The staff at the Southern Oregon Humane Society (SOHS) in Medford, OR, discovered this wonderful canine while visiting Tehama County Animal Services in Red Bluff in Northern California. Dana was bouncing a tennis ball on the ground as she walked through the kennel and noticed a Lab/Shepherd mix who was obsessed with the ball. She tested the dog, Raider, and he passed with flying colors.
Raider was loaded onto SOHS’s “Saving Train” (a fully equipped bus that transports more than 100 rescued animals each month) and driven back to Medford, where the staff immediately called SDF. During a second evaluation, Raider found over 15 hidden tennis balls in the play yard, but continued to search for the toy that the evaluator had originally hidden – It was clear that SOHS had found their first-ever Search Dog candidate!
Raider entered formal training at Sundowners Kennel in June of 2010 and progressed very quickly. He was soon joined in his training group by the rest of the dogs that were promised to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Meanwhile, in March of 2011, firefighter/paramedic Sara Rathbun was deployed to the Japan earthquake/tsunami with California Task Force 2 out of Los Angeles. There she was able to witness what her fellow task force members were accomplishing with their Search Dogs as handlers. Sara had already been on the roster to receive a new Search Dog for over a year when she was deployed to Japan and she could not wait to become a handler herself.
“I would say that one of the most challenging parts of Japan was the enormity of the task,” says Sara. “The dogs there could probably clear the buildings 100 times faster than I could. The feeling of helplessness and fear of leaving someone behind was mitigated. It was so much easier, faster, and more efficient to have these dogs on-hand than to try and do it on my own.”
Sara and Raider were paired in May of 2011 and the team achieved FEMA Certification in June of 2012.