The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Rescue Dog The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Rescue Dog
Showing posts with label Rescue Dog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rescue Dog. Show all posts

Monday, September 13, 2021

Remembering the Hero Dogs of 9/11


When the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, nearly 10,000 emergency rescue workers joined in the efforts to help. More than 300 of those heroes were dogs.

We remember and honor the Hero Dogs of 9/11 along with the countless people who had their lives irrevocably changed by man’s best friend. From search and rescue dogs to comfort dogs to bomb detection dogs, these canines’ stories of courage and healing are a long-lasting legacy that must never be forgotten.

Always remember.

To read more on this story, click here: Remembering the Hero Dogs of 9/11


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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Couple Custom-Builds ‘Mega Bed’ So All 8 Of Their Rescue Dogs Can Sleep With Them


For most of us, our rescue animals are like family. From the moment we take them home, we blend them into our daily lives and quickly grow to love them fiercely.

It’s pretty clear that the couple in this story feel that way about their rescue dogs — all eight of them! They love their pooches so much, and feel so strongly that they are part of their family, that they did something that not many pet owners do — they allowed all of their pets to sleep in one bed with them!

To read more on this story, click here: Couple Custom-Builds ‘Mega Bed’ So All 8 Of Their Rescue Dogs Can Sleep With Them



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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

11 Things Dog Owners Should Never Say


When it comes to dogs, owners sometimes have tunnel vision, seeing the world only from the perspective of their own dog or their own dog-training experience. This often leads to owners tossing out sentences that, in an ideal world, would never be uttered. Yet these words are clues to a bigger issue, or a situation that's about to become an issue, including not fully understanding dog behavior, social cues, body language, or simply good manners toward other dogs and dog owners.

Training yourself is the the most productive strategy for improving the behavior of your dog -- as well as other dogs that your dog socializes with -- because you are such a big influencer of behavior, even when you don't realize you're influencing your dog's actions.

Dr. Patricia McConnell writes in her book "The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs," "Focusing on the behavior at our end of the leash isn't a new concept in dog training. Most professional dog trainers actually spend very little time working with other people's dogs; most of our time is spent training humans. Take it from me, we're not the easiest species on the block to train."

But it doesn't have to feel daunting. Training yourself can become easier if you're truly seeing your thought process about your own dog and dogs you pass on the street. Once you recognize how you think about them, you can more easily influence what you think about them. And once you do that, better interactions will follow.

To read more on this story, click here: 11 Things Dog Owners Should Never Say

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Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Meet Ruger, The First Anti-Poaching Dog in Zambia, Where He is Now Responsible for Putting 150 Poachers Out of Business


Ruger, once considered a “bad” dog, is perfect for his job.  Because he had a very rough start in life, he was aggressive and would snap at people, but part of his personality has made him easily trained to become the first anti-poaching dog in Zambia, where he is now responsible for putting 150 poachers out of business.

“Bad dogs have an overwhelming desire to bring you things,” Megan Parker told The Guardian. “Dogs love telling you what they know. They have an inability to quit.

”Parker is the director of research at Working Dogs for Conservation in Montana.  She searches shelters for difficult, “unadoptable” dogs who’d have no problem putting poachers in their place.

Ruger was born on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.  When he was young, his owner shot his littermates, but he was able to flee.  He wound up in a shelter, where he was noticed by a trainer who told WD4C about him.

At first, Ruger was aggressive, and would bite people.  Parker had a hard time getting him to the vet, and he hated small spaces.  But there was something about him that encouraged her to keep working with him.  However, there was something else that stood in Ruger’s way of becoming an anti-poaching dog at all.

“Early on in his training, Meg was under pressure from her colleagues to decide if Ruger would make the cut,” said Pete Coppolillo, executive director at WD4C. “If a dog doesn’t work out, we make sure they have a forever home. We all wondered if Meg should start finding a place for Ruger, who was losing his sight.
”But she knew that Ruger had the drive necessary to make the cut.

“These dogs have an unrelenting drive,” she said. “For a dog that doesn’t stop, you can train that dog to bring you things.”

Parker was eventually able to match up Ruger with the Delta Team scouts, a law enforcement unit operated by the South Luangwa Conservation Society and the Zambia Wildlife Authority.  The scouts had little experience with dogs, and were leery of the idea that a dog could help.

Ruger proved his worth at his first day on the job.  Roadblocks were set up to search vehicles for illegal paraphernalia.

