BROOKINGS – At coordinator Sandy Vernlund’s farm in rural Brookings, the chilly January weather and snow cover did not deter a Sunday afternoon training session for Brookings County K9 Search and Rescue handlers and their canine charges.

Vernlund said the teams meet almost weekly, usually for three hours on Sundays at her farm. There the trainers and their four-pawed partners have the necessary space to hold realistic scenarios.

“It’s very important that they maintain their training levels,” Vernlund said. “We also test our dogs every year through the North American Police and Working Dog Association (NAPWDA). It’s required that they pass testing every year.”

Search dogs usually fall into one of four categories:

• Tracking dogs, that follow a subject’s footsteps, oriented to a mixture of human scent and ground disturbance where the subject walked;

• Trailing dogs, attracted to cells that have fallen on the ground where the subject walked; able to work some distance from the trail if wind direction is right;

• Air scent dogs, able to work large areas off lead, drawn by human scent and able to work at night; when the subject is detected, alert the handler and lead him back to the subject; and

• Human Remains Detection.

Snow great for training

“They’re trained on water finds, buried and hanging, in vehicles and buildings,” Vernlund said of the last group, also known as cadaver dogs. “So there are a lot of different scenarios that we pick and choose from. Today we’re going to be working with (human remains) buried in snow, because those are some of the situations we’re working currently.

“We’ll also be working tracking dogs and area search dogs.”

Vernlund explained that snow “is a great way to train new dogs that are just starting; because the snow actually traps the scent, keeps it in place. It’s also a great way to train on that foundation in older dogs.”

The search and rescue roster of handlers and K9s now includes:

• Vernlund and three dogs, a German shepherd (Rowdy) and a Belgian Groenendael (Jet) both trained for human remains detection, and a coonhound (Dooley) trained for tracking;

• Becky Eggebrecht and a Belgian Tervuren (Cyrus), certified for area search; and

• Eric Peterson and a Dutch shepherd (Ninja), trained for human remains detection.

Vernlund said the word is getting out that Brookings County has trained and certified K9 Search and Rescue teams. And Sunday afternoon they were out honing their skills: Vernlund with Rowdy and Jet, Eggebrecht with Cyrus, and Peterson with Ninja.

S & R dog in the news

Vernlund said the past year was very busy for the Brookings K9 teams, with their being called out about once every three weeks. Additionally during the past year, “FBI callouts” have been added to the list of clients the K9 teams can serve; and they were called out for three cases.

Recently the role of search and rescue dogs has been given plenty of media attention, with the dispatch of Cisco, a 2-year-old Belgian Malinois and Jeremy Gibbons, his handler, to a search-and-rescue mission following the collapse of a building in Sioux Falls. Cisco and Gibbons are members of South Dakota Task Force 1, a Rapid City-based group of firefighters from Rapid City, Watertown, Aberdeen and Sioux Falls.

Reporting to the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, the specialized task force is part of the South Dakota Office of Homeland Security. It is trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological nuclear and explosive threats. The team is also trained in specialized rescue techniques that include land-based search, structural collapse, swift water, confined space, high-angle, and rope rescue.

Addressing the recent bringing in of Cisco and Gibbons as part of the search-and-rescue effort in Sioux Falls, Vernlund said, “They were very correct in calling in a ‘live-find rubble dog.’ We do not have a live-find rubble dog on our team yet; but we’re working on it.

“Now if it had gone longer without finding him, then, yes, we could have gone in down there; because we have human-remains rubble dogs that could have worked the rubble. But I think they were hoping against hope that they could find him alive.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.