The English language contains dozens of words that describe the dog
Yet none alone seems entirely adequate
loving, loyal, devoted, amusing, spirited, tireless
How they enchant us, delight us, brighten our days
And how they work for us
Down through history no other animal has served us in as many ways
Called by one philosopher
"the noblest beast God ever made," the dog is at work
On farms and in pastures around the world...
Across the forbidding reaches of the frozen North...
As comrades on the battlefields of war...
Seeking even the faintest scent of a buried victim
Of disaster...
Or a hiker who has lost his way
And he is the devoted servant of he ill, elderly, and handicapped
We will never know exactly how this
unprecedented partnership came about or when
But one story tells us: "In the beginning
God created man, but seeing him so feeble
He gave him the dog"
Every year since 1877 a stylized
ritual has been repeated in Manhattan
the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show the world series of dogdom
Some 2,600 dogs, all purebreds and prizewinners in other shows
will compete. Westminster now welcomes 130 breeds and varieties
There are 52 million dogs in the United States
While some romp in the yard or sleep by the fire
others are being carefully primped and primed to take home ribbons
"Oh, Rhye, Rhye, Rhye Oh, Rhye, Rhye, Rhye
What do you think, huh?"
"Give me another kiss Good boy!"
"You're a sweetheart aren't you"
"That's $50.00
That's a show special normally $79.95"
"Low sodium
A diet for your dogs an all natural diet
No added preservatives colorings, or flavorings"
"Oh, that ought to be great"
"Okay.
Try that out on him and if you live in Manhattan
there's a store that delivers for you right on the bag"
While most show dogs today perform
no labor at all outside the arena
historically their ancestors worked
side by side with man
In fact, our unique and splendid partnership
with the dog began as a working relationship...
as long as ten to fifteen thousand years ago
Over the centuries many of their jobs became obsolete
One that has continued is tending sheep
In New Zealand, sheep outnumber people twenty to one
and a saying goes: "No dog, no shepherd
No shepherd, no sheep
No sheep, no wool or meat"
With dogs at their side
New Zealand farmers now rank second in wool exports
and are near the top in meat products
Some of New Zealand's back country is so
remote it is only accessible by helicopter
The dogs may not like the ride
but where the shepherd goes
so goes his devoted dog
Grant and Robyn Calder run a sheep
station on New Zealand's South Island
Grant is a champion breeder and trainer of sheepdogs
in the tradition of his father and grandfather before him
Much of New Zealand is mountainous country
suitable only for grazing
Without the sheepdog this would be wasteland.
Working their 13,000-acre property with no additional hands,
the husband-and-wife team herd 7,500 sheep.
"It's really an unusual partnership that a husband
and wife work a farm like this together
But thanks to the dogs we can manage to do it
Without them, we just couldn't do it
"A useless farmer could come on to this place with my team of dogs
and work out how to work them and actually make a living here
But if you took my dogs away and left me on this place
we would be broke in 12 months"
"Here, pup, pup, pup, pup
Come on, I have to give you a name"
One of the two types of dogs the
Calders breed is called a "huntaway"
Grant begins training at about three months
Huntaways work the sheep from behind
facing away from the shepherd
"That's the first signs of a pup starting to work
is to go over there like that and chase those sheep
If I put a string on that pup
the noise would start coming
and that's the makings of a huntaway dog
"Two sheep over there
Good boy, good boy"
Even early in the training
a simple tug of the string keeps this pup facing correctly
"Good boy. Good boy, good boy, good boy"
This six-month-old pup is learning not only
when to bark but when to stop
once the sheep obey him or the shepherd commands him
"Will a go, Danny
Will a go
Good boy, that's good. Good boy"
The second type working the
Calders' sheep is called a "heading" dog
They virtually never bark but control
the sheep entirely with their eyes
"She tries to mesmerize them
She can introduce herself quietly
looking straight into the sheep's eyes"
Twice a year the Calders round up from the high country
2,500 of their sheep for shearing
to send to market,
or in this instance
to be dipped to protect their wool
Robyn works on a high ridge and Grant is lower
down as they and their ten dogs begin to pull the flock together
Because sheep in New Zealand have no natural enemies
they have never developed a herding instinct
and therefore spread far afield
The dogs are tireless and would literally work until they drop
It's not unusual in the course of
a day for them to cover up to 50 miles
Over the years, man has channeled the dog's ancient
hunting instincts into herding and driving behavior
Ther shepherds command the dogs with words or by whistling
"They're just basic commands
A 'run' command (he whistles it)
You want him to run slow, you can vary it...
