But it wasn’t as easy as I thought.
Living alone came as a shock. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. There are only so many hours you can spend watching television or reading, and only so many times you can walk a dog. Once you have time on your hands, the loneliness factor sets in and drains the life out of you. For a time, I lived in my van – myself and my dog Bob, a collie-mix I’d bought from a local farmer while I was still living at home with my wife and children, having taken a year out from the dogs. When I first set eyes on Bob, he was only twelve weeks old and in very poor condition. He had never been socialised, and he’d had very little human contact during the most critical period in a dog’s life, which is from three to eleven weeks. As a result, he was extremely nervous and frightened, even of his own shadow. His left ear was swollen from a haematoma caused by scratching mites in his ear canal; the swelling was the size of a tennis ball. He ended up with a cauliflower ear and had no hearing in it. In the coming weeks, I spent several hundred euros on visits to the local vet, who found that Bob had only partial hearing in his right ear.
From the very start, I took him everywhere I possibly could, including regular trips up Carrauntoohil. He never relaxed except if he was on a mountain or in a forest. Over the following few months, I tried every trick in the book to socialise him, but it looked as if I was going to fail miserably. Deep down, I felt he hadn’t a hope of making it as a working dog, or even a pet, as it seemed his temperament was very bad with people and with other dogs. As this meant he could not be passed on to another owner, I began to think of euthanasia as an option. But everyone at home felt very sorry for him. In spite of everything, he was very affectionate and responsive. Marie did basic training with him, such as obedience, and she seemed to be making some progress. So we decided to keep him.
Bob loved to search. On making a find, he’d run back to me and bark furiously. If I dared ignore him, he’d jump up on me and pinch me on the arm. After a training session with Bob, I usually came home with black and blue marks all over my arm. When I left home for good, I brought Bob with me. Now the roles were reversed and I was relying on Bob to save me.
Living in the van was rough, tough, depressing and degrading. But even if I’d had a palace, it would have made no difference: space wasn’t the issue. When I moved to a rented house, the loneliness got worse. I hated coming home from work, turning the key in the front door, knowing that the only sound I would hear would be the panting of the dog. I dreaded the long, dark night ahead, every night the same, dragging on and on.
It seemed to me then that Bob was my only friend, my one true, constant, loyal companion. I spoke to Bob as if he was a human – so much so that I felt, some day, he might actually answer me back! I did have friends who called in regularly and tried their best to cheer me up. But as soon as they left, I felt lonely again.
My daughter Michelle was very good with dogs and wise enough to see how much I relied on Bob for my sanity. She also knew that I was big into German shepherds – more so than any other breed – and so she decided that a German shepherd was just what I needed to give me a bit of a lift and pull me through. We drove to a riding centre near Ennis and she bought me Jack. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw his papers and realised that Jack’s father was a great-grandson of Dex, the first dog I qualified in search and rescue, and whom I had recently put to sleep. Jack’s father was an Italian-registered dog bought by a friend of mine from Mike Worral in Belgium. When my friend made the purchase, the pet-passport scheme had just come in, and he ended up having to leave the dog in Belgium for some time with Mike. One Saturday, when I was training in Glanmire, my friend called down with this dog, having just collected him from the airport. What an impressive-looking dog: he had a head like a lion and was in a totally different league from what we normally see. Unfortunately, this dog subsequently went through a number of different owners, and the last I heard was that he was working as a guard dog in a hunt kennels. I’d buy him in the morning if I could afford him.
Jack was with me night and day. I brought him to work with me in the van, took him out training in my lunch hour, and left him to sleep in my bedroom at night. If I decided to leave my van door open, I could trust him to stay inside, no problem. But keeping two dogs in a rented house just wasn’t on, and I decided to find Jack a new home. He was young and had an excellent temperament, and I knew he would settle into a new home without a bother. I offered him to a club member, Kieran, who was an experienced dog handler and excellent trainer. Afterwards, any time I ever met up with Kieran at training sessions, Jack would hop into my van, expecting to come home with me. Because of the way I had reared him, he was still bonded to me more than anyone else.
The dogs had pulled me through my separation and helped me to survive. And I was lucky because others were looking out for me – those who knew my situation well. Friends from my doggy circle rallied round and started calling to my house. They always came in pairs, usually under the pretence that they were on their way to do a bit of training, and stayed for an hour or two. They were standing by me, keeping a close eye on me, picking me up and trying to make me feel as if I belonged. They filled my house with noise and occupied the empty chairs. Among the pairs of callers was Áine Dorgan, a veterinary nurse with whom I had always been good friends – ever since she first came along to training sessions having read a write-up about us in a magazine. She was laid back, had a warm, open, sunny personality, and was good fun. At the time, she was renting a house in Ballincurrig. During one visit, Áine said to me, ‘Why don’t you move in with me and rent a room? I could do with sharing the rent.’ She was throwing me a lifeline, when I was on my knees and desperate to survive. Pride would not get the better of me now as it had when I refused my mother’s offer of help. I gladly accepted Áine’s kind suggestion. And so my days of living alone came to an end.
