Making the Team: FEMA Search & Rescue Certification

It takes agility, focus, curiosity and a lot of hard work to receive certification from the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an Urban Search and Rescue canine. And even with daily training exercises from handlers with decades of experience, some 20 – 60 percent of the applicants still fail at the trials held only six to nine times per year.

What is it that makes these trials so arduous? The dog and handler team are given 20 minutes to traverse a pile of mock “rubble” — often stacked ten feet high. The dog sniff out and locate a number of volunteer “victims” buried throughout and must bark for at least 45 seconds, the official alert to a human presence. The dog can only miss one victim per trial, and any false alerts mean automatic disqualification. And from the dog’s perspective, all this work just for the chance to play with…