"...(he whistles)
'Left hand' (he whistles)
'Right hand' (he whistles)
'Stop' (he whistles)"
"When he's finished the job, you have two commands to call him off
One's 'Well a go' and the other one is (he whistles). Well a go"
"It's hard to believe how tough dogs are
And on this property they work
in extreme conditions in all types of weather
Even with a dog in those sort of conditions
everything might be against him
He might have cut feet' he might have snowballs built up on him
They will always try and run
they will always try their best to do and complete
the job that you've put in front of them"
Like army sergeants on alert, the dogs keep the flock moving
In one week's time
the remarkable team of two people and their
ten steadfast dogs have completed the roundup
"A dog's work is never done
And when he finishes on the hill
he comes into the real hard work of slogging in the hot yards
The hotter it gets, the more the sheep
put their heads down and won't go
And we tend to only work with one or two dogs in the yards
so that we can alternate them
so that each dog gets a turn because it is hot and dry
dusty, dirty work"
Because of the intense heat
the tired sheep often don't want to move
creating traffic jams in the tight confines of the pen
To find the offenders the dogs simply make
a sidewalk out of the backs of the sheep
After a chemical dip for protection against external parasites
the sheep will be set free to wander up to the
high country again to graze until the next roundup
And then, once more, when the shepherds head for the hills
their canine partners will be by their sides
"For us to spend a day on the hill
horse and dogs
the companionship and love and hard work that they give to us
you could never receive from any other animal in the world"
The New Zealand farmer and his dog
have become a world-famous partnership
Today, more than 200,000 such dogs
are on the job across the country
Probably the most photographed is this one
a public tribute to the dogs that help
keep the economy so vital and alive
The origins of the domesticated dog
lie shrouded in the distant past
but it is generally agreed that the dog evolved from
the wolf or that both share a common ancestor
Wolves and dogs have the same basic anatomy
physiology, and patterns of behavior
and underneath the dog's domestic facade
lie the instincts of a predatory hunter
Wolves live and hunt in packs
Unlike other meat-eaters
such as members of the cat family that ambush their prey
wolves stalk chase after, and run down prey
However as the wolf quickly learns
even with the cooperation of the pack
he is no match for an animal as large as a bison
The mainstay of the wolf's diet are animals
the size of deer small moose, or elk
Pack behavior is strictly regulated by a
dominance hierarchy understood by all members
In the dog, pack loyalty is basically unaltered
even after thousands of years of domestication
The main difference is the dog looks to man as leader of the pack
Modern-da scientists have pondered why early man
himself a flesh-eating hunter
would have turned competitors like wolves or wild dogs into allies
Animal behaviorist Dr. Michael Fox
one of the world's leading experts on wolves and dogs
has one explanation for how the partnership may have begun
"I feel that dogs and humans came together
because of their similarity in lifestyles
to the degree that we hunted in small packs
we were gatherer-hunters
and the dog-wolf ancestor was like that too"
"And it's quite probable that the early hunting societies found
that dogs were pretty good allies
if they were properly socialized to help locate
and even ambush prey"
"Dogs, in their long association with us
have powers of manipulation"
"In one sense we have domesticated them
but they have domesticated us too
We have the situation where the dog will come up
and just look at you and look at you and you have to feed it
The dog knows how to touch your heart
They have a power in the eye"
"Some people think that their dogs have ESP
that they know what you're feeling and thinking
But they are acute observers of our body language depressed happy
or anxious and reading all that all the time...
