Right: Celebrated at the July 9 celebration at the NSD Foundation Training Center were (left to right) Huck, Tanker, Rugby, Riley and Pearl, who with their human partners responded in April to the devastating earthquake in Nepal. Left: Four rail cars were loaded onto flatbed trucks in Santa Paula for the trip to the NSD Training Center where they are now a “train wreck” training tool.

National Search Dog Foundation
celebrates emerging training center

July 17, 2015
Santa Paula News

Usually you think of a train wreck as a bad thing, the same you would assume about a plane crash and a collapsed freeway.

But there’s not a disaster that isn’t a good thing at least at the National Search Dog (NSD) Foundation National Training Center in Wheeler Canyon that last week celebrated supporters of the continuing work to train canines in saving lives.

The Santa Paula-based training center, according to NSD, will be a place “where rescued dogs will learn to be rescuers, providing a training ground for search and rescue teams throughout the nation to work with their canines in an environment that simulates real disaster conditions.”

And there will be plenty once the center is completed September 2016:  several railcars were moved to the facility last week to make a train wreck, earthquake-stricken buildings are being built, a freeway collapse created out of a mountain of concrete and immense rubble piles carefully placed for training dogs and their handlers. There will be a school, trailer park and even a firehouse to be able to train for all structural disasters.

According to Janet Reineck of SDF, “The National Training Center will be the only training facility in the U.S. dedicated solely to first responders and their canine partners who risk their lives to make sure no one is left behind in the wake of a disaster.”

The organization is building the center on a 125-acre parcel tucked way back in the canyon off Foothill Road where it has been working with the help of donors and labor including by Navy Sea Bees to create the one-of-a-kind facility where there will be a hurricane torn Haiti Hotel, tilted house, buildings in an earthquake ravaged zone and other “real life” settings to provide training and familiarity of place to those training for disaster response. A tribute wall to the dogs as well as a cabin restored with the help of the Santa Paula Historical Society are already completed.

The center will hold barracks, classrooms and kennels for the volunteer handlers — most are firefighters — and their rescue dogs.

Wilma Melville of Santa Paula founded NSD almost 20 years ago, inspired by the 1995 federal building bombing in Oklahoma City, a tragedy that Melville and her black Labrador Murphy responded to.

Melville and Murphy were FEMA-certified in 1994, a hobby Melville turned into a quest after she learned in Oklahoma that there were only about 15 such trained teams in the country.

The July 9 gathering celebrated the ongoing campaign to complete the training center including a $2.5 million donation from the PETCO Foundation.

Melville was unable to attend the celebration but issued a statement noting “The Petco Foundation has been a good friend to SDF for many years. We are thrilled with their outstanding $2.5 million partnership investment to name the beautiful Petco Foundation Canine Pavilion. If there was ever a time for our new and existing supporters to come forward, this is it! 

“It’s simple,” wrote Melville. “The more we can raise, the more services and training opportunities we can offer rescued dogs and their handlers. If we can match this historic gift, the National Training Center will open in just 14 months, offering decades of societal benefits to our communities and the nation.”

During the event, SDF also honored the six SDF-trained Search Teams deployed to Nepal in the wake of April’s deadly earthquake, acknowledged the Navy reservists who are helping to build the center, and celebrated the delivery of four full-sized train cars that will be used for the train wreck search “props” that were delivered to the canyon location via flatbed trucks.

According to the SDF, the Petco Foundation grant is the latest in a series of “generous gifts from SDF’s supporters across the nation who have contributed a total of $23.5 million in support of the project — a ‘home away from home’ for search teams from across the nation and the world.”

The foundation provides professionally trained canines and the ongoing training program at no cost to fire departments; in addition, each dog is ensured lifetime care so that once rescued, the dogs will never have to be rescued again.

“By saving shelter dogs and transforming them into national heroes, SDF highlights the potential of shelter dogs for all types of service programs,” said Susanne Kogut, executive director of the Petco Foundation.

“The relationship between the rescue dog and the first responder, partnering to save lives, is the ultimate expression of animals and humans working together in service to humanity. The transformative impact that they have on so many lives is nothing short of heroic, and we couldn’t be more proud to partner with the Search Dog Foundation to help make this amazing vision come to life.”

To qualify as a search canine, dogs, whose reward for finding a living victim is a favorite toy, must love to play but also have intensity, strong focus and a high drive among other attributes.





Site Search

E-Subscribe

Subscribe

E-SUBSCRIBE
Call 805 525 1890 to receive the entire paper early. $50.00 for one year.

webmaster