“It takes humans an hour or more to search a car,” said Coppolillo, “whereas it takes dogs three to four minutes.”

Ruger sat down and glared at one of the passing cars.

“That’s his alert [signal],” Coppolillo continued.

Several pieces of luggage were inside the vehicle, and the scouts who searched them came up empty-handed.  But Ruger kept his eye on one bag, which contained a matchbox in a plastic bag.  Inside of it was a primer cap, which ignites gunpowder in the illegal muzzle loaders that poachers rely on.

“At that moment, everyone believed that Ruger knew what he was doing,” said Coppolillo. “They learned to think of Ruger as a colleague.”

Now he’s been a valuable team member for a year and a half.

“He’s a hero who’s responsible for dozens of arrests and has convinced many skeptics of his detection skills,” Coppolillo noted.

Some people likened his skills to witchcraft, but at a courthouse demonstration, a scout hid a piece of ivory and Ruger found it in only a couple minutes.  And his deteriorating vision hasn’t impaired him one bit.

“His skills have sharpened.  He’s working with a few younger dogs, who are somewhat goofy and get distracted like most puppies do,” Coppolillo said. “Ruger remains focused despite many distractions, such as having wild animals close by. Baboons are the worst. His lack of eyesight works in his favor because he almost entirely focuses on his sense of smell.

”Because the work is very dangerous, Ruger does not have to work every day, and Godfrey, a scout, rewards him with games of tug-of-war when he nabs someone.

“Poachers are well-armed and well-trained,” Coppolillo said. “African elephants don’t live throughout the continent. Poachers kill elephants where they reside and smuggle them to places where they don’t live to throw law enforcement off their tracks.

”Though it is illegal to hunt within South Luangwa National Park’s boundaries, poachers do it anyway, and over the years, many scouts have colluded with them.  Good scouts are hard to come by, and in Africa, it’s even more difficult to find dogs like Ruger.

“Good dog selection is absolutely essential,” Coppolillo said. “Village dogs simply don’t have the drive to do this kind of work. There are only a handful of suitable and reputable kennels in Africa. Most are focused on selling security and military dogs, so they’re not as well socialized as a conservation dog needs to be. Plus, they generally sell those dogs for much more than what it would cost us to source a dog in the US.

”Parker will continue her dedicated work of finding suitable American shelter dogs to send to Africa to keep saving the lives of countless elephants.





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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Search and Rescue Dog Teams from the United States Deployed to Nepal


Making up part of the U.S. contingent that were deployed to Nepal on Sunday night were these six dogs and their handlers from the Search Dog Foundation from Ojai, California.

The dogs and their humans will assist in rescue and recovery efforts in that earthquake stricken country. The six teams from the SDF are part of that amazing organization’s canine-firefighter volunteers who have assisted in numerous international and national recovery efforts since their founding.

Established almost twenty years ago by Wilma Melville, a retired schoolteacher from New Jersey, who  with her Lab Murphy, in 1995 was one of the only 15 Advanced Certified teams in the entire U.S. who worked at the bombed Oklahoma City Federal Building. That experience gave Melville the “determination to find a better way to create highly skilled canine search teams,” so she established SDF the following year in 1996.

SDF is the only non-profit in the U.S. dedicated to finding and training rescued dogs and partnering them with firefighters. They recruit dogs from shelters and breed rescue groups, then provide the dogs with professional training, and match them with firefighters and other first responders who then go on to find people trapped in the wreckage following disasters.

They go to great lengths to find canines with the exceptional characteristics required in a search dog: intense drive, athleticism, energy and focus. The traits that can often make dogs unsuitable as family pets and land them in a shelter—intense energy and extreme drive—are exactly the qualities required in a search dog.

SDF offers these talented animals what they crave: a job! The dogs (primarily Labs, Golden Retrievers, Border Collies and mixes) are recruited from animal shelters and rescue groups throughout the Western states—some just hours away from being euthanized.

 A happy ending for all… as these dogs are transformed from rescued to rescuer. The teams are provided at no cost to fire departments or taxpayers, and with no government funding.  Do think of donating to this worthwhile organization so they can continue in their mission to help disaster victims.

Watch the video to see the teams walking up to their plane. We wish them, and the people of Nepal well.




These are the six handlers and their dogs from SDF who are assisting in recovery efforts in Nepal.
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