“I Could Not Ask for a Better Partner”

In the rolling hills outside Santa Paula, California, a stirring ceremony is afoot. Four young first responders from Oklahoma Task Force One and their canine partners will be formally paired today – effectively for life. Each in his turn, the soft-spoken young men in uniform tell their stories, the small outdoor amphitheater ringing with birdsong. As they speak, their four-legged partners in rescue gaze on them with the unfiltered love for which dogs are known. 

These young Oklahomans are signing on 30 years after the Oklahoma City bombing that essentially launched the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation’s mission. The stakes remain high. These paired teams will not be searching for the dead, but for the living. CEO Rhett Mauck offers a benediction. “To these handlers, we say thank you for your dedication to your canine partners – and for the journey that lies ahead.”

In 1996 a woman named Wilma Melville launched the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF), having been stunned the prior year at the shortfall of handlers and rescue dogs desperately seeking survivors in the smoldering rubble of the blasted Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

These years later, evolving SDF training is arduous and exacting, the expansive training compound an outdoor menagerie of collapsed buildings and crushed cars. SDF’s canine candidates arrive already familiar with the rescue theme – SDF’s dogs are themselves rescues from shelters. However they fare in SDF’s training and mission, they will find homes. SDF’s Lifetime Care Commitment guarantees it.

The bond between dog and handler is mission critical. “It’s about connection over compliance,” explains Denise Sanders, senior director of communications and search team operations. “It’s about making sure they’re connected with their handler, that they are doing the work together. In a large-scale disaster,” says Sanders, “there’s so much ground to cover. So to be able to trust that dog to say, we can move on, this area is clear; that’s everything.”

From Maui to Los Angeles to Texas to Turkey, through fires, floods, and quakes, SDF’s work never pauses. From the day of a dog’s arrival on campus, SDF spends approximately $75,000 to train a search dog and handler over 10 to 12 months – professional, certified training that comes at no cost to the emergency departments nationwide who are SDF’s beneficiaries. “We’re 100% funded by private donations,” Sanders says. “We don’t accept government funding, only individual and foundation donations.” And though the nature of disaster itself is dynamic, SDF teams are on the case. 

“They leave here,” Sanders says, “prepared for all scenarios, ready for anything. These teams have that relationship in place where it needs to be.”