‘Well, goodnight, so,’ I timidly replied. Then I turned on my heels and was gone like a bullet.
When I tried to make my way back down to the city, I got lost. I must have looked some sight, walking around in circles in the lashing rain and wearing my motorbike helmet. After what seemed like two hours, I finally found Coburg Street, hopped on my bike and headed for home. I wasn’t aware of it then, but in meeting Marie I had also found my wife-to-be. On the night before our wedding, I stripped all the pop posters from my bedroom walls and handed up my pay packet to my mother for the last time. I was closing the door on an old way of life and beginning a new.
Stepping Stones
Sometimes, the smallest of decisions can take us off in a direction we never planned to go and from which there may be no return. From my teenage years to my early twenties, music had dominated my life. One day, a colleague at the glass company announced he had a black, six-month-old cocker spaniel for sale. On an impulse, I made up my mind to buy him, much to the surprise of Marie, who quickly reminded me that we had no proper place for a pup in our new home in the city.
I confined him to the kitchen and hoped for the best. In only a matter of days, I knew I was in big trouble when I saw that he had chewed off the kitchen window sills and all the legs of the table. Luckily, I found a woman who wanted a replacement for her old dog, and she gave him a good home. But by then, my love for dogs had been reignited, and I was soon on the lookout for another family pet.
Next came Cleo, a female Doberman pup. We converted the area under the stairs for her, and this became her surveillance base for all the comings and goings of the house. One day, when Marie was at home alone, some Travellers came begging. By now, this particular pair had become regular callers. On the advice of a friend, Marie decided it was time to put an end to their calls. When she declined to give them anything, they got very annoyed and refused to leave. Marie became anxious. She tried to close the door but the women pushed it hard against her and knocked her back into the hallway. Marie screamed for Cleo. She came charging out from under the stairs and jumped aggressively at the pair. They ran for their lives, never to be seen again. But that wasn’t Cleo’s only claim to fame. As I was walking with her through Cork city one evening, some youths surrounded us and refused to let us pass. I gave Cleo her alert command and instantly she leaped at them. Frightened out of their wits, they separated and made way for us to walk by.
Of all the dogs we ever owned, Alla, a black miniature poodle, was the toughest and the best family pet. Named after the Scottish mountain Ben Alla, he arrived as a five-month-old, and straight away made himself at home by cheekily settling into a cosy armchair. When one of my daughters sat down on a chair beside him, he suddenly turned and snapped at her. But despite getting off to a bad start, he soon became a firm family favourite, proving himself highly intelligent and capable of being trained for any purpose. He remained with us for thirteen years.
During that time, we also owned a standard schnauzer, a Weimaraner and a German shepherd named Ben, who was an excellent show and obedience dog. From the word go, we made a great team, and travelled the country together giving demonstrations on obedience, agility and protection. Over the years, I competed in dog shows as well as obedience and agility competitions with several different registered breeds of dog, including poodles, German shepherds, Dobermans, schnauzers, Weimaraners and numerous mixed breeds. For several years, beginning in 1979, I judged all registered breeds of dogs under Irish Kennel Club rules at dog shows.
Well and truly back in the doggy mode, I was now ready to become more heavily involved in dog training. Around 1982 we moved from our first home at Boherboy in Mayfield back out to the country, to my native Knockraha, where I began a training club, Ortsgruppe Erin’s Own (later, this became part of the German Shepherd Working Dog Association). At first, the club was exclusive to German shepherd dogs and through the German Shepherd Association (GSA), founded by Marie and John Buckley in Limerick, we practised the sport of schutzhund, which is a German word for ‘protection dog’ training.
Marie and John’s dedication and commitment to the German shepherd dog and the sport of schutzhund was unsurpassed. They went on to become two of the most influential people in the world of German shepherd dogs. John was, and still is, one of the most respected show and schutzhund judges in the world. When practised properly, schutzhund is the best dog sport of all. It has three different aspects: obedience, tracking and protection. As the standard of obedience is very high, only the most controlled and obedient dogs qualify.
Before being allowed to take part in schutzhund training, owners and dogs must first qualify in begeitlinghund, known as BH, which is a traffic test focusing on sureness and temperament. While training for the BH degree, dogs with suspect temperament, such as aggression or nervousness, are quickly weeded out and prevented from making it through to the schutzhund field. For the obedience phase of schutzhund, dogs must obey the commands of their handlers to perform a variety of skills, such as heeling at their handlers’ side, retrieving and jumping.
In the tracking phase, the dog works on a thirty-foot lead and follows with deep nose (where its nose is scuffing along the ground, searching for the footprints of the tracklayer) a previously laid track that contains a number of the tracklayer’s articles. Once an item is found, the dog must lie down or sit until the handler comes alongside and retrieves the article.
For the protection phase, six blinds, or hides, are placed – three on each side – along the sides of the training field, and a person acting as a helper is concealed. The handler and dog begin walking down the centre of the training field. Then, on command from the handler, the dog searches each blind, left and right, until he or she finds the helper, who is dressed in a padded suit and sleeve. The helper stays motionless while the dog sits and barks in front of them. This is called ‘stand off’. To pass the protection phase, a number of scenarios must be completed successfully by the dog and handler, all of which involve total control of the dog by the handler.
