I was born January 10, 1994, in Oregon at Von Stocker's Kennel. I soon went to live with my current family, the Ramey's, and their other dog Gairda who is also a Standard Schnauzer. I started obedience training when I was only a few months old and when I was a year old I started AKC conformation and 4-H dog shows.
In ‘95 K.C. joined Kitsap County Explorer Search and Rescue (ESAR) and in ‘96 she decided to train me for search work. We originally trained with Northwest Bloodhound Search and Rescue since ESAR is for humans only. I learned how to follow a trail and find a person who had been lost. This soon became one of my favorite games to play. We had to drop out of the Bloodhound group because they decided to only train Bloodhounds and because my handler was only 14 years old.
Oh well, K.C. and I kept training hard and hoped for our chance to come along and in 1997 it did. The trainer for West Coast Search Dogs, Rita McMahon, agreed to help get us certified. Unfortunately she died in a helicopter accident on a search at Olympic National Park. She had taught us a lot and gave us the confidence we needed to keep going.
In August of ‘97 all our hard work paid off. Our county SAR Deputy (now Sargent), John Sprague, had a trail run for us by police dog handler Deputy Jay Kent. Deputy Sprague and the police dog trainer, Kip Sparber, followed us and watched how we worked. We did Great!! We found our subject with his wife and daughter picking black berries. We were finally allowed to go on in-county searches. We would be called out in conjunction with Kitsap ESAR.
We have been on many searches since then and had been heading in the correct direction the majority of the time. If have led the way to many finds even though I haven't made a find on a real search yet.
In August of '98, one year after we were allowed to start going on searches, we were finally called out of county. On that particular search the gentalman wasn't found and is still missing. We are now working with a few other counties on searches and it is neat to be able to search in all the different areas. We are going to keep working hard so that some day we will be the team to find the person.
In September '00, two new family members came into our life. Sampson and Loni are also Standard Schnauzers like me. Jean and Bruce (KC's parents) are currently working to train them how to search. We are also working on setting up an official Search Dog Group in Kitsap County so that I won't be the lone search dog anymore!
© 1997 winged_magic@hotmail.com