Shelter Dog Finds New Life, Goes to Chile to Help

LONGMONT, Colorado — Joe is on his first rescue mission.
The yellow Labrador that was on the adoption block at Longmont Humane Society a few years ago is on his way to Chile to help rescue survivors trapped in the rubble after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake and a series of aftershocks devastated parts of central Chile early Saturday, killing more than 700 people.
Joe and his handler, Linda Tacconelli, deployed on their first mission Monday morning.
They are one of six teams — part of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force based in Los Angeles County — heading to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif., to catch a military transport plane to Chile.
“The whole purpose there, of course, is to find and identify and alert rescuers to live humans that have been trapped,” National Disaster Search Dog Foundation canine manager Karen Klingberg said Monday.
“They need to be able to focus their rescue efforts before it becomes a recovery effort.”
When Joe arrived at the Longmont Humane Society in 2007, employees and volunteers quickly discovered his endless energy for playing fetch, LHS training and behavior department coordinator Sarah Clusman said Monday.
But after Joe had been at the shelter for “quite a while” without being adopted, Clusman had another idea: search and rescue.
She worked with the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, based in Ojai, Calif., to drill Joe, running him through a series of tests: throwing balls and toys into bushes, throwing them when he wasn’t looking, allowing him to watch the throw then spinning him around and around before releasing him to search.
He found his target every time.
“One time, it was stuck up in a tree; he could see it, but he couldn’t reach it, and he just kept jumping up and down trying to get it,” Clusman said. “He practically climbed the tree.”

Klingberg watched Joe’s tests on YouTube and liked what she saw. She flew to Denver in late December 2007 to pick him up and fly with him (he wormed his way from the floor onto the airplane seats) back to California. Joe graduated from his initial training program in July 2008 and was paired with Tacconelli, who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., Klingberg said.
The two continued working together, training intensively to pass the difficult tests to become a FEMA-certified search-and-rescue team. They were certified in October.
“This shelter dog that was dumped turned into this fantastic animal, which Joe very much is,” Klingberg said.
Unlike Haiti, which was devastated Jan. 12 by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, Chile has a structured government with emergency response teams in place, Klingberg said.
“(But) their resources are stretched so thin, they cannot keep up with everything; they have finally asked for our help,” she said.
When task force members arrive, they likely will be briefed by Chilean officials, but no one yet knows exactly where the teams will be sent to work, Klingberg said.
The teams will be there for two weeks. NDSDF provided them with satellite phones, she said, “so we’re hoping to hear from them on occasion.”