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    Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners
    Unavailable
    Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners
    Unavailable
    Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners
    Ebook312 pages3 hours

    Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners

    By Wilma Melville and Paul Lobo

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    About this ebook

    Lola was a buckshot-riddled stray, lost on a Memphis highway. Cody was rejected from seven different homes. Ace had been sprayed with mace and left for dead on a train track. They were deemed unadoptable. Untrainable. Unsalvageable. These would become the same dogs America relied on when its worst disasters hit.

    In 1995, Wilma Melville volunteered as a canine search-and-rescue (SAR) handler with her Black Labrador Murphy in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. At the time, there were only fifteen FEMA certified SAR dogs in the United States. Believing in the value of these remarkable animals to help save lives, Wilma knew many more were needed in the event of future major disasters. She made a vow to help 168 dogs receive search-and-rescue training in her lifetime—one for every Oklahoma City victim.

    Wilma singlehandedly established the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF) to meet this challenge. The first canine candidates—Ana, Dusty, and Harley—were a trio of golden retrievers with behavioral problems so severe the dogs were considered irredeemable and unadoptable. But with patience, discipline, and love applied during training, they proved to have the ability, agility, and stamina to graduate as SARs. Paired with a trio of firefighters, they were among the first responders searching the ruins of the World Trade Center following 9/11—setting the standard for the more than 168 of the SDF’s search-and-rescue dogs that followed.
    Beautiful and heart-wrenching, Hero Dogs is the story of one woman’s dream brought to fruition by dedicated volunteers and firefighters—and the bonds they forged with the incredible rescued-turned-rescuer dogs to create one of America’s most vital resources in disaster response.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 8, 2019
    ISBN9781250179920
    Author

    Wilma Melville

    WILMA MELVILLE is a retired Physical Education instructor and grandmother of six, Wilma founded the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF) to address this gap in our nation’s disaster response network. Still active within the Foundation, Wilma serves on the Board of Directors and is involved with the planning of the National Training Center. When time permits, Wilma enjoys piloting her experimental airplane, an RV7A, based at her hangar at Santa Paula Airport.

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    Reviews for Hero Dogs

    4/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A fantastic book for the curious like myself, who wondered how rescue dogs were trsined, and for anyone who loves the misfits in the animal world. Wilma, in her mid sixties was hunkering down for a calm retirement with her husband when she decided inactivity was not in her nature. She had one trained rescue dog, Cody who she worked at the Oklahoma bombing site. The descriptions were of course heartbreaking but she became aware that there was a big shortage of trained rescue dogs. Instead of retiring she decided to so something about this deficit, and decided to train and acquire these dogs.Enter Ana, Harley and Dusty, three golden retrievers who already had a past. Rejected for various reasons by owners, Wilma takes them on. I fell in love with these pups and their stories. Then three firemen who were trained to become their handlers. This was only the beginning, and eventually many more were trained, and some of her graduates would be called into zero at ground zero.A book filled with humor, cues and miscues, accomplishments, started by a gutsy, loving woman who decided to not retire, but to get involved. The colored photos are a plus, nice to see the pups and people one is reading about.
    • 2/5
      An interesting topic, but this book was a slow read.