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Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol Dogs | Mammoth, CA United States | 11/26/08, by powderjunky

Just like an over-proud soccer mom thinks of her children, dog owners generally believe that their dog walks on an elevated pedestal of self-manifested awesomeness. In reality, most of our dogs are spoiled, untrained terrors that make an A.D.D pre-teen on a Ritalin hiatus look tame. However, there are some canines that actually look beyond the food bowl and fire hydrants, with the aid of their handlers, to help make the slopes safer.

We had a chance to meet such handlers, Scott Quirsfeld and Sean Macedonio of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area Ski Patrol. Mammoth Mountain has based their program mainly on the CARDA standards (Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association) with influences from the Wasatch Backcountry Rescue Dog School and the Tahoe Ski Resorts with Dog programs. There are currently 2 dogs working Mammoth Mountain.  "King" is a 4 year old Golden Retriever and "Chief" is a 7 month old Black Labrador.  

Think your canine could make the cut? According to Scott, Retriever breeds, like Goldens and Labs, are best suited for avalanche rescue. However German Sheppards can also hold their own and some people have also been branching out with breeds like Collies. On the other hand, Pugs, Chihuahuas, and Yorkies have been deemed socially useless.  Whatever the breed, Scott insists the dog must have good play and prey drives.

STB: So maybe you have the right breed. Now what? How the heck do you train an animal, that likes the taste of its own feces, to find a buried person?

Scott: The training begins with 10 weeks of basic obedience and building a bond between the puppy and the handler. This is combined with simple run and hide drills.  These training sessions start out with having a secondary handler (someone the pup is familiar with)  holding the dog while the handler plays with a special toy with the pup.  The handler then gets up suddenly  and says bye and runs off to a open hole in the snow or even just behind a tree.  The pup is soon released and runs to the handler where he is greeted with loud positive praise and play.  As the pup understands the game the difficulty is gradually increased by wind direction, covering the pups eyes and increasing the search area.  The pup is also introduced to finding others that have the special search toy.  The obedience is done twice daily in addition to search drills and also includes activities like Snowmobile, SnoCat, Chairlift and Toboggan rides.

We try to go to Dog Schools specific to Avalanche Rescue if we are able to raise enough funds through T-shirt sales.  We have also joined Search and Rescue Tahoe Dogs.  This has been a great resource for us being a young program.  They have access to a helicopter which provides a unique training opportunity for us.  

STB: Once the dogs are trained and ready for action how much of it is body recovery and how much is saving lives?

SCOTT: Hopefully it is a live recovery.  The best chance for survival if you are caught in an avalanche and do not suffer major trauma is your partner and the avalanche transceivers your hopefully wearing and know how to use.  The Dog is probably the next best chance.  Response time is also critical, so your chances of the dogs getting to you quickly in the ski area is obviously much better than in the backcountry. 

Fortunately Mammoth Mountain has never had a fully buried body so the dogs have never been fully tested. This in itself is a testament to the Mammoth Ski Patrol, as Mammoth is a large resort and has a ton of avalanche prone terrain.

Being such a large resort could be problematic in getting the dogs to the scene of a slide, especially when you take in to consideration that after a person has been buried for over 15 minutes their chances of survival go way down.

STB: An avalanche just ripped, walk us through the procedure of the dogs involvement.

SCOTT: Once an avalanche is reported, the handler and dogs go on alert.  This entails gearing up and getting in to position to respond.  We then wait for a patroller to get on scene and verify the incident and location.  Once this happens, we get to the scene via snowmobile, toboggan, or chairlift. We don't want to tire the dog before the search.  The dogs only can work for about an hour max before they need to rest and re-fuel.    

If the dogs are not cruising the slopes they generally enjoy relaxing around the house and just being a dog with an occasional trip to the desert to get away from the snow.

After learning about King and Chief, I have come to realize what a waste of mutt my own dog is. Maybe he might be capable of such tasks only if the victim were covered in bacon and deep fried. It takes a lot of patience, time and love to train these dogs, and let's hope their skills aren't put to use all that often. But when that worst case scenario happens, it is a comfort to know our furry friends might just be the difference between casualty or survival. For more info check out http://www.eastsidek-9.org.

Fyi-Stay tuned for a follow up video of the dogs in action!