Old Dogs....

This year my beautiful, smart and fearless Finn turns 10 in May. And on January 1^st he passed what is quite possibly his last recertification for wilderness search and rescue. Even at 10 years of age he can still search circles around the younger dogs on my team, and he proved it with this recert. He was required to search 40 acres in less than an hour, and find any and all subjects in that task area. It took him 10 minutes. He’s been everywhere and done everything, so that you can’t trick him. We try to do that with the older more experienced dogs when we are setting up training exercises so they don’t blow through things and actually get a decent work out, but the Finn man can’t be tricked. He worked so fast that I didn’t have time to take any pictures while he was working. All I got was him at the end with my team mate that was the subject for the test.

Finn was given to me almost 10 years ago, even before I knew that I needed a new search dog. A friend of mine realized that my first search dog was not going to be able to recover from a blown tendon that I was trying to rehabilitate him from. So she gave me the last pup in a litter of Labradors she’d just had. At nine weeks this yellow ball of fur ended up in my life. As he grew up and learned about the job of a search and rescue dog, the I never would have guessed the places his ability would take me. We were in New Orleans after Katrina and Rita to assist with body recovery. And just this past summer we were in the jungles of Guyana, South America looking for a flight crew that went down in a small airplane in November of 2008. He was the oldest dog on the mission and did better than some of the younger dogs.

I am also a state evaluator for dog teams and on the same day that I was recertifying with Finn another team mate of mine had to recertify with his dog, Jarod. Jarod is another old timer at 8 years old. He’s a Border Collie that probably has more years in front of him than Finn does. It’s fun to watch these older guys do their job. They adore being able to get out and show off their stuff. The only way that I can tell that Jarod isn’t the youngster I remember him as, is the more noticeable gray mustache on his muzzle. I don’t even think that he’s lost a step from what he was as a 3 year old.

January 1^st was what I called the geriatric day. Finn is 10, Jarod is 8. His handler, Brian Rock has been recovering from a horrible rotator cuff surgery he had way back in May, and I’ve been recovering from multiple orthopedic injuries. All I can say is, I am glad they were older and were able to get through their 40 acre recerts in record time!