In the days after the World Trade Center collapsed into a mound of melted steel and dust in Lower Manhattan, few living things could be seen roving through the wreckage. Some were firefighters, some were police and some were search dogs.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 80 search dogs have been used in 20 rotating groups of Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces in New York City. In addition, four groups, all with search dogs, were used at the Pentagon. Handled by firemen, these dogs covered sections of the cordoned-off area in a grid pattern, searching for scents and "clearing" the ground they left behind.
"The dogs help to sniff out ... unfortunately, in these cases, it was mostly the remains," said Ross Fredenburg, a public affairs officer of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Region III, which encompasses Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
And weeks after the recovery efforts have ceased and search dogs are no longer sifting through the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, fourth-year College student Alex Dahlgren trains Leela, her six-month-old yellow lab for similar searches in Charlottesville.
Dahlgren stands at the foot of an Observatory Hill trail; she holds a white bottle and squeezes so puffs of Johnson & Johnson baby powder fly into the air. She is checking the wind direction - a key element in training Leela to be an air scent search and rescue dog.
Dahlgren opens the back of her white pick-up truck and lets Leela loose. Still a puppy, she bounds out, seeming more intent on play than on serious rescue work.
Building on this playfulness, Dahlgren trains Leela with treats and words of praise and excitement. Dahlgren characterizes Leela's attitude: "Let me out and find people for food!"
"Basically, I just use a training theory based off a reward system," Dahlgren said.
She estimates that it will take several years before Leela realizes that she is looking for people, rather than toys. And even when she is mature enough to distinguish between the two, Leela will continue to be rewarded after a "find."
As an air scent search dog, "if there's a person there, [Leela] will pick them up from human scent from the air current," Dahlgren explained.
Fully aware of the usefulness of air scent dogs in state-called searches, Winnie Pennington, Virginia State Search and Rescue Coordinator explained that air scent dogs work on the principle of their acute sense of smell - about 44 times the power of humans. "They categorize the world around them, and the people, by smell," she said.
In the state of Virginia, most search and rescue dogs track via air scent. Unlike bloodhounds that search by tracking ground scents, air scent searching is not as natural for dogs, and is something for which they much be conditioned.
Leela's conditioning is, and will continue to be, primarily made up of excursions to the top of Observatory Hill with Dahlgren.
During these trips, Dahlgren asks recruited volunteers to hide in the wooded area along the trails. Dahlgren then walks along with Leela on a different path until she sniffs out the volunteer.
These informal lessons are reinforced by weekly sessions with DOGS-East, a Virginia-based volunteer search and rescue organization situated throughout the state, chiefly in the Northern Virginia area.
Although Dahlgren can obtain training help from DOGS-East, she relies on friends and most recently, volunteers from the University's Pre-Veterinary Society to hide and be found during her excursions to Observatory Hill.
Jennifer Van Tiem, a first-year College student and member of the Pre-Veterinary Society, met Dahlgren when she encouraged aspiring veterinarians to help out with Leela.
"I'm interested in being a vet and I'd seen a program on TV about dogs following scents," Van Tiem explained.
She also described how her mother watched a show detailing the work of search dogs in the recovery efforts at the World Trade Center in the days after the terrorist attacks.
Like older, more experienced canines, Leela ultimately will be used to look for lost people, drowning victims, dead bodies and police evidence.
While Leela's training currently is geared primarily toward finding those lost in the wilderness, Meg Birney, training director of DOGS-East, estimates that 50 percent of the work she will do as a certified search dog will be cadaver searches.
Once fully trained, Leela and Dahlgren will, together, accompany searchers with groups like Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue group, a search organization of which Dahlgren is an active member.
"Search teams can get called out by whoever is legally responsible for the area [in which an accident or loss has occurred]: parks, police, sheriff, sometimes even the FBI and secret service," Birney said.
In the face of larger, national disasters however, the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System, a division of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is activated.
FEMA has a number of regions and each one contains a number of fire department members. Throughout the structure of emergency service personnel, FEMA certifies units of canine and handler teams.
"Primarily, fire departments [train search and rescue dogs] locally and certify and make sure they are trained for larger disasters," Fredenburg said.
These certifications are different from those required by the state of Virginia. Birney explained that, in Virginia, there are no disaster standards, and dogs are trained for wilderness finds.
Wilderness searches are more flexible and do not have the same level of danger inherent in disaster situations. "Basically, in times of disaster, when you activate FEMA, it's a separate ball game," Birney said.
Yet many Virginia dog teams are used not only for state, but also national calls. In the Oklahoma City bombing, Birney recalls that at least four DOGS-East search dogs were used.
In addition, two DOGS-East members are also certified and used by FEMA. Following the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon, dog search teams from Fairfax County and Virginia Beach fire departments were called in.
Fairfax County search specialist and dog handler Teresa MacPherson described the part dogs played in the Pentagon search.
"All [rescue operations] were within a task force, and the dogs were just a small part of the search element," MacPherson said.
Four search dogs were deployed at the Pentagon and a further two were later brought in for cadaver searches.
Bruce Speer, a FEMA dog handler based in Seattle, WA said that during the World Trade Center recovery efforts, all dogs were set on life command -- looking for live humans.
But even though a number of dogs were sent to Sept. 11 disaster sites, the active duty of most of search dogs is confined to smaller scale search efforts. And Leela most likely will be no exception.
In order to be called out on searches, Leela will undergo roughly a year and a half of training and must pass several certification exams.
"The state has a basic air scent dog standard they [search and rescue dog groups] are asked to adhere to," Pennington said. "In order to work, called out by the state, dogs must meet these."
The Virginia state standard requires dogs pass obedience and aggression tests as well as a 160-acre, multi-subject practical test and a 40-acre nighttime test.
But it seems clear from Leela's overabundance of energy and her propensity to accost passing joggers, that obedience will be a key issue in her continued training.
"To be a search dog, they have to be really well-trained and obedient, just because they interact with the public so much," Dahlgren said.
Eighteen months of training will not only develop Leela's searching abilities, but also will foster her relationship with her owner. This is important in their working relationship, as well as their pet-owner bond.
On searches, Dahlgren will need to recognize any changes in Leela's behavior, whether signs of alert or simply signs of boredom or discouragement.
Dahlgren emphasized the importance of a strong relationship between dog and handler.
"Handler and dog work together as a team, separate they are not operational," she explained.
The gratitude of "found" victims and the recent footage of New York City search dogs rifling through the World Trade Center wreckage, has made search and rescue dogs into heroes in the eyes of many, fully aware of the feats they accomplish.
Dahlgren, however, is quick to reject this illusion and instead believes that the dogs are acting on natural impulses.
"People think they're heroes ... they're not, they're just dogs, and you have to keep that in mind," she said.
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