"...because that's how they communicate with each other too"
In finding out about each other and the rest of the world
smell is the dog's primary tool
It is said their ability to smell is at least
500 times greater than our own
Their hearing too, is better than ours
but they see less well and are colorblind
There are 350 recognized breeds of dogs in the world
Regardless of outward differences
they are all the same species, Canis familiaris
Their wide diversity in appearance can often be
explained by the work humans have bred dogs to do
In the language of his native Germany
dachshund means "badger dog"
His short, stubby legs and narrow body made him
ideal for squeezing into burrows after prey
Terriers, too, were bred small and low to the ground
so they could plunge into dark
holes in pursuit of rats or foxes
The name terrier comes from the Latin word terra, or earth
Whippets and greyhounds are long-legged
and sleek because they were bred for hunting and racing
Firehouse mascots today
Dalmatians were companions to charioteers in ancient times
In Elizabethan England they gained fame as coach dogs
with a calming effect on the horses
The regal chow chow boasts a 2,000 yearhistory
in China as hunter and guard
For centuries dogs have helped man hunt
Today, we have made them highly specialized
Pointers only point nose high, body frozen in place
And retrievers only retrieve
joyfully leaping into even frigid
waters to bring back their quarry
From predatory
wild animals we have created
regardless of breed
the most adaptable and sociable
of all domesticated animals
It is not precisely known when we first put dogs
to work as entertainers
but one of the most famous
adored by countless millions, is Lassie
Bob Weatherwax, son of the original Lassie trainer
is no preparing the seventh generation
Lassie for an upcoming television series
To get the seven dogs who have actually appeared on the screen
Bob and Rudd Weatherwax had to breed more than
200 collies to get just the right coloration, intelligence
and temperament
On screen, the Lassie character has always been a female
but in reality all Lassies have been male collies
because males tend to have a more luxuriant coat and greater stamina
The Lassie legend began in the 1940s with a dog named Pal
"Originally Lassie... MGM had their own collie to do Lassie
It was a female dog, which is what Eric Knight wrote
the story around because it had to have puppies
And my father's dog was hired as a double dog
and it was a male collie called Pal
"And I think he knew that the other dog
couldn't do this performance..."
"...and they had a spot where Lassie had just
come from Scotland back to England
And he had to cross a river, and it's a nice scene"
The genius of Rudd Weatherwax came through in this scene in
which he taught Lassie to look naturally exhausted
as if it weren't a trick at all
"Come on, crawl"
The mind of the dog, no mater how bright he may be
cannot conceptualize "look tired"
But the dog can obey a series of off-screen commands
given in a specific order that result
in the tired look the audience sees
"Speak. Stay, stay. That's the boy. Stay"
Compared to many dogs that bring
a large measure of instinct to their work
dog actors start out as a blank slate
Because they are intelligent
they are capable of learning
The motivation to learn
the willingness to behave in such un-doglike ways
is based simply on the dog's desire for human praise
"Dog is man's best friend' I figure the most domesticated
of all animals and they want to please us
They want to be with man
It's like A for effort' they'll give you that effort
"All right, come on! Up! Up! All right
come on over here, come on
All right, take a bow"
The earth's ice-locked polar regions could
never have been explored without dogs
In the early 1900s sled dog teams brought Peary to
the North Pole and Amundsen to the South
When northern regions were settled
dogs became an essential part of life
Until the advent of airplanes and snowmobiles
dogs alone transported mail and supplies
pulled sleds, took hunters in search of prey
Today in Alaska, the pioneering spirit of that earlier times
is celebrated in a grueling 1,100-mile race
Beginning in Anchorage and ending in Nome
it covers a distance roughly the same
as from Seattle to Los Angeles
lts name, Iditarod, is said to come from the trail that
was once the lifeline linking far-flung villages in the interior
Two-time champion of what is called the
"last great race on earth" is 33-year-old Susan Butcher
A world-class athlete and now a celebrity
she is going for an unprecedented third consecutive win
She hopes to beat her 11-day record
and take home the $30,000 first prize
"Five minutes until we drop? Yeah."
