park superintendent Tim Setnicka states, “One trained search dog can patrol a track in six hours that would take 106 workers 370 man-hours to comb with the same probability of detection.”

On today’s program we feature the benevolent, selfless work of the non-profit, canine search-and-rescue group Los Angeles Search Dogs based in Southern California, USA. Los Angeles Search Dogs primarily supports the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, local fire departments and other law enforcement agencies in Southern California, as well as the California State Office of Emergency Services.

The organization’s free services include finding missing hikers, lost children, injured persons and disaster victims 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Please tell us a little bit about the history of the organization.

This organization was founded in 1985, so it’s been around for almost 25 years now. (It) started as a very small group of folks, three or four people, who were all very much involved in search and rescue and wanted to take it to another level with the dogs. Back in the time that this started, there wasn’t a whole lot of training guidelines.

There wasn’t really a whole lot of understanding about how the dogs could work and getting them to work. But most of the folks had had some experience with dogs in general, so they started to develop these guidelines, figuring out ways to train dogs to be able to perform specific tasks like cadaver as well as trailing. And those were the main disciplines that they started with.

The human members of Los Angeles Search Dogs are busy people who work full-time jobs besides performing their duties with the organization. The members pay for all search-related costs including those for equipment, supplies, fuel for vehicles and veterinary care for the dogs.

We generally get about 80 to 90 callouts a year, and we’re an all volunteer organization, so none of us get paid to do any of this. We all do it because we love working with our dogs and it’s a great way to give back to the community. I’ve only been doing this maybe about 10 years. We have other people who (have) been around (for) maybe just a couple of years. So it takes a lot of time, takes a lot commitment.

So how do you get new members to come into your group?

A lot of times they come from other search-and-rescue groups and they know we exist and they start to get interested in maybe the canine aspect of it. Others are (from) police agencies; some people get interested and they don’t necessarily want to do patrol canine, which is a whole different deal than what we do. We really don’t do criminal (searches).

Sometimes cases turn into that but initially we don’t deal with that. Fire department personnel sometimes get interested and come over and learn to train their dogs. And that provides another dog in the field. Others are volunteers just like myself that get interested, come on board, start training, and get their dogs out in the field.

The searches that the team conducts vary greatly with regard to nature and setting.

We worked a train wreck that happened about a year ago in Chatsworth (USA). That was very difficult, very challenging, just due to the nature of the accident itself and the environment. Some of the other things are more wilderness-related; there was the fires up in Sylmar (USA) the recent fires that we’ve had.

What are some skills that humans and canines must possess in order to carry out effective search-and-rescue operations?

First of all, you have to learn mapping, compass and GPS (Global Positioning System). You have to know the gridding of an area and you also have to do scent theory; you have to do first aid. The dog has to go through all the socialization skills. He has to learn how to climb the rocks, do a lot of that agility stuff.

Just basic obedience, for instance, can take a little bit of time, depending on the dog.

If you’re new, for instance, you have a lot of things that you need to do in order to get yourself up certifications that you have to do, and you’re training your dog at the same time. So that can take you maybe two to three years to do all of that. But once you get up on the curb and you become a mission-ready handler, it should take you no more than eight months to a year to get a dog up and actually on the curb and out and working.

When we return, we’ll have more about Los Angeles Search Dogs and its fine work. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants and our program featuring Los Angeles Search Dogs, an ever-ready search-and-rescue group that serves the residents of Southern California, USA.

(We) just would like to do a brief introduction of the team and the dogs. Over here we have Jerry. He is actually one of our founding members. He was instrumental in starting this team back in the early 1980s. He currently has a hound and he does trailing.

I’m Agneta Cohen and I have been with the team for eight years, and have had two dogs. I am looking for a new dog now to train, so I’m doing support and helping the team out.

This is Laila and we are a trailing team.

How old is Laila?

Laila is three, she’s still a baby.

(I am) Shirley Smith and this is Flash Gordon. For those of you who remember who Flash Gordon was, (an) early rocketeer, and that’s how he got his name because he rockets back and forth.

He is now 12 years old, and he does nothing but cadaver now. Flash has four finds in that area. He has a blue eye and a brown eye.

Both the canine and human members of Los Angeles Search Dogs spend many hours on the job, so the work requires great passion and dedication.

And how much time do you devote to this organization, say, every week or every month?

It’s actually quite a bit because I also sit on the board as the vice president so that does take a lot of time. And with the trainings as well with search callouts, it turns out to be quite a bit a time. Over the year I probably drive maybe six to seven thousand miles in my vehicle, personal miles, just going to searches and trainings.

Time-wise, my goodness, I mean it’s probably a few thousand hours a year. I think, most volunteers with the Sheriff’s department, it takes several years just to get 500 or a 1,000 hours of volunteer time. Well, most of the members of this team, when you join this organization, you generally clear that within almost two years.

Most people who volunteer at stations and things like that, takes five, six years, seven years for them to reach that. So that kind of gives you an idea of how much time and dedication it really takes.

All types and breeds of dogs can participate in search and rescue, but selecting dogs from the start that have a natural talent for searching generally shortens training time.

We usually use the working dogs like Border Collies, Labradors, Bloodhounds and so forth. Those are basically the dogs we use, but there can also be mutts that can be trained to anything. It just depends (on) their drive.

Dogs are trained in particular search specialties such as trailing, area search and cadaver. Two olfactory skills are employed in canine search and rescue – trailing and air scenting. A trailing dog follows the residual scent left on the ground as a missing person walks around an area.

A trailing dog is a certain type of dog. They’re trained to take an object, which we call a “scent article,” which could be your shoe, could be a toothbrush, could be a pen that you’ve handled, your watch for instance, whatever. She’ll take a scent off that by sniffing it, and then she’ll follow that trail that you walked.

Area dogs identify human scents within a space and can follow a scent in the air emanating from a lost or missing person.

We use them especially in the wilderness area, like this huge park here. Somebody can be lost and they can be in the brush and so forth, where the trailing dogs have difficulty to get in. They may find the trail up to the end of here and then they lose the trail, and we deploy the area dogs. When the dog has any human scent, we can tell in their body language. There is something, the dog will take off, find the person, come back to us and do their specific trained alert, and then bring us back to the person.

If we have a missing person and we know that the missing person is unfortunately deceased, we then deploy the cadaver dog so that we can find that individual and bring closure to the family.

The circumstances of some missions require a combination of these skills.

Some of our dogs are cross-trained. After they’ve been trained in either trailing or area, they can cross-train in the cadaver. But they first have to be certified in either of the other two disciplines.

We thank the human and canine members of the Los Angeles Search Dogs for helping to locate missing and lost persons in Southern California. Their noble, selfless efforts on behalf of others deserve our highest praise. For more details on the Los Angeles Search Dogs, please visit

Distinguished viewers, thank you for your company today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Please join us again tomorrow for Part 2 of our program featuring the compassionate work of Los Angeles Search Dogs. May Heaven grace all beings with infinite blessings.

What ingredients are really important for healthy and beautiful skin and hair?

Pretty much everything we need is in the plant kingdom, all the microbial kingdom.

What differences do people see when they use vegan organic skincare products?

They’re biggest, change that we have seen in people’s skin, in reducing eczema and that sort of thing has been from a switch from a chemical to an organic product.

Trevor Steyn of South Africa, the vegan founder and owner of Esse Organic Skincare and African Organics, shares the secrets of healthy and vibrant skin on “Esse Organic SkinCare – Vegan Beauty,” this coming Monday, January 18 on Healthy Living.