"Avalanche Rescue Dogs: Multiple v Single Handler Teams"
by Sandy Bryson

This article is following up on Steve Gamble's article in the Avalanche Review December, 1996. This article will also appear in the Avalanche Review, April, 1997

December 23, 1996, at 10 pm WOOF Search Dog Unit received a page requesting dogs to assist in the search for a missing snowboarder at Sugar Bowl Ski Area in California. Four dog teams responded. The ski patrol and a Placer County Sheriff’s Deputy briefed the searchers.
At about 11 am that day, Joel Busath and a friend were snowboarding near a band of cliffs called "The Sisters." The two young men considered jumping off the 25- to 30-foot cliff. Joel had made the jump successfully the previous year and wanted to try it again. They hiked up the mountain, but the friend did not want to jump and left Joel at the top of the cliff. He did not see what Joel did next.
Later that morning someone found a snowboard and turned it in at the lodge.
Around 3 pm, Joel’s friend, who could not find him, reported him missing.
Ski patrol had searched the area and discovered a depression in the snow at the base of the cliff. A set of footprints left the depression and led to a groomed run. The signs indicated that someone had jumped off the cliffs and walked to a groomed ski run below. Ski area dogs, ski patrolmen, and Tahoe Nordic skiers had done hasty searches in part of the ski area.
Displaying an aerial photograph at the briefing, the deputy assigned the dog teams to the base of the cliff band where they suspected Joel had jumped. He wanted a very fine, detailed search in a half-moon pattern downhill.
Groomers transported the dog teams up the mountain. It was a calm night. Several inches of snow had fallen during the day at this elevation. Led by patrolman Sean, the handlers skied across the steep slope to the base of the cliffs.
They formed a plan. The 2 most experienced avalanche dogs, Marie Sjoqvist with Shanto and Bob Macaulay with Quasar, would search the highest probability areas. Chris Salisbury with Nicholas and Lynn Macaulay with Zephyr would cover the other areas.
First, though, they decided to send each dog one at a time across the cliff band below the chutes. Bob directed Quasar to sniff closely at the base of the cliffs. When he reached the snow depression found earlier, the dog indicated briefly but left it without alerting. Marie’s dog Shanto performed a similar sniff pattern, showing interest in the depression then leaving it.
It was Zephyr’s turn. The excited Lab jumped around digging at Lynn’s ski. She knew he was playing and directed him out to search. When she reached the area above the depression, Zephyr was 20 feet beyond her and 15 feet below the ski trail digging in an undisturbed area of the slope. She watched the dog dig, his body tense, his tail wagging differently, more rapidly. Zephyr backed up a step and barked. Looking up at Lynn, he barked again.
Skiing to the dog, Lynn saw a glove about a foot and a half down in the hole he had opened. Cautious, she said he had found a glove. As she pulled off her own glove to check further, Zephyr started digging again and produced a second glove, this one full of hand.
While the other handlers dug Joel’s body out of several feet of snow, Lynn and the dog played with a bumper toy.

Kirkwood Ski Patrolman Dave Paradysz: "After noon January 4, 1995, another patrolman and I were out digging a snow pit for layer analysis in another part of the ski area. We had just gotten to the bottom of a 10-foot hole when the avalanche call came over the radio. We jetted over to the bottom of Chairlift 2 and rode that up. My dog Doc was at the station at the top of Chair 2. The avalanche was a few hundred yards from the station south of the top of Chair 2, well within bounds, in an area called Button Bowl south of the groomed trail leading to the bottom of Chair 3. Two snowboarders and a skier had been on the hill. The skier Jeff Eckland was the one caught. He is a groomer at Kirkwood Ski Area. He was on his day off.
"At the top of Chair 2, the patrolman I was with drove my dog and me up the ridge on the snowmobile. Meanwhile Dave Allessio was also working the station with his dog Woody. He was one of the first patrolmen to get the call and traversed into the slide path. He started searching the bottom part where most of the debris was.
"When we traversed into the slide, Doc was obviously feeding off my stress. He was pretty excited about the whole deal. It didn't take much to put him to work. It was fortunate. There was a big pile of snow in front of a stand of trees. We started right there and, boom, the dog hit it. Within 10 seconds, he was digging and found him.
"There was a patrolman named Louie with a hasty pack ahead of me skiing in. Before Louie could even get his pack off, Doc was digging and I was telling him to dig there. I clicked out of my skis and went over where the dog was. Between the trees Doc had uncovered this guy's back.
"I couldn't immediately tell how he was oriented, up or down. I was pretty much digging frantically. I thought I had his head, but it was his elbow. That clued me which way he was facing. So I dug to his face and was able to get him air. I could not see his face, but I was able to talk to him then. He was conscious. I asked him where he was hurt and if there was anyone else he knew of who was caught. He said his left side was hurting. It turned out he had a broken rib and bruised liver. I called for a sled with a backboard. Oxygen arrived with the other patrollers. We were able to put him on oxygen right away while uncovering him."
Dave Myers, ski patrol director: "The dog dug to Jeff by himself. Everything worked right. Fifteen minutes from the call to the find. We had two avalanche dogs located at the top of the hill. Everything that was done was appropriate and expedient."
"Apparently Jeff knew he was in the slide, tried swimming, tried to cover his face up, and it looked like just the position of his body might have aided in that. I think everything combined helped. It looked like he had been swept to the side of the avalanche into the trees. He was under about 3 feet of compacted snow. He was not able to move at all. They estimate he was found in 15 to 20 minutes, by 12:27. It took quite a few minutes to actually dig him out.
"As other patrolmen got the oxygen on him I was able to reward the dog. He had already grabbed a stick. He was pretty happy about the whole deal. He was the true definition of a hero--he had no clue what he had done. Happy as can be, same old Doc. Then we went back to work and helped clear the rest of the slide path to make sure there was nobody else. Probe lines got established."
Myers: "We had about 12 patrollers on the scene and about 30 volunteers."
Paradysz: "I worked Doc for about an hour. Pretty intense. The dog was beat. I brought him down to the bottom, got him some water, let him rest while I went back up and probed.
"Jeff was found approximately 100 feet below the crown, swept into some trees from above. We were guessing it ran 500-600 feet total. It was hard slab. I don't know if anyone did a fracture line profile afterwards. Jeff lost both skis, his pole and a glove in the slide. Originally we thought the slide might have been ridge deposition, but up there later we saw the sliding surface was pretty close to the ground. The crown was a 3-foot fracture. It had been shot the day before, the last time it snowed."
Jeff Eckland, after the rescue: "I knew I was going to be all right when I felt the dog on top of my head."

