Welcome, kind 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.

According to research studies, a dog’s sense of smell is at least 44 times more acute than that of a human. Depending on their size, canines possess between 125-million and220-million scent receptor cells. By contrast, humans only have about five-million such cells. This abundance of smell receptors enables dogs to find microscopic scent particles even in extremely challenging environments such as disaster areas.

Today, we’ll present the second and final part of our series on a special canine search-and-rescue team called Los Angeles Search Dogs.

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.

What specific scent enables a canine to track a missing person? Humans continually shed dead skin cells to form groupings called “rafts.” Heavier rafts such as flakes of dandruff fall near the body, but lighter ones float in the air. We shed rafts while sitting, standing, sleeping and walking.

Dead skin just sheds off of us, constantly. It comes up from our hair, comes down through our pants. Then skin goes through the putrefaction process.

In other words, it starts to deteriorate based on the bacteria that are on that skin raft. And that process is where you get scent.

The process is interrupted on hot, sunny days as the Sun’s ultraviolet rays neutralize the bacteria.

So that means your scent’s not going to be very strong, and with the heat, that’s going to tend to raise that scent up. So that’s a difficult condition at best. In a cooler, more damp setting that has more greenery around it, that’s a much better setting because that allows the bacteria to thrive and feed on that skin raft which produces more scent. So that’s basically what they’re following.

The wind and the weather factors into how the dog is scenting, and the scent can (be) blown off far away, it can be laying down, or it can go straight up. Heat causes scent to rise, so he may not find anything if we do it at 12 noon. So you also have to think about the weather when you do searches. So the best time to search is really early in the morning and late in the evening.

Just following a search dog is not all that’s necessary in finding a missing person. Precise understanding of canine body language is also essential to a successful search.

So, it’s very important that you know how to read your dog too. That is one of the most important things, his body language. There he had the head turn. And there we go, he found it. It’s either the ears are up, or the neck is stretching, or the little head turn, or just a little twitching of the nose, that you need to learn about your dog. See the dog looked up in the tree sometimes because the scent goes up, and gets stuck in the leaves. So you have to be aware of all this scent theory too.

Search dogs should be able to climb, balance, jump and swim and be adequately trained in their specialty. Ms. Cohen now gives an example of the training used with area dogs.

So I’m going to tell you how we train the area dogs. What they are looking for is any human scent that is out there; they are not scent specific. So all of us have a different scent, but some are specific to us, so the dogs know that there is a human out there.

We teach them to run after a person who hides, and then we’ll call them back, and we develop an alert, either a bark or a sit or a lay-down in front of you, meaning that they have found a person. Then we tell them, “Show me,” and they take us back to the person. That is what the area dogs do.

The dogs love to search and are well rewarded with toys or food for finding a given article or person.

Shirley and Flash are going to do tree cadaver problems. We have placed three training aids out there. So she has deployed her dog on the cadaver command. Now he’s looking for it. He’s going to let you know when he has found it.

His alert is a bark. He comes back to her and barks, and then brings her back to where the training aid is. Now the dog has found the aid in the tree, and he went back to her, and let her know where it’s at. They give him the reward for finding the training aid. So now she is rewarding him.

They love it. It’s a game for them, it’s totally a game. That’s why I like it. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I love it. So I can’t wait for my next dog.

When we return, we’ll learn more about Los Angeles Search Dogs and its important 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.

Hi, I’m Dawn Brady. This is my dog Keller. Keller is trained in area and cadaver. She’s relatively new to the team. She’s very high drive. What she does is mostly wilderness searches. So she’s looking for any human scent. Good job, good job.

Hi, I’m Bob Veeck. This is my dog Hilly. Hilly is a trailing dog. She’s three years old, and (has) been certified about a year now.

My name is Larry Cude. I handle usually the radio communications and anything dealing with paperwork. This is my new dog, Casey. He’s about 10 months old, and curious.

Larry handles all of our base camp operations, generally at searches and things like that, organizing the teams and getting the teams out into the field, making sure that they have all the right equipment when they do go out into the field, so (that) they’re safe. So it’s a pretty important role.

Now let’s look at an essential piece of equipment for trailing dogs.

This is a typical harness we use for trailing. It just goes over their back and then we hook to that and then it keeps the leash off of their neck because that’s a huge deal. If you take their neck away from them, they can’t freely search for scents because you’re tugging on their neck. So this puts it way down further on their back and allows them to do their job. Now this little pad, that’s a scent article. So you can see it doesn’t take much.

Search dogs and their human partners have to pass several rigorous tests before being allowed to participate in search-and-rescue operations. Agneta Cohen explains the Mission Ready test for the three specialty areas.

We have a test that they have to take, what we call “Mission Ready.” For a cadaver test, they have to find in a one-acre area a buried training aid, about 15 inches down, that has been sitting there for an hour at least.

So they have one hour to find that aid. If they don’t pass, they have to try it again. That is pretty deep; it’s just a small source. So it’s hard for the dogs, because it takes a while for scent pool from the source to come up through the ground.

For an area dog (the test) is a 120-acre area that you have to find one to three persons unknown to you within four hours. You have to know how to read the map, use the compass, and also look at the dog at the same time. So you have four hours. That’s your initial test. And then every two years you have to recertify the dog with an eighty- to ninety-acre test.

For a trailing dog, there are several tests that they have to go through before they even get to the mission ready status. They have 24-hour, 48-hour and 96-hour trails, and just general interaction with the rest of the pack and people, crowds.

In addition, human team members have to take several vital courses required for certification to participate in search-and-rescue work.

You have to go through things like helicopter safety, survival training, and medical training. Some of us are EMTs (emergency medical technicians); others of us are what are called “first responders,” which is not as intensive of training as an EMT. All of that kind of stuff takes time.

In recognition of the virtuous contributions of Los Angeles Search Dogs to the safety of their community, Supreme Master Ching Hai kindly contributed $US 1,000 to the group.

On behalf of the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association, I am honored to give this check for US$1,000 to the Los Angeles Search Dogs.

We’re going to have each member buy something that they really need for their dog. For example, booties or cooling vests, because it gets really hot here during the summer and the dogs get overheated easily. So cooling vests are really important.

So whoever doesn’t have that is free to buy one; we give them a certain amount, and then they can get whatever they need for their dog for their searching. So that’s what we have planned to do. (Wonderful) Yes, it’s all going to go toward the dogs.

Agneta Cohen has a heartfelt message for Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Thank you very much. On behalf of Los Angeles Search Dogs, I really thank you for your organization, and especially Master Ching Hai, for the generous donation. This will really help us to further our searching and training with our dogs. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you very much!

We’d like to convey our sincere thanks to all the members of Los Angeles Search Dogs, human and canine alike, for their noble work of rescuing missing and lost residents of Southern California! May Heaven protect all the team members while on duty and off.

For more information on Los Angeles Search Dogs, please visit

Benevolent viewers, thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Enlightening Entertainment is next after Noteworthy News. May the guidance of Providence always be with you.

Did you know kangaroos grieve for the loss of their beloved just as human beings do?

A female kangaroo who had been hit, and her partner, had his paws on her back and was just standing there trying to wake her up, trying to move her. …

In 2008, more than 3.6 million kangaroos were hunted down and brutally murdered for their meat and skins.

You hear stories of shooters shooting the kangaroo, breaking their legs so they can't move, and throwing them in the back of the truck so they don't die. They get to the slaughterhouse, you know, still alive so the meat's fresher….

Please watch “Stop Animal Cruelty: The Killing of Australia’s Icon, the Innocent Kangaroos,” this Tuesday, January 19 on Supreme Master Television.