A New Generation of Nepali SAR Dogs

I wanted to share some videos with you from the Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad Nepal's training and breeding center in Shyauli Bazaar. I'll be trekking from Pokhara to Shyauli Bazaar in June, along with HRDSN leader Ingo Schnabel and two SAR K-9 trainers from Germany.

(If you can't view the embedded videos here, I've added direct YouTube links below each.)

Shyauli Bazaar in Lamjung at the Middim Khola River is one of the most beautiful places in Nepal. Here, you'll see HRDSN's newest litter of SAR dogs-to-be.

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Meet Hunter, a SAR dog donated to HRDSN by Lynn Martin from Oregon. Lynn teaches at the Dog Obedience Academy. Here's Hunter demonstrating his man-trailing skills after just a few lessons.

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See a bit of the daily "shaping" training at Shyauli Bazaar. "The shaping or fine-tuning of the dogs' performance has to be done step by step. With the help of the clicker training method and voice commands in Nepalese language, the dogs learn to negotiate obstacles of different kinds and shapes. This is preparation for entering and searching collapsed buildings for disaster victims."

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And here's Dunston, reporting his find to his handler and leading him back to the subject. "Rückverweisen" is German for "search, find, report back and then lead your handler to the subject."

The way Dunston communicates a find is jumping up and placing his paws on his handler's chest. This method is taught step by step with clicker training and small treats and is used with dogs who don't like to bark at a discovered person. Dunston was never a barker, and since he is an excellent air-scenting dog, he was trained to do his reporting (or alerting) in this manner.

 

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A Walk In The Woods

There's no news article link to give you for this one. I guess the ending didn't make it a newsworthy story. Still, a disabled teen did spend a cold night in the woods, and search and rescue, local firefighters, and members of CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) did spend all night looking for him, wandering the forest, Forest Service roads and trails, tracking, and knocking on doors in Munds Park.

He'd left the house around 5 p.m. on Friday but hadn't returned home by dark. The first searchers on scene checked what was said to be his usual route to Frog Tank, but there was no sign of the subject, legally an adult but mentally much younger, who wasn't dressed well for what was becoming a very cold night.  It had, after all, been a rather warm spring day.

We'd brought ATVs with us but were told the young man would probably be afraid of searchers, so the vehicle noise certainly wouldn't help. Not to mention the muddy and very wet conditions that would have made driving difficult. Even on foot, my search partner and I encountered some obstacles, at one point stopped by a wide and deep, swiftly moving creek swollen with spring runoff. We talked to two of our teammates who'd arrived on the opposite side of the creek, compared notes about our perspective assignments, and since our next search assignment was on their side and theirs on ours, we swapped.

As my companion and I looked for prints around a stock tank and seasonal ponds and along water-filled washes, we had to climb over barbed wire fences, slog through the mud, watch our step on jagged rocks and mounds of snow, and at one point, cross a very rickety suspension bridge. Meanwhile, we called the subject's name as nicely as we could, adding that he wasn't in trouble and we just wanted to help. We'd stop to listen for any response, but all we heard were coyotes.

And the only tracks we found belonged to critters, big and small. Other searchers even spotted some fresh mountain lion prints. In the pitch dark, I couldn't help but wonder if we were being watched.

Another search team did, however, find human prints in the woods. They matched prints they'd spotted around the subject's home. Incident Command had checked and described the tread on the boots of those who'd arrived first on scene to do a hasty search and ruled those out, so everyone was optimistic these were the missing teenager's prints. But the tracks were eventually lost in rocky terrain.

At daybreak, weary searchers were replaced by a fresh crew. But it wasn't long before the subject was located, Code 4 (fine), as he was walking back home.

Nepal Update: A Documentary and Photos From The HRDSN

With five weeks to go until I leave for Nepal, I've been learning as much as I can about the country and their only SAR team, which not only responds to calls for missing and injured trekkers but also to disaster situations, like earthquakes, floods, and landslides. The Himalayan Rescue Dog Squad Nepal, or HRDSN, also provides medical aid to remote villages and even started a school that defied Nepal's caste system and gender prejudice.

I just finished watching the one-hour documentary, A School of Their Own by Debra Kaufman, who sponsors a Nepali student. Debra went to Nepal to meet the child, and it was then that she discovered how the Riverside School's mission intersected with the country's fight for democracy and freedom. The school struggled to stay afloat during Nepal's bloody, 10-year civil war, during which the police accused the children of being Maoist rebels while the rebels themselves were forcibly drafting children over 12 years of age into their army.

I learned a lot about education in Nepal, the 10-year People's War, and the HRDSN's special school in this documentary, which "shows how children, even in the most extreme circumstances, can lead a nation to a better future."

And here are some photos from the HRDSN, taken by Ingo and other team members:

Below, Ingo distributes application forms for medical aid and numbers for the line of men. They will have their turn after the women and children have been treated. The villagers are Muslims, most from Rautahat. The former Hindu Kingdom of Nepal didn't come to their aid following a flood, but HRDSN did.

This next photo was taken in 2002. While the HRDSN's medical disaster unit stopped on its way to the Terai Flood disaster in Rautahat, they stayed overnight at a school compound in Lothar, Makwanpur District. The local people took that opportunity to line up their children for medical checkups by Ingo and the team. Most of these kids suffered from diarrhea and chronic bronchitis.

The first villagers arrived early in the morning at a HRDSN medical camp.

This is James Scott, an Australian trekker who went missing in the Gosaikund and was found 43 days later. This picture (with Ingo) was taken in 1992, a year after his ordeal, when James came back to thank his rescuers.

