The History of Rescue Dogs

The First Rescue Dogs

• The history of the rescue dog begins in the St. Bernard Pass, a route in the Alps between Italy and Switzerland. It is named after the Augustine monk St. Bernard de Menthon, who founded a hospice and monastery there sometime between 980 and 1050. The hospice has remained in operation ever since, and sometime between 1660 and 1670 the monks received their first dogs. They were the St. Bernard dogs of today, only smaller and directly descended from the Asiatic mastiffs from Rome. While originally used as guard dogs, they were quickly switched to a search-and-rescue function.

St. Bernard's Pass

• At the turn of the 18th century, the monks of St. Bernard pass were regularly training St. Bernards to rescue travelers who were lost in the pass. Marroniers, who were servants that accompanied people traveling through the pass, often brought dogs along with them and found their great sense of smell could help them find people trapped under snow a huge help. These marroniers used the rescue dogs often to save many lives in the pass. Between 1790 and 1810, more than 250,000 of Napoleon's troops trekked through St. Bernard's pass. Not one lost his life, and many of the soldiers told of how they were saved by rescue dogs, who dug them up when they were trapped under snow and laid on them to warm them until help came. Rescue dogs would work here for over 150 years.

Rescue Dogs in the World Wars

• Rescue dogs were trained and used elsewhere in the world in later years. Though not directly influenced by St. Bernards, they were just as effective. During the World War I, rescue dogs used their heightened sense of smell to find wounded in the United Kingdom. The Red Cross also used rescue dogs at this time, also in their wartime efforts. In World War II, the U.S. began to use rescue dogs as well in the Dogs for Defense program. They used a few different breeds, most commonly Newfoundlands.

Rescue Dogs in the Alps

• After the World War II, rescue dogs were introduced into the Swiss Alpine Club to find victims of avalanches in the Swiss Alps. This group previously used a prodding technique that involved rescuers walking around pushing a pole into the snow in hopes of hitting a person trapped underneath. Rescue dogs proved to be much more successful and useful. Similar groups over the years have adopted rescue dogs to aid in avalanche rescue. They are widespread throughout the Alps (where they are also trained) to this day.

The American Rescue Dog Association

• Bill and Jean Syrotuck created the American Rescue Dog Association (ARDA), which is the oldest group of its type, in 1972. The organization brought together various rescue dog groups that had formed at the state level and gave them a forum to trade training techniques and information. In this way, the ARDA was able to help train and to provide capable search dogs to those who need them. Similar organizations have popped up in Europe and across the world, where search dogs are most readily needed and seen.

Modern-Day Rescue Dogs

• While rescue dogs have longest been put to use in the battlefield and on mountains, today they are used to rescue victims of all sorts of disasters. In 1996, the Search Dog Foundation (SDF) was founded in Ojai, California, and has trained rescue dogs to work alongside firefighters in California, Florida, Utah, Oklahoma and New York. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has also started training and putting to use rescue dogs in first-response roles in disasters, everything from tornadoes in Oklahoma to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. FEMA has 28 response offices across the United States, all of them employing rescue dogs.