A handler can achieve a number of different schutzhund degrees. These range from SchA to Sch3, which is the highest degree available. For many years, Ireland has been sending dog teams to compete in the World Schutzhund Championships. In 2005 the Irish achieved seventh place in the world in overall scores, and first place in the world in tracking. While most other sporting achievements are acknowledged by both the government and the public, this great feat was never recognised, yet to dog owners this is the ultimate in dog training.
Because of my involvement with the sport of schutzhund, particularly the tracking phase, I began to consider the possibility of using our dogs for search-and-rescue work. At this stage, I knew very little about search-and-rescue training with dogs other than what I had read. I founded the Cork Area Search and Rescue Dog Association (CSARDA) in 1983, through which I was able to invite all dog owners and their dogs – whether thoroughbred or mixed breed – to training. Having leased some land, we set up agility equipment, a show ring and a protection area.
However, I wanted to take schutzhund tracking a little further, into more real-life situations. The other two CSARDA club members, Gerry Brennan from Castletownbere and Don Murphy from Cork city, teamed up with me, and we began training our dogs in search and rescue. When, in my naivety, I considered our dogs to be of practical use in real-life scenarios, I contacted Con Moriarty of the Kerry Mountain Rescue Team. Con showed great enthusiasm about our dogs, and advised me to ring Neil Powell, a search-dog handler from Northern Ireland. Neil was the leader of the Mourne Mountain Rescue Team and was responsible for introducing air-scenting dogs to Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s. He used his dog Pepper regularly in call-outs, not only in Ireland but also in Scotland. In the years to come, he became the first search-dog handler in the world to train dogs to detect counterfeit DVDs, and trained the first ever water-search dog in the United Kingdom. Initially, Neil had trained under Hamish MacInnes, the renowned Scottish mountaineer who
developed modern mountain rescue in Scotland, who designed the first all-metal ice axe and the MacInnes stretcher – which is used in rescue operations worldwide – and who founded the Search and Rescue Dog Association. Hamish was first inspired to train dogs when he went to Switzerland and saw rescue dogs working there in the snow. On his return to Scotland, he began training German shepherds for avalanche work.
Neil agreed to visit us, and arrived at our training grounds. Being a schoolteacher, he had an air of authority about him without it being obvious. He soon put us straight. Neil told us that tracking dogs are of little use in real-life searches, whereas air-scenting dogs can work solely by air scent and rapidly get on the trail of a missing person. They can pick up a scent 120 feet under water, and cover as much ground in one hour as ten people can in four hours. Air-scenting dogs work with their heads up all the time. But tracking dogs work with their noses down, which is much harder and more tiring for a dog.
To show us what was needed, Neil gave a short demonstration with his air-scenting dog. Then he tested some of our dogs to check their suitability as air-scenting dogs. He explained that as well as training a dog, search-dog handlers had to be members of a recognised mountain-rescue team, have a current mountain-rescue first-aid certificate, be extremely proficient at reading a map and compass, and be competent with a rope and harness. When I had assimilated all this information, I realised I knew next to nothing about serious dog training. I had been truly knocked off my pedestal. There was I thinking I knew everything about dog training and that search training would be a doddle to me. What an idiot!
After Neil’s visit, I quickly concluded that Kennel Club obedience, agility, schutzhund and all the other facets of sports-dog training only barely touched on a dog’s capabilities. I realised that I had only been playing at being a dog trainer, and felt I had to give serious thought to forgetting all about search-dog training. But then Con and Neil convinced me otherwise, and Neil told me that he had been trying for some time to form a national search-dog organisation similar to the one already in existence in Britain. Some months later, in 1987, he invited a group of about ten of us to meet in Laragh, County Wicklow. After a long discussion, we officially formed the voluntary Search and Rescue Dog Association of Ireland, or SARDA Ireland, as we call it today. Our aim was to search for missing persons. A sergeant from the Garda Dog Training Unit in Dublin became our first chairperson and Neil was elected as our training officer. With search-dog teams, it’s customary that the training officer rules supreme. This meant that Neil would have full control of the running of the organisation, including qualifications, call-outs, training and contact with other rescue teams in the country.
Having agreed to hold a training weekend in the Wicklow Mountains every six weeks, everyone returned home filled with enthusiasm and eager to begin proper search-dog training. Little did I know what lay before me! While my commitment to SARDA Ireland involved me in search-and-rescue operations and provided me with opportunities to work abroad, it also took a heavy toll on my personal life, especially my marriage.
Lockerbie
A year after SARDA Ireland was launched, a major tragedy in which hundreds were killed shook the very foundations of search-and-rescue organisations. The Lockerbie air disaster occurred on 21 December 1988 when a Pan American World Airway’s Boeing 747-121 – named Clipper Maid of the Seas – exploded during a transatlantic flight from Heathrow Airport in London to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The explosion killed 243 passengers, sixteen crew members and eleven people on the ground in Lockerbie, in south-west Scotland, where huge sections of the plane hit the ground. The deceased came from twenty-one different countries.
