An interview with a Mountain Rescue Volunteer and his search and rescue dog, Boomer.

By Erica Elliott

Thirty years ago, Swords man Joe Egan began volunteering with the Dublin Mountain Rescue Team, training with a dog unit, and working independently on site.

One day they were in Wales, and while they were recertifying the dogs for live victims, nearby cadaver training was going on. Joe recounts this moment speaking of Boomer, his search and rescue dog, “finding the bait before the dogs that were supposed to find it”. This was not something that had crossed his mind, he tells me. In fact he says it “was just by chance we found he was good at the dual work”.

Boomer is the only dog in the country that’s certified to search and rescue live and dead victims, and the training process is extensive as it’s difficult to train them once they go over a year. “The first thing he has to do is speak. You get him to speak on command, then you have to train him with livestock, and he has to be able to both sit and stand, so if I find someone that’s injured I’ll be able to treat them without him”.

He tells me training a dog for dual work can be “confusing for the dog”.

“It’s not something I would set out to do”, he says.

“I have to be careful that if the person that’s missing is still walking around, that he can pick up on the fact that I have to find every person. But to see him when he works, he’s so laid back and chilled. Other dogs run frantically around looking for the scent and that’s the way they’re trained to work. He just walks along really slowly, methodically”, he comments.

“I can read him like a book. So if you’re walking with me, I’m not looking at you. I have to watch him, every move he makes, and when he makes that turn, that’s it, he’s gone”.

When Boomer makes a strike, “he bolts”, he says. He goes to the person or the body, identifies it, and comes all the way back to him. This could be hundreds of metres away depending on the conditions of the weather and terrain.

“He comes back and barks at me. That’s how he speaks”, he adds.

“He lets out a loud speak and that indicates to me that he has found somebody, and I say show me, and he goes back to them and I follow him and he shows me exactly where they are”.

“That’s what you get after two years of training. It’s a continuous tough two years for the handler, meanwhile the whole time the dog thinks it’s just a game”.

As for the training process for him. To train with the Dublin Mountain Rescue Team, “originally you have to be a team member to train with the dogs team”, he says. As well as having navigational skills, first aid skills, and rope and rescue training.

But once they find the people, they have to treat them.

“If they’re injured, we assess them, we get the appropriate first aid up to them , up to and including helicopter evacuation, depending on injuries. Some people are just lost, some people are just lost and injured. With modern technology, the search engine sometimes can be quicker, they can send sire locking. We sent you a notification on your phone, and you respond to it and it pinpoints it. So that’s just a modern take. It saves the dogs, it saves the drones”, he tells me.

“If the batteries are dead or there’s no coverage, it’s not going to work. So if someone is lost on a particular mountain, the quickest way to find them with no technology is the dog”.

After thirty years, he says technology has advanced helping Dublin Mountain Rescue, and that they are soon to acquire a base.

“It’s evolved completely. Yeah, completely evolved with technology. We were flying in the helicopter there two weeks ago”, he responds.

“If there’s someone lost on top of the mountain, rather than me walking up the mountain, they can fly us up to the top, deploy us from the top. and that could include coming out on the rope. If they can’t land a helicopter they have to put us out on the rope and hang us down. So we haven’t done that yet but we’re hoping to train him”.

Boomer is trained to walk off lead, not only while he’s working, but on a day-to-day basis. However there are times where this is not the case.

“He’s on a lead right near the start or the end of a search. Because when you go to a search base, maybe the car park, the entrance into a forest or wherever it is. There could be press around, there’s always someone with a camera. If another dog was aggressive towards him and I’m dressed in rescue gear and he has his search jacket, it looks bad if I haven’t got control of him. And if someone walks away with a German Shepherd, I just lose control of him. He loves German Shepherds. So I keep him on the lead for that reason, and the family might be distressed waiting on their loved ones” he says.

“Because we set up our own dog unit, we had to find an assessor and the assessors we get are in Wales. So we travel to Wales for training and assessments and they come over here as well”.

Joe tells me they’ll soon be returning to Wales at the end of November for cadaver training, at the place where they first made their discovery.

Erica Elliott, from Swords, Co. Dublin is a final year Journalism student studying in DCU