These incidents, and hundreds more dating back 3 decades in the US, longer in other parts of the world, tell the stories of trained dogs successfully finding missing people, some of them buried in snow. Part of the story is the dog’s drive and training to alert when he recognizes target human scent. The other part of the story is the partnership between handlers and working dogs, a partnership distinct from the fawning warm fuzzies typically seen as the relationship between pet owners and their pets.
The work itself—finding missing people, or in other disciplines finding criminals, dope, bombs, even sheep—defines the partnership. Indeed the work objective sometimes supersedes the natural friendship that develops between humans and domestic canines. Very high drive dogs that excel in their work give the impression of needing no handling. Such dogs focus on their jobs eagerly, intensely, and appear to ignore the handler.
It is a mistake, however, to conclude that the dog could work equally well for multiple human partners. It is a question of reliability.
Reliability is critical in bomb detection. The dog team misses the bomb—boom. The dog triggers the bomb—you get the picture.
Reliability is equally critical in avalanche detection. The dog team misses the person—the person dies. The dog misses the person—the ski area gets a lawsuit. You get the picture.
No human, much less a dog, is 100% reliable. Bombs explode. People die. But police and civilian dog teams have over the past 30 years built a body of policies, procedures, performance records, and case law establishing criteria for working dogs in public service. These criteria deserve scrutiny by ski areas considering protocols for avalanche rescue dogs.

Following is a brief review of important elements ski areas should consider when deciding if their rescue dog(s) should be handled primarily by one person (usu. patroller) who takes the dog home daily or by multiple people, typically kenneling the dog at the ski area:

1) Daily health exam, feeding and care.
The nose-to-tail health inspection (usu. in the morning) every day by the same person is probably the best early detection system we have for health problems, which determines if the dog can work reliably. Feeding twice a day in the same relaxed area of a home environment sets up a routine that veterinarians recommend for the dog’s health and as a second indicator if something is wrong. The general term care covers all the tasks from brushing and nail cutting to voiding on command (a nice feature if your dog rides in helicopters) and stool inspections. It also sets the stage for bonding, an often misunderstood term.

2) Play and bonding.
Dogs need time off duty to rest, relax, sleep. They also need play. Not running free on the slopes causing skiers to wreck and schmoozing their food. The handler uses play (may include food) to communicate what is permissible, what isn’t, and to create incentives for the dog to actively seek out the handler for reinforcement—important tools in the trainer’s bag of tricks.

3) Training and testing to standards.
Who trains the dog teams? Who tests them? Does every handler undergo separate training and testing with the dog he may be responsible for deploying? How frequently are teams evaluated?

4) Working the dog—most important, reading the dog.
Under the best of circumstances, real search missions are high stress affairs. In Lynn Macaulay’s case, when they started searching, Zephyr spent time digging at her ski tips. A handler less familiar with the dog might have interpreted this as alerting, wasting time and energy excavating the wrong spot, also reinforcing the wrong behavior. In Dave Paradysz’ case, when Doc sniffed the scent and dug to the victim on his own, his persistence reflected targeted training that contrasts with mere diffuse, excited behavior. Both dogs are privately owned, single handler dogs.

5) Liability—who is responsible?
The courts have established that the handler is responsible for working the dog. The ski area typically shares the responsibility for training, supervision, etc. What handler would like to be responsible for working a dog today that someone else had possibly mishandled yesterday?

In the ideal world every handler is a professional, every dog gives an unmistakable alert on every find, and every ski area has a boundless budget for training. In reality budgets are tight, people (and dogs) are lazy, and what starts out as a dynamite "we’re all gonna do this" type program sometimes devolves into disputes and out of control, neglected dogs.
The insurance all ski areas can afford against failed avalanche dog programs is intelligent administration, before and after getting the dogs.