And this is Ingo today, with Tara, one of the HRDSN's next generation of rescue dogs.

This is Lobsang Ngodup, co-founder HRDSN in 1989. Ingo met Lobsang 37 years ago while trekking with his dog, Nelson, in the Himachal Pradesh. Up in the mountains at a place called Tiuni, there was a little shop run by Tibetan man (that was Lobsang) who sold dry yak meat. The two became friends and shared a dream of starting rescue dog teams in Nepal and India for earthquake relief.

This next photo was taken during a HRDSN student fitness training in 1999. The boy on the right is Karna Dura, who I'll be meeting in Kathmandu. Karna is now at the Lalit Kala Campus, studying business management and fine arts and, with some of his schoolmates, runs a cyber cafe.

This is another Nepali citizen I may meet. He (or she?) lives at the HRDSN headquarters at Shayauli Bazaar...

 And the, um... dish on the platter in this last photo (for now) is, I'm told, a delicacy. 

Nepal Adventure Update: A Visitor From The U.N.

I recently got some exciting news from Ingo Schnabel (pictured here), founder of the Himalaya Rescue Dog Squad Nepal (HRDSN).

While I'll be with Ingo and the others in Pokhara and Shayauli Bazaar, the squad will be visited by Adrian DeCastro, PhD., special adviser and counselor at the United Nations. Dr. DeCastro and some of his colleagues and potential donors are very interested in the HRDSN's work and want to see things firsthand in Nepal. This means a lot to the squad, including the potential for funding infrastructure and equipment they desperately need. So, I'll really look forward to meeting Dr. DeCastro and learning more about this unfolding aspect of the HRDSN story.

Oh, and I finally booked a flight... and then another flight... and another. Twenty-three hours and 17 minutes of flying time and 14 hours, 48 minutes of waiting in between those flights, and I'll be in Nepal. Phoenix to LAX to Hong Kong for a mighty long layover to Kathmandu. After a few days in Kathmandu, I'll take a short flight to my final destination: Pokhara.

A Snowy Search Near Munds Park

"Everybody be quiet for a second!" I had to raise my voice over the sound of the wind and radio traffic, neither of which stopped on my command. Nor did the racket caused by the icy pellets hitting my hood.

But my three tracking companions abruptly stopped talking, as I unzipped my jacket to turn down my radio. I thought I'd heard something just as we'd started moving again. If I had heard something, it was certainly far off and in the opposite direction than we'd been headed.

Another tracker said he thought he'd heard something, too.

"I'm going to shout," I told my teammates, then let out the loudest, high-pitched yell that I could. And then we all waited. Seconds later, I exclaimed, "Yes! I heard a bark!"  My teammates moved towards me and listened. Then we all heard it. Definitely a dog, and it was now actively barking.

During our mission briefing, we'd been told the woman we were looking for had called a friend the previous afternoon and said she was going to walk her dog and then come home. But she never returned, and her vehicle was located the following morning at the overlook on I-17 south of Munds Park. We'd also been told that the dog, a husky/shepherd mix named Max, is aggressive and protective so we should be very cautious if we encounter him. But, at this point, the barking was quite a distance off, across a canyon and possibly over the rise beyond.

Almost immediately, the four of us designated Tracking Team 3 took off in the direction of the sound, taking turns shouting and blowing whistles then quickly stopping to listen. "Tanya!" we called, hoping to hear a shout back from the 39-year-old mom we were looking for. "Max!" we yelled, hoping the dog would keep barking.

Once down in the canyon, we lost the sound but kept moving. Eventually, we split up, with two staying in the canyon as it rounded the base of the hill and two of us heading up-slope, trying to pick up the barking again.

We called and listened, called and listened, but it seemed the barking had stopped. As my teammate was talking with Incident Command on the radio, I moved further toward the far side of the hill and continued calling. And then I heard another bark. It still seemed rather distant. Was the dog moving?

The two of us continued in the direction of the sound, then stopped short. Suddenly, the barking was very close, and we caught sight of movement through the thick brush maybe 50 feet away. That was definitely Max! We watched the dog pace while we waited for our teammates to arrive before moving any closer. "Tanya!" we called a few more times, but there was no response.  Was she over there?

Finally, four of our teammates arrived, and we all moved in. Max moved off. No sign of Tanya in the immediate area. Two trackers followed Max, who was dragging his leash, and four of us began looking around.

Soon after, we found articles of clothing mostly buried in fresh snow right where Max had been pacing. A definite sign... but not a good one. We all knew this was likely evidence of paradoxical undressing, a phenomenon often associated with severe hypothermia. One of the items was partially burned, indicating that Tanya had made a futile attempt to start a fire. The other discarded articles of clothing were intact and not burned at all.

The four of us proceeded to search the immediate area, doing some "purposeful wandering" and then line-searching as best we could over the dense, rocky terrain, looking under pinion pine and juniper trees as we slowly worked our way back and forth. But we found no further evidence. Or Tanya.

After a long day of searching, often in blizzard conditions, we hiked out to base as our weary selves were replaced by fresh searchers with fresh eyes and bodies. For the rest of that evening, throughout the night and into the next day, the searching continued, with volunteers from our county and Yavapai County Search and Rescue working together.

At around noon on Wednesday, Tanya Morris's body was located by search dogs about 100 feet from where we'd found her clothing and boots. She'd been covered in snow and not immediately visible.

See: Missing Woman Found Dead South Of Munds Park

Added 3/16: Tanya Morris's obituary was in the paper today. She had four children and a life-partner of 14 years.