A Skier's Best Friend
In the maze of snow, the dog roves around, ears pricked, his nose centimetres from the ground. In no time at all he has crisscrossed the entire area. Satisfied with his initial assessment, the dog returns to a certain point, turns around, backs up a little way, starts to whine and scratch at the debris with his paws. He claws more and more frantically and then starts barking, alerting his master to his find.
The handler is ready with his shovel in hand, not doubting for an instant the skill of his four-legged partner. In next to no time a hole is dug and the dog gets stuck in face-first, emerging only seconds later with something between his teeth. First an arm and then a smiling face are revealed. A second avalanche victim is recovered inside 20 minutes.
The avalanche search and rescue training, held last week at Lognon on the Grand Montets, was deemed a success by organisers. Attendance of this type of hands-on training is compulsory for dogs and their handlers five times a year; the Chamonix session was attended by 25 teams from across the Alps. Man and dog must work together to uncover two victims within 20 minutes, the average length of time a person can survive under the snow. The idea is to reproduce the as closely as possible the circumstances of an avalanche.
Source: Le Dauphiné Libéré