"I've been racing in the Iditarod for ten years now
And I think over all the years I've been basically in the top ten
and I think that all comes from my training ability
with the dogs and the time that I spend with them
and the conditioning that I put on them
And then the rest has to be up to the dogs
I've got good dogs and I bred them and raised
them purely for long-distance racing"
Many observers feel that the time Susan spends with her dogs
and the affection she lavishes on them are key elements of her success
Fifty-three teams will leave at two-minute intervals
"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, go"
"All right"
"Over the years I've really seen that dogs love to
race and know what it's all about
When they see a team in front of them
they'll pick up their pace and want to pass around them
And what I found out is they know then
when there's no other team in front of them
because there's no dog scent on the trail"
In 1975 when she moved to America's last frontier
the adventuresome 20-year-old first lived in a tent
then single-handedly built a log cabin
She was 30 miles from her nearest neighbors
50 miles from the nearest road
She started out with only three dogs
and today has a breeding kennel with 130
Susan raises only Alaskan Huskies
a line bred from Eskimo and Indian dogs
"Well, I changed the teams around today, David"
"Susan runs Trail Breaker Kennel with her husband
David Monson, himself a champion racer
"I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts
but I've always felt I was born in the
wrong century and in the wrong place
And so I kept moving north and west
And I've always loved animals and they've
been the most important thing in my life
And so I was looking to incorporate living
in the wilderness and working with dogs
and I found the perfect thing"
"How's your baby. How are they? Hi, guys. Heigh-o"
In the early days of sled-dog racing
breeding was often a haphazard mater
But Susan Butcher knows that good racing
dogs don't just happen without careful planning
"Every summer I raise a number of puppies-between 50 and 100 pups
And I'll pick out two of my best dogs
Usually if I have a very fast dog
but maybe it doesn't have a good enough coat
I'll breed it to one with a good coat
"But the most important thing is that they
have bred into them the desire to pull and the desire to travel"
And travel they do
every day, with either Susan or her dog handler
These four-month-old pups are learning that running
that running is fun and that being with people is fun
"There's a lot of mushers that don't really like
to make their dogs into pet dogs
and feel that they have to keep them very separated
to make them a working animal only
But I feel that the best thing that you can do
with a dog is to really bond them to yourself
So we're just trying to teach them to
respect us and trust us and vice versa
I have to trust my life in their hands all the time
and they should learn to trust me with their life
And then when you're out there racing
that trust is what's going to make you able to win"
"Are you going to be my next all-time best leader?
Are you going to be my all-time best leader?"
Every night Susan and David bring a few dogs
into the cabin for extra attention
It's done as part of Susan's training strategy
but also because she quite simply adores her dogs
"Every fall is a really exciting time for me and for the dogs
As the temperatures get colder
we just develop a certain excitement towards winter
When it starts to get cold
the dogs just start making a lot of noise
running around their chains; they're just antsy
They want to get going
They just show me in many ways that they're ready to roll
ready for the racing season"
All the adult dogs are run three to
four times a week throughout the year
As with all athletes
conditioning is vital to their performance
When snow cover is too thin to be safe for the sled
the dogs pull an all-terrain vehicle left in neutral gear
To some 200 miles of trails,
Susan adds new ones each year to
keep the dogs from getting bored.
