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Teton County search and rescue coordinator Doug Meyer arrived at the scene of an avalanche near Jackson Hole Resort about 90 minutes after the call came in. The slide, which was out of bounds but visible from the ski area, had partially buried one person and completely buried another. Neither victim was wearing a transceiver.

Meyer was on the second helicopter trip to the site and arrived about five minutes after the first group, which included three teams of avalanche dogs and their handlers. By the time he got there, Coup, a Labrador Retriever working for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, had already located Drew Dunlap-who was buried four feet under the snow.

"As soon as they let her loose, that dog practically ran straight to the guy and started digging," Meyer says.

Coup made headlines across the nation. That rescue, which occurred on April 3, 1992, was the first time in North America that an avalanche dog had found a live person. Since then, there have been two others, both in Canada. But these dogs do much more that is worthwhile, too. Not only do the dogs assist in rescues and body recoveries, they can save resorts hundreds of staff hours in the event of an unwitnessed inbounds avalanche, and they serve as valuable public relations tools as well.

For example, at Mt. Bachelor, Ore., the dogs have never been called out in a scenario with a known burial. But patrollers use them to teach kids and the general public about snow safety, taking them to schools, safety days and a variety of other events.

In Wasatch County, Utah, where 45 dog/handler teams from nine ski areas are available to respond to emergencies, Dean Cardinale, president of Wasatch Backcountry Rescue (WBR) and head of snow safety at Snowbird, estimates the dogs respond to backcountry emergencies an average of six times a season.

WOOF EVERY PENNY
Trained dog teams have been part of ski patrols for decades. Even though it takes hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to train and care for the dogs, a few dozen resorts have added avalanche dogs to their ski patrols since the early 1980s. Today, more than 25 ski resorts in the U.S. now have dog teams on site as part of their ski patrols.

Regardless of how the dogs are used, the programs are expensive. Costs include food, vet bills, staff time devoted to training, and special training workshops and certifying clinics with rescue organizations such as the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association (CARDA) and WBR.

At some resorts, including most of the ski areas in Utah, the resorts own the dogs and cover all of the expenses for their care, feeding and training. Each dog has both a lead handler and a secondary handler, and lives with its lead handler. If the lead handler leaves the ski patrol, the secondary handler adopts the dog and takes over its training.

"It's optimal that the resort owns the dog, because that way the dog works its entire working life, which can be up to ten years," Cardinale says.

At other resorts, such as Mt. Bachelor and Heavenly Resort in California, the individual patrollers own the dogs and cover all of the expenses for the animals' training and care through private funding and donations.

Regardless of who's spending the time and money to train the dog, all it takes to get the payback is one unwitnessed, inbounds avalanche.

"I have great faith in the dogs," Meyer says. "If we have an avalanche that was unwitnessed and we don't know if someone was trapped in it or not, we'll run over it with transceivers and run three or four dogs over the debris. And if we don't find anything, we can be pretty sure no one is under that snow."

Before they had the dogs at Jackson Hole, Jerry Balint, Coup's handler, says they would close down the lifts, call in every single patroller on duty and recruit any experienced people available to set up probe lines, working in a search grid across the avalanche path.

"You're talking 50 people and hundreds of man hours," adds Bob Comey, ski patroller and lead avalanche forecaster for Jackson Hole. "It takes the dogs minutes."

BURIED, ALIVE (HOPEFULLY)
In addition to reducing the time and costs involved in clearing an inbounds slide path, if someone is caught in an avalanche inbounds, that person's chances of surviving are dramatically higher at ski areas with rescue dogs on site.

"If there's an accident at a resort, you're probably not going to be looking for someone who's got a locator on them," Cardinale says. "Most people skiing inbounds don't wear transceivers."

Without the dogs, the only way to find a completely buried person who isn't wearing any type of locating device is by probing the snow, which can take hours. But after 30 minutes, the odds of someone surviving an avalanche are cut in half. Because it takes so much time to conduct a probe search, Meyer estimates that the likelihood of finding a person alive, who wasn't wearing a locator, without using dogs, is about one percent.

"But I think they'd have about a 50 percent chance of being found alive by the dogs, because the dogs are there, at the top of the mountain, ready to go, and there are people there who know how to work with them," he says.

GOING TO THE DOGS
Before a dog becomes a useful search tool, the handler spends months training it, working on drills and exercises at least