HOST: 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.

Supreme Master TV(m): Please tell us a little bit about the history of the organization.
Rus(m): 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.

HOST: 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.

Rus(m): 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.

For more details on the Los Angeles Search Dogs, please visit
www.LASearchDogs.org