"A lot of people would look at my life
and think it's a lot of hard work
But for me, it's a labor of love
I spend all day long with my dogs and work with them
And I'm my own boss; there's no one telling me
what to do or at what time to do
I live way out here where I can go anywhere
and do anything at any time of day
And I love that freedom"
"The best things for long-distance racing
dogs are a fast trotting speed
and then they have to have good feet
and you just want them to have a good attitude
Their heads are bent and they're just going for it
and they're paying attention to you
and you're paying attention to them
and you just are working as a team"
Like a coach with marathon runners
Susan gradually increases the length of the runs
Her goal is 50 miles without tiring
The dogs, never more happy than when on the trail
joyfully oblige
Twelve to sixteen hours a day
the routine seldom varies
The culmination in March: The chance to
compete in the most punishing race on earth
The mushers, as sled-dog drivers are called
brave temperatures that can drop to 40 below
Except for one mandatory 24-hour rest stop
they may sleep only an hour or so each day
and only after the dogs are tended and fed
The route can be potentially treacherous at every turn
In 1985 a moose attacked Susan's dogs
forcing her out of the race
On the last leg of the race along the frozen Bering Sea
mushers encounter the most severe weather
It is Susan Butcher's tenth day out and
she is trailing as she has for most of the race
Now, a violent storm has forced temperatures to plunge
and swirling snow has obliterated much of the trail
Both Susan and the dogs are pushed
to the limit of their endurance
The storm has thwarted her nearest competitors
who have stopped to wait it out
Undaunted, Susan Butcher charges on
In Nome expectant crowds gather
The ham-radio operator at the last checkpoint has reported
that the first musher might reach the finish line at any time
In 11 days, 11 hours, and 42 minutes
a jubilant but exhausted Susan Butcher becomes the
first person ever to win the Iditarod three consecutive times
Susan is a full 14 hours ahead of any other musher
Some will not cross the finish line for several more days
Amazingly, Susan could have made even
better time than she did if she had wanted
but she put the safety and well-being of the dogs above all else
"It was a matter of either go for a
record competing against only Father Time
and no other musher and possibly
take more out of the team than I like to
or just to take good care of the team
and be well satisfied with a victory
And I thought that sounded a lot safer"
Susan and racing enthusiasts everywhere know
the real tribute belongs to the bravery
love, and indomitable spirit of these magnificent dogs
On an ordinary street in an ordinary California town
a drama anything but ordinary is quietly unfolding
Seventeen-year-old Mike Knowlton was born with spina bifida
a disabling birth defect of the spine that occurs in one to two out of
every thousand babies born in the United States.
"Good girl. Hi, girl. Yeah"
Mike must be cared for by his parents
Joy and Dale Knowlton
for he is totally paralyzed from the chest down
Mike walked on his own for many years
Then, without warning, his condition worsened
"The last time he was walking was right about here"
"At that point in time he had to have support
from one of us to move his legs"
"When we were told he was paralyzed and a wheelchair
was going to be with him the rest of his life..."
"Michael went into a depression for about two years
It was very hard for him to adjust"
Now a dog has come into Mike's life and the depression has lifted
Her name is Zest
"Zest has made a major change
If I didn't have her
I don't know what I would do"
"She just really helps me a lot"
A unique organization called Canine Companions for Independence
or CCI, brough Mike and Zest together
Using dogs to guide the blind is a well known success story
CCI pioneered the idea that dogs
could also help the wheelchair-bound
During an intensive two-week training program
students master 89 commands
For their safety as well as the dogs' and the public's
they must gain total control over the animals' actions
CCI instructors have spent six months training the dogs
"All right. Good boy. Good girl. Get happy everybody"
One of the most important jobs is retrieving
"Look. Get it. Bring it here. Good girl"
Keys are especially difficult because of their uneven edges
and dogs dislike the taste of metal
"All right! Good boy!"
Because they will be going home to very diverse environments
the teams are put into as many real-life situations
as possible during the two-week course
Today, on a college campus the dogs encounter some other
dogs that at first they think are real
"These are the kinds of things you guys need to anticipate
know that it's going to come up
These things happen all the time"
Some in the class have driven in vans
equipped with electronic lifts
but none has had prior experience with a bus.
For the dogs too, this is a first
"Remember, this is as new for her as it is for you
And even though it's new for you
you have to portray to her that you're confident"
"Yeah. Okay, Zest"
"The most frustrating part was having them
tell me to have the dog do something
And the dog wouldn't do it
and they wanted to tell me how to get the doh to do it
But my biggest thing was would I be able to make it
through the two weeks because I kind of had doubts"
"No, Zest. Zest. Come on"
"She should come to you
not go around behind there
She doesn't understand that concept"
"Okay, Well, what do I do to get her to..."