For several weeks, I spent many nights worrying about where I’d end up. As time moved on, I still found it hard to handle my single status. But the loneliness lessened. I stopped taking myself so seriously and learned to laugh again. Then Áine surprised me with a dog for my birthday. She went to Kieran and bought back Jack. He was the best birthday present I ever got! He had never forgotten me and after three years away was back with me again. Kieran had put a lot of time into training Jack during the intervening years and was very reluctant to part with him. However, any time we met, I was constantly telling him how much of a mistake I had made letting Jack go in the first place, so Kieran knew how much I wanted him.
Jack always wanted to be around me, to be taken out for a walk or a run. Any time I took him to training classes, he’d watch me through the legs of other people if I was at a distance. Then, if he heard my voice, he’d come running in between everyone and all the dogs. But there was blue murder between Jack and Bob. They became bitter enemies. If one came near me, the other would start vying for my attention. Many a time I had to tear them apart. I ended up having to train them separately. I could have neutered them but didn’t because they were too old for it to be effective. Primarily, neutering prevents dogs from breeding. It can also help them avoid fighting with other dogs for positioning in a pack, as the highest-ranking dog usually gets the female. Ideally, dogs should be neutered around nine months of age, as older, dominant dogs are likely to have fixed habits that neutering cannot eliminate.
The relationship between Áine and myself had moved up a gear: we were now dating. The days of depression and loneliness were left behind. I had a flutter in my heart and a spring in my step, a reason to get up each morning and someone to come home to every evening. I was living again and life was good.
Back to Basics
During my break from search and rescue, the gardaí and other rescue agencies kept ringing me for help in finding missing persons. Of course, I couldn’t respond as I no longer had a trained working dog.
Sometime around the opening of the Jack Lynch Tunnel in 1999, a man phoned me for advice on training his German sheph
erd puppy. The Cork Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had recommended he contact me. Gary Daly came to my house with his puppy, and we immediately hit it off. When he showed me the pup’s pedigree certificate, I found that his pup Zeus was a cousin to Jack and a great-grandson of Dex. I explained to Gary about the types of training, from competition obedience to schutzhund, agility, and search and rescue. I pointed out that the basics of the various facets of dog training were initially the same, and showed him some techniques of puppy training. A week later, Gary returned, eager to show off the tricks Zeus had learned. They had both worked very hard, and Zeus responded quickly to several different commands.
As time went by, it was plain to see that Gary was what I term a ‘doggy man’. While it’s possible to give dog owners the techniques to train a dog to become an obedience champion, only ten per cent of these handlers will ever be doggy men or women. Yes, they’re capable of training the right dog to a certain level, but give them a difficult dog with a variety of problems and they are usually stumped, even to the point of stating that the dog is incapable of being trained. I was hugely impressed with how Gary and Zeus continued to progress, and working with them rekindled my love of serious dog training. For the first time since taking a break from search and rescue, I began to feel excited and enthused again. I couldn’t wait to get back into the swing of things, and within weeks I was into my old routine of regular training. It was like a new lease of life, and I knew then that this was the only existence that interested me. Dogs were my life and everything else was secondary.
Gary soon began bringing some friends along to training, and from there things started to snowball quickly. I could sense that some of these people were anxious to be part of a more formal group or club, so I suggested we form a search-dog association, and so it was that K-9 Search Dogs came into being. I was not entirely happy about this as I always hoped that I could return to SARDA, but other people had taken my place during my leave of absence and there was no real place for me now in the organisation. I regularly crossed paths with several of the old guard in SARDA, and they always seemed happy enough to talk with me. However, there was never any talk of my returning to the fold. This bothered me a lot as I really felt there were already too many small search-and-rescue associations around. This manifested itself when I would turn up to a shout to be met by many different groups with the same aim: to find the missing person. The problem with this was that they all wanted to be the group that found the missing person, and, consequently, these different groups tended to do their own thing instead of being co-ordinated into one organised search group. The rivalry between many of the civilian groups was obvious at many of these shouts. The rule within our own group, K-9 Search Dogs, was to do our job and go home. Many of the call-outs and finds we have made over the past few years are not even recorded. My attitude generally is this: who cares who makes the find just as long as the missing person is located.
With a formal association in place, K-9 Search Dogs began to train with more intensity. Our purpose was to train dogs to look for missing people, but along the way we wanted to enjoy our dogs, and that was our priority in training. We were not affiliated to any dog teams, although most of us at K-9 were members of the German Shepherd Association, which is itself a member of the International Rescue Organisation, and we thereby automatically became members of that organisation. But we never conformed to its rules, mainly because its methods of training are of little practical use in searches here in Ireland. Also, its standard of obedience and control is very rigid, and we felt that conforming to it would deprive our dogs of the enjoyment we want them to have in training. Very soon, our numbers increased dramatically. Don and Rose Ryan, with their golden retriever, joined us, added some semblance of order and helped keep us in check as they were both excellent administrators.
