On the Home Front: Life With a Search and Rescue Dog

Finlae snoozing in the car. photo: CARDA

Searches and rescues can be dangerous and demanding, and not every dog is up to the job. Here in California, the CARDA dog handlers work with a wide variety of breeds, including ones you might expect: German Shepherds, Bloodhounds, Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, Belgian Malinois, and Dutch Shepherds. But there are also some you might not think of as typical for this line of work, including Australian Shepherds, Border Collies, and McNabs. There’s even a Wirehaired Vizsla! 

But the big thing all search and rescue (SAR) dogs have in common is an indefatigable drive. This drive is what makes them great working dogs.  It’s also what makes them challenging to live with sometimes.

Finlae is one of our SAR dogs who often garners compliments.  As we continually train with her, she meets people in a variety of settings, including hardware stores, plant nurseries, or just walking down city streets. People frequently comment about how well behaved she is, how intelligent, how athletic, how in shape…and how much they’d love a dog just like her.

But it takes a lot of work to build a search and rescue dog. And most of these dogs think that going and doing is all that should ever happen, which can make them sometimes exasperating companions on the home front. 

Puppy Finlae was ready from the beginning! photo: Trish Moutard

At CARDA, we’re often asked what breed of dog is the best choice to become a search and rescue dog. The answer is: the breed you can live with.

Here’s what that looks like. 

Finlae has her ways of letting us know when she thinks she hasn’t worked enough. In fact, at our house, we have a cool fashion line called Finlae Signature Clothing - so named for the signature her teeth have left when she’s stolen a hat or shirt or jacket, spirited it through the dog door, and run gleefully through the yard with said item, tossing and catching it. And her tastes are expanding. She recently branched out to literature with the dog behavior book she removed from the bookshelf and shredded in the living room.

This is life with a search and rescue dog. 

Other search and rescue dogs on our team have their own signature moves. When Stasha hasn’t, in her opinion, worked enough, she invents her own games of hide and seek, like digging a giant hole to bury a ball as deep as possible in the backyard. Finnegan has figured out how to open the garage door so he can sit by his SAR vehicle, waiting for training or a search to start.  Caliber steals anything she can pick up – gloves, socks, even CDs – and runs through the house, showing off her prize. Wren has been caught on video moving a full-sized garbage can around her back yard.  

Then there’s Louise, a paper shredder extraordinaire who can also ventilate your couch, and Elsa who removes bedding and pillows, violently tossing and shaking them all over the house. And let’s not forget I. C., who apparently wanted to operate his own GPS; he once removed one from the counter, tried to turn it on, and destroyed it in the process. 

This is life with a search and rescue dog. 

You’re sick and need to lie in bed to get better? Not when your SAR dog Gremly wants to work and is in your face, in your space, and won’t leave you alone, scratching at you and looking into your soul, willing you to get up and work her or she’ll destroy your lawn mower cover.  

Think you’re going to settle down and watch a movie?  Not when your SAR dog Scarlett is running through the house like a whirling dervish, stirring up trouble with every other creature in the house.    

This is life with a search and rescue dog. 

But it’s this same energy that allows these dogs to work tirelessly throughout California, searching for missing people. The drive that pushes these dogs to shred books, open garage doors, or move garbage cans also pushes them to climb the rubble of a collapsed building, crash through dense brush, and search for missing people for miles and hours in forests, on mountains, and on city streets.  We teach them that we will follow them as they follow their noses. And they respond with bravery and tenacity, no matter what it takes.

These dogs are genetically wired to work, and we have given them very important jobs. It’s not their fault if they don’t always want to punch a time clock and kick back at the end of the day. 

So this is life with a search and rescue dog.  We love every bit of their crazy. They may be challenging to live with at times, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Except I would really like my GPS back.