Dealing with such a horrendous aftermath stretched search-and-rescue resources to the limit and had a serious impact on search-and-rescue organisations. At the time, SARDA Ireland had only three internationally qualified search dogs: Pepper – a collie belonging to Neil – together with a golden retriever and a bearded collie, both belonging to Vicky and Mitch Cameron, a married couple from Northern Ireland. For a number of years, the three dogs and their handlers had trained regularly with SARDA Scotland. All were experienced mountain rescuers. When the Lockerbie disaster happened, they were summoned to the scene. None of them had ever dealt with the horrors of a plane-crash disaster before.
At least fifty international dogs, including police dogs, took part in the search. As well as having to look for bodies, the dog teams had to search for body parts and debris from the plane. Search dogs are initially trained to search for live bodies, but can quickly switch to a search for various articles simply by having a relevant item put before them and used as their toy for a few minutes.
Neil, Vicky and Mitch spent five days at Lockerbie over the Christmas period searching with the dogs. The horror and awfulness of finding human bodies left its mark on all three of them. Afterwards, Neil commented that his life could really be defined as before and after Lockerbie – it had been that traumatic. Pepper had recovered the remains of sixteen people. Within days of returning from Lockerbie, one of Vicky and Mitch’s dogs died, reportedly from inhalation of aviation fuel, which had spread around the area. Later, some of the international search handlers involved in the search, who were extremely traumatised by what they had seen at Lockerbie, retired from their search organisations. Usually, the effect of dealing with such a tragedy might not surface for months afterwards and counselling is essential.
Because of the disaster, new structures came into force. An international search-dog association was set up in Britain: the British Overseas Disaster Unit. Neil and I were founding members, even though we were not British – rescue people have no international boundaries. Phil Haigh was elected as deputy leader with Dave Riley as team leader. Dave was well known in doggy circles, especially in Cumbria, where he acted as an assessor for the official search dog assessments. Other guys in the disaster unit included a camp manager, paramedics, a dentist, a doctor and a communications manager. Penny Kirby and Jim Greenwood were based in England to act as contacts and to deal with the press. At that stage, we had only six dogs on the team: two in Ireland and four in England. The organisation was willing to fly to any place in the world where dogs could be successfully used to search for people lost in disaster situations, such as flooding, mud slides or earthquakes.
Neil and I hoped that the Irish government might step in and, at the very least, offer us a training area at Collins Barracks in Cork or at Kilworth Camp, near Fermoy, but no such luck. We’ve since learned through experience that the Irish government will only help out when it’s under the spotlight – such as in the later case of a missing German Boy Scout. When the focus of the international media was on Ireland, the government immediately lent a helping hand. A government jet was laid on to fly Neil and me from Cork to Donegal to take part in the search for the German lad. Other than that, we have never been offered any type of help. On the other hand, the British government couldn’t do enough for us. It set us up with a training area in Northern Ireland, and we had the Royal Air Force at our beck and call.
Neil and I began to train together in earnest, but then a whole set of new rules came into play following a major mud-slide disaster in Afghanistan. The British Overseas Disaster Unit sent two of the team’s dogs to Afghanistan to take part in the search for the living and the dead. But while the dogs proved successful in finding dead bodies, they ignored the live ones. After that, an order was issued that every dog on the team should be trained only to look for live bodies. This was impractical for dogs working in Ireland. Our dogs need to be cross-trained as, on average, nine out of ten people found here are deceased. This is primarily because civilian search-dog teams are not called in until one or two weeks after someone is reported missing.
At that stage, I decided to pull back from the disaster unit. I hadn’t time to do specialist emergency training. I opted to make Ireland my priority and to stick with the cross-training. I felt I had no choice, as Ireland needed its own s
earch dogs. Vicky and Mitch had already lost one of their dogs, and Neil’s dog Pepper had reached old age. The Lockerbie aftermath gave us that final push to qualify our dogs. It underlined the need for us at SARDA Ireland to increase our number of search dogs and search-dog handlers sooner rather than later, and made us more committed than ever to passing the official search dog assessment.
On 31 January 2001 Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was convicted of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should serve at least twenty years before being considered for parole. Under Scottish regulations, prisoners can be released on compassionate grounds if they are considered to have only three months or less to live. In 2009 he was freed from jail on compassionate grounds after it was concluded that he would be dead in less than three months from prostate cancer. Megrahi had served less than nine years of his life sentence. Having been released, the bomber returned to Tripoli and defied the medical prediction.
A Mountain to Climb
From the time SARDA Ireland was founded, search-dog training took up every spare minute of my time. Just as I had been obsessed with music and schutzhund training, I now became obsessed with training a dog for search-and-rescue work. Every hour outside of work was spent with the dogs. I trained seven days a week, including every Christmas day and all holidays.
In Search of the Missing Page 4