"You need to do what you need to
take care of yourself and your dog"
"I'll start over again"
The sheer physical exertion would
cause some to simply give up
But Mike is determined
Finally, he and Zest are successful
Even for those with the use of their arms
fatigue is a major factor that often keeps them housebound
Dogs are a wonderful solution for they will pull tirelessly
At the end of the two weeks,
the last hurdle is the final exam
Of the more than 300 teams that have
gone through CCI since it began in 1975
90% of dogs and humans have passed
With well-deserved pride
the class arrives for graduation
threshold to their new independence
"As you can see, this is quite a loving team
And throughout their lives
there's always going to be a lot of love
and commitment on the part of these two
Mike worked very hard in this class and so did Zest
And congratulations to both of you"
"Ladies and gentlemen, Mike and Ziggy"
The diplomas, appropriately
are inscribed with both names
student and dog alike
"Mike and Zest"
Today Mike is a high-school senior
Having Zest has helped Mike vastly broaden his horizons
and now for the first time he is
considering going on with his education
a vocational school where he thinks
he might study computer science
Whenever Mike is working
Zest has been trained to rest quietly
by his side and not disrupt the classroom
But at those moments when he needs her help
Zest knows it's time to work
"She does things like picks up papers
or pens and makes me feel independent
like I don't always have to ask somebody
I can just go to Zest and tell her"
All CCI graduates report a dramatic rise in
self-esteem because of the dog's role as icebreaker
People who normally feel awkward approaching a person
in a wheelchair do not feel uncomfortable in the presence of the dog
"I'm real shy
and the last couple of months it seems
like it's easier to go up to people
because most of the time people come up to her
And I kind of get into the conversation
It helps me to get to know people"
"We didn't realize that kind of a bond
could be between a dog and a person
It realy gives us a different perspective"
"We didn't realize that a dog could do as much for
Michael's emotions as this dog has done"
"Okay, Zest
Come here
Up switch, Zest
Good dog
That's it
Good girl
Okay, Zest
Come on
Good dog
A boy needing help and a loving canine at his side
Perhaps nowhere is the age-old covenant between man
and dog more poignantly felt than here
In northern California one man remembers a partnership
with dogs that many people have never even heard of
For the 13 months he served in Europe during World War II
oe Simpson fought alongside a dog
"Atta girl, heel"
They were one of the earliest teams
in what was known as the K-9 Corps
"In 1942 the K-9 Corps was formed by a group of
civilians from the New England Dog Training Club"
"And Dogs for Defense was formed at the same time
and they picked 14 Gis out of 5,000 volunteers
And fortunately, I was one of the 14 icked
not because I knew anything about dogs necessarily
but because I was in the horse business
And this is how I got started in the K-9 Corps"
Patriotic families everywhere across America
volunteered their dogs to help the war effort
Rovers, Spots, and Fidos of al descriptions were sent off
to an uncertain future in the Army, Marines
or Coast Guard
Like their human counterparts
all dogs were examined for fitness
"Any new man that came in got a new dog
And they taught us to make the dog heel
sit, and down, and stay
and all the obedience commands
"And these dogs then went through the training with the master
And then when that was through
certain ones that were fit for attack training
if they had enough aggressiveness in them
were put into attack classes
And the dogs that were better
for messenger work were trained for that
Some dogs were trained for pack dogs
So it was quite a course"
In Europe dogs were used in World War I
but this was our first use of them in combat
Some 10,000 served in many of the bloodiest
battles across Europe and the South Pacific
"If you needed to send a message back to the forward outpost
we had a messenger collar that we'd put the
message in and put it around the dog
And the dog had to learn that when this collar was on him
he was to run as fast as he could back to the other master"
Messenger dogs had to develop equal loyalty to two masters
because they worked by going from one to the other
To ignore the noise and flames from
exploding shells was hardest to teach
"The dogs didn't have to reach up and tap us on the
shoulder to tell us that there were some Germans over there
We knew by watching our dog and being able to read the dog
this is very important with anyone working a dog
if you can read the dog
then you'll know what the dog is trying to tell you"
"And I owe my life to my dog and I'm sure
a lot of the other handlers would say the same thing."
Joe Simpson was one of many who
brought their dogs home after the war
Intensive demilitarization programs retrained the animals
before they were allowed to return to civilian life as the gentle
and loving pets they had originally been
One phase of training similar to that for war
dogs is used in search and rescue work
More than 70 such groups now exist across the United States
All volunteers
they work alongside law enforcement teams in wilderness
rescues and the aftermath of disasters
"Go through. No, no, no. No cheating"
It takes hundreds of hours of training
before a team can be sent on a mission
"Go through"
Early on a dog often needs to be coaxed
"Okay
Try that way again?