During this time, we received a few visits at training from the then SARDA chairman, Noel Murphy. He was having a few misgivings about his dog Holly. He believed SARDA was preventing him from entering his dog in assessments as it felt his dog wasn’t ready. It was obvious that he was becoming frustrated, despite the fact that he was chairman of SARDA. Eventually, he asked me if I could help in preparing his dog for an upcoming assessment in which he hoped to take part. I agreed to help, and we began to meet several times each week for training. When work commitments prevented Noel from attending training, Richard Cotter would bring Holly along. Though Richard had no dog of his own, he was an intelligent and competent dog handler. Although Holly ticked most of the boxes required to be a search dog, it was obvious that my mantra ‘It’s perfect practice that makes perfect’ was not being employed. Yet when this changed, Holly very quickly began to make progress. Within a few months, Holly and Noel passed their search-dog assessment and were officially declared an active search-dog team. Noel was thrilled, and phoned to thank us for all the help.
Shortly after this, Noel was voted off as chairman of SARDA, and occasionally began to turn up at some of our training sessions. We had an open-door policy for all dog handlers, so Noel was more than welcome, and we began to invite him along to many of our call-outs. Noel is one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met. He is a brilliant instructor in first aid and rescue techniques, and had served as an instructor with the Civil Defence for many years. If ever I have an accident, I would prefer Noel to attend above anyone else. He has it all.
Shortly after leaving SARDA, Noel went to work with British Telecom for two years, during which time he trained with SARDA Wales and the Severn Rescue Unit. Training or undergoing assessments with foreign search teams can be challenging, especially if their priorities differ from ours. In one particular qualification test I had taken with Dex in Wales, the assessors were obsessed with the fact that dogs should have a coat on their backs during searches. They were convinced that putting coats on dogs signalled that a search was underway, excited the dogs, and put them in a working frame of mind. Not in my book! During the assessment, Dex was working in a mountainous area of brush and heather, with dense undergrowth and sections fenced off in barbed wire. Working with a coat was impractical as it was likely to get caught in the barbed wire. When I took it off, a radio call came in immediately from one of the assessors. He ordered me to put the coat back on as working without it would hinder Dex’s performance, but I did not agree and continued without it.
During the assessment, Dex struck on a scent while walking across a ridge, and went out to the edge of an overhang. For safety, I crawled out on my stomach to check the ground below, only to find there was a drop of about thirty feet to boggy ground beneath the overhang. I checked around but failed to see any body. While I was doing this, Dex became frustrated and decided to jump down. My heart was in my mouth, but when he landed he picked up the scent of the body underneath. Immediately after Dex’s jump, another radio call came from the assessor to enquire if Dex was dead. I had to find a way down, which took some time because of the nature of the terrain. I could hear Dex barking his head off in a cave – so vigorously, in fact, that the guy waiting inside said, ‘I was afraid to come out.’
Back at base, we had a big discussion on dogs wearing coats. The assessors were amazed that Dex had performed so well despite having had his coat taken off, and that he had dared jump off the thirty-foot crag. I explained to them that he had no fear of heights as we trained at home in sand quarries. What it boiled down to was that the assessors, like most of their European counterparts, were first and foremost mountaineers. They lacked the same knowledge and understanding of dogs that we had as dog handlers. In search-and-rescue operations, whether or not dogs wear coats makes no difference to how they perform. If dogs have drive, they will work regardless of everything else. If dogs don’t work when they are not wearing a coat, they are not much good as search dogs. And common sense tells us that dogs with coats swelter in warm weather. In search-and-rescue missions, a dog should only wear a coat if it becomes necessary to let people know that a search dog is at work
. In those situations, I’d put a bright orange coat on the dog, with a light attached.
At K-9, the wearing of dog coats never became a condition when I assessed and certified dogs for search-and-rescue work. And if I failed a team, it was only because the handler or dog didn’t come up to the mark. The basic requirements of search dogs are that they must be stock-proofed, capable of hunting – like any hunting dog – for human scent, and able to indicate a find to their handlers and lead the handlers back to the source of the find. The obedience required is very basic – merely an immediate return to the handler when called, and some directional control. I have seen many potentially good search dogs ruined by the handlers insisting on too much obedience from their dogs. Really good search dogs wouldn’t win any prizes at beauty shows or obedience competitions, and the best search dogs are those bordering on being highly strung and wired. They want one thing only and that’s to work, work, work. The most laid-back of dogs can be trained in search routine, but these dogs will give up after a short time working. A search dog needs the fire and drive to work, even when exhausted, as a search may take several days.
Recently, a new member of our Hop Island training group came up to me and asked, ‘Why is it that all your trainers’ dogs appear so fiery and aggressive?’
We usually tie our own dogs up to the sides while helping new dog owners with their dogs. ‘Have you seen any of our dogs attack or jump at other dogs or people?’
‘No.’
‘Watch,’ I said to him, as I went and let my own German shepherd off his lead to run loose among the other dogs and people. ‘Now,’ I asked, ‘does this dog look like he’s going to bother anyone?’
In Search of the Missing Page 12