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Bacco's
FEMA Recertification
by Gail McCarthy - Bacco's handler and owner
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I am thrilled to announce that my Czech German Shepherd, Bacco, passed
his FEMA Advanced Recertification this past weekend. My fellow FEMA
teammate, Janet Merrill, and her Malinois, Chai, also passed their
Recertification. The Test, or Certification Evaluation (CE) as it is now
called, was sponsored by the Ohio Task Force 1, so Janet and I had to
fly out to Dayton, Ohio, to take the test. The weather predications for
the weekend were horrid -- heavy rains, thunderstorms, tornados, Yikes!!
-- but the skies were only ominously cloudy on the morning of our Test.
The FEMA Advanced Test is conducted on two rubble piles, each
approximately 6,000 - 15,000 sq. feet in size and 6'- 10' in height. The
rubble debris normally consists of concrete, wood, mixed material,
partially or completely collapsed structures and, in our case, was made
up of concrete pillars lying all-a-jumble and interlaced with large
voids and slippery steel I-beams. Each testing canine team had 20
minutes to search each pile and to locate up to 4 concealed victims in
each pile, any one of whom could be buried deep down into the rubble,
creating complicated, diffuse scent problems for the dog to work out.
There also could be a variety of distractions in each pile and, in our
case, I believe that the CE Evaluators hid food, clothing and one live
cat in the pile!!! The first rubble I was assigned to search was called
the "Limited Access" pile, which means that I was not allowed up on the
rubble pile until my dog made his first find and barked a minimum of
three barks. Once the dog barked, the handler is permitted to access the
rubble to mark the alert location and to restart....read the rest
HERE.

Beretta v. Guardianhaus
SchH1, TR1
H.O.T.
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Odesa Utvar ZVJS
Prison Control K9
SVV2, BH
5CX5/55P d. 2.tr.

Jera Jipo-Me
ZVV1, ZM, BH
5CY1/P vd. 2.tr.

Czar Nikolas z Olde World
Security K9
BH, TR1, TR2, TR3
H.O.T. |