"Even the tiniest Poodle or Chihuahua
is still a wolf at heart."
— Dorothy Hinshaw Patent,
Dogs: The Wolf Within
SEATTLE, WA (USA) — We've all heard about
the German Shepherds, the Rottweilers, Labs and Bloodhounds who combed
the fallen World Trade Center in search of victims last month, but what
about the lap dogs? They're no exception to the courageous canine
list.
Last week, the Seattle City Council
held a ceremony to honor a few of the brave souls who helped with New
York City search-and-rescue (SAR) efforts: 62 firefighters, police,
doctors, engineers and public-safety personnel, all working with Puget
Sound Urban Search and Rescue. Also invited to the podium were
four SAR dogs, including one so small that many people in the audience
had to squint to get a good look at him—that would be "Ricky"
the Rat Terrier.
Ricky, measuring in at 17" and 280
ounces, didn't let his diminutive size deter him from his duties at
"the pile". In fact, he worked his tininess to his
advantage, squeezing into holes that other dogs and robots were too
large to navigate. Ricky and his trainer, Janet Linker of the
Seattle Fire Department, searched the ruins for 10 days, helping to find
the bodies of several victims, according to The
Seattle Times.
At two years old, Ricky can climb
aluminum ladders, run complex patterns on command and differentiate
between the living and the dead. On June 17, 2000, Ricky attained
the official certification at Basic Level after proving that he can
search through piles of concrete at a site the size of half a baseball
field, finding three victims in less than 10 minutes, unfazed by
bulldozers, jackhammers, cats in cages and dirty laundry set up as
distractions. Even so, the carnage at the World Trade Center site
pushed Ricky's abilities beyond anything he'd ever experienced.
"There were a few situations where
we had to climb underneath metal beams, and the space just kept getting
smaller and smaller," says Ms. Linker, who works for Northwest
Disaster Search Dogs.
She and Ricky worked closely with
another SAR pair, Kent Olson (forensic therapist at Western State
Hospital) and a 5-year-old Golden Retriever named "Thunder",
working the two dogs' abilities in tandem. Ricky would wriggle
into tight spots that 64-lb. Thunder could not manage, and Thunder, a
more experienced dog (certified Advanced Level) would verify Ricky's
finds.
When Ricky found a body, he would
signal by standing very still and looking at his handler intently with
all the fur on his body standing up; Thunder would confirm the find by
lying down as his signal to his partner. Rescuers would then know
exactly where to dig.
Both dogs' indication of a "live
find" was to have been a bark, but unfortunately they never had the
chance to make that signal.
"It's really hard to know exactly
how many people Ricky helped find," says Ms. Linker. "I
saw them take a policeman and a firefighter out from areas that we had
just searched. I don't know how many people were in the
stairwell. There were lots of people in there. They were gone, not
alive."
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Ricky the Rat Terrier is the smallest
search-and-rescue dog in the USA (pictured with his Seattle Fire Dept.
partner Janet Linker).
(Photo: Thomas J. Hurst / Seattle Times)
"Sometimes I
wonder if the dogs feed off our emotions. If I'm nervous, my dog
is nervous. If I'm upset, my dog is upset. Toward the end,
he was just tired of working, tired of the noise, the commotion, the
power and construction equipment always running. I've never seen
Ricky as mellow as he was when he got home."
— Janet Linker, Seattle firefighter, speaking about her partner
"Ricky"
Photo: Northwest
Disaster Search Dogs
The Puget Sound Team was one of 28
Elite SAR Teams across the USA coordinated by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Although SAR teams were overwhelmed at the immensity of the wreckage,
Ricky and Ms. Linker, who worked the night shift, quickly settled into
their routine:
3:00pm,
Wake, water and feed the dogs, eat dinner, take the bus to the WTC site.
7:00pm
to 7:00am, Search.
7:00am,
Medical checkup & a B-A-T-H.
On
Sep. 29 after almost two weeks, Ricky and Ms. Linker were called off the
job and returned to their home in Auburn, Washington. At last
week's honors ceremony, tiny Ricky was one of the most heartwarming
sights on the stage, sitting quietly on top of the podium in front of
the Seattle City Council, wearing his official dress uniform adorned
with patches from FEMA and Puget Sound Urban Search and Rescue.
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