Want to go through?"
Go. All the way
Good girl! Good girl!"
What handlers look for is not the breed itself
many breeds are used but qualities like intelligence,
curiosity, and self-confidence
The dogs must be taught agility so
they can safely negoiate boulders
and other obstacles in the woods
as well as piles of disaster rubble
"Climb. Good girl"
Shirley Hammond is both a handler and a trainer
"What we do is we start the dogs out very young
if we can although we can start older dogs
teaching them on an agility course
"We do a lot of ladder climbing with the dogs
And this teaches them to use their back feet
Their back feet just normally follow their front feet
and they do not develop a knowledge of back feet
unless they're taught to do something feeling
what they're putting it on and feeling for stability with it"
"Good dog, Tasha
Good girl! Good dog!"
This 12-week-old puppy confronts a ladder for the first time
In addition to the obstacle course
they train on a rubble pile that simulates a disaster area
The uniform and helmet signal to Shirley's dog
Cinnamon that now they are working
Trained not to follow her instincts to jump off the unstable boards
Cinnamon zigzags across the rubble in what is known as air-scenting
trying to pick up the victim's scent on the air currents
She has been trained to cover the entire area thoroughly
Once the victim, in this case a volunteer
has been found
the dog's job is to scratch and bark to alert
the handler to the area with the most intense scent
"Put that one back there
Oh, look
What did you find, Cin?"
Finding the victim is the dog's primary reward
It is essential that physical contact be made
so the dog knows she's done her job well
"Good girl, you found him
You've got him where you want him now
Yeahl've got him where I want him
Did you find him, huh?"
In 1985 Shirley and Cinnamon were one of 13 U. S
search-dog teams that made a vital contribution in a real
life disaster the devastating earthquake
that wracked Mexico City
The soft sub-soils underlying the city
and inadequate building codes were blamed
when hundreds of buildings collapsed
Thousands were injured
thousands more left homeless
As many as 10,000 died
"It was really hard to believe because
there were buildings standing with glass
and beautiful structures that were just...
"...pancaked to the floor
This is a building that was 11, 12, 14 stories
Suddenly, it's down to 10, 20, 30 feet high
because some of them actually sank down into their basements
They went that far down"
"Can you jump?
Up, up. In you go"
Twelve hours a day for a week
the teams searched through the twisted rubble
Hundreds of people surely lay trapped but where?
And could the dogs find any of them in time?
"Cin, stay, stay"
"They cock their head and listen with their ears as
if maybe they might even be able to hear
the victims after they would bark
as if they were kind of calling to them by their barking"
"And the other side of that coin, of course
is when they did locate someone buried
under the rubble that as gone, deceased
it was a very low-key reaction
Just a little pawing and a little whining"
Amazingly, even at week's end
victims were found still clinging to life
"Agua, agua"
Only hours old when the quake hit
this baby was trapped for nine days
Doctors cannot easily explain her survival
Others see it simply as a gift from God
"The Mexican people were just wonderful
to us and it was a warm, warm feeling
They were so...
"...appreciative of our being there
And it was really a very unqiue position to know
that you were doing something that was helpful
and that your dog was able to do it
It's a feeling that says this is what we've done it for
All the times we've been wet, we've been cold...
"...we've been tired, we've been hot
This is real and it's so exciting so exciting"
Many thousands of years ago
some long-forgotten caveman welcomed a wild animal
into his home to share his fire and food
Through the centuries the dogs that
evolved have remained our enduring helpmates
and unfaltering friends
Our own success as a species is due in no small
measure to the fact that a canine partner has been by our side
Intelligent and loyal beyond measure
dogs ask little from us in return for their unquestioning devotion
In fact
most dogs do not see work as work
but thrive on serving us simply for the praise of a job well done
"Give. Good girl
Yeah, good girl"
In commenting on this age-old partnership
one author has written: "We give them the love we can spare
the time we can spare, the room we can spare
In return
dogs have given us their absolute all
It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made"