Rescue dog proves it is never off duty
Published: June 1, 2007
An ‘off-duty’mountain rescue search dog located an injured hill walker while enjoying a walk with her owner.
Neil Bulger, a member of the Arran mountain rescue, was walking on Goatfell behind Corrie when his dog Briar disappeared for about 10 minutes.
The four-year-old yellow Labrador works for the search and rescue dog association (SARDA) and is a serving member of the Arran mountain rescue team.
Neil said: ‘Briar is trained as an air scenting dog and locates people or items touched by them. She can smell a person up to half a mile away, long before I can see them.’
She then indicates to her handler that she has found someone by barking.
Realising that her indication was serious, Neil asked Briar to show him where the person was, and off she went.
After walking for about 10 minutes Neil and Briar discovered a 57-year-old walker whose face was covered in blood. It appeared that he had fallen face first into the burn.
After a survey of his wounds, Neil cleaned him up and within 10 minutes the man’s wife appeared with her car at the water board treatment plant and they were on their way to the hospital.
After locating someone Briar is usually given her favourite toy to play with unfortunately on this day Neil didn’t have one with him.
‘I was really quite taken aback; you can always tell if there is a person up wind of you because Briar’s nose lifts and she smells the air.
‘But when she’s not working she doesn’t usually react and turn into work mode but she did this time.’
It is very rare for a search dog to locate a missing or injured person when off duty.
Neil has only read of one other case where a search dog in America located a mass grave whilst out for a training exercise that turned out to be four murder victims.
Briar is primarily a pet but she can switch to search mode by putting on a harness. As her handler, Neil is the only one who can accompany the dog on searches.
Neil is still puzzled by what happened: ‘I really don’t know why she did react maybe it was the smell of the blood, I just don’t know.’
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
If you like this, you'll love Good Animal News:
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: