Leopold Chen
More rescue dogs will be reproduced to contribute to the present group of 6 after among them carried out remarkably in the Turkey quake search objective in February, the Fire Services Department says.
The FSD now has 6 rescue dogs, and 4 others were raised and trained outdoors Hong Kong.
One of the 2 in your area reproduced dogs, Umi, signed up with the rescue in Turkey and rescued 4 individuals together with its colleague, Twix.
Umi’s handler, Chan Chu-hong, said Umi is best as a search and rescue dog.
Both of them were reproduced in 2021 through the collaborations of the FSD and the Customs and Excise Department.
Authorities think internal breeding can much better satisfy their training requires.
”The puppies gotten basic training and socializing training in a game-based mode at around 2 months old to help them establish a brave and friendly character. They might likewise adjust to the weather condition and surface of Hong Kong,” Chan said.
The department wished to breed a brand-new generation to help individuals of Hong Kong. Chan said in your area reproduced dogs might much better serve training. Umi’s experience in Turkey had actually contributed.
”We can now much better mimic the environment of a quake-struck location when doing training. The training field will be created with the gives off food, individuals’s clothes and heavy equipment, and there will even be fire,” Chan said.
”Canines will be more focused on searching if we enforce such diversions in training,” Chan included.
Another task for FSD rescue dogs is mountain searching. The variety of mountain saves has actually increased from 242 in 2018 to 1,014 in 2022.
In July in 2015, Umi and in your area reproduced brother or sister Uma were released to look for a missing out on hiker on a mountain in Clear Water Bay. They likewise carried out searches after a No 3 alarm fire broke out in a storage facility in Fan Ling last August.
In the past, search and rescue dogs would make massive searches to discover human fragrances, however it was energy consuming due to the lack of a particular target fragrance.
Now the department has actually changed its method to train dogs to target a particular fragrance.
”During real rescue operations, we check out the missing individuals’s home and gather their fragrances, such as those from pillowcases, shoes or clothes for the dogs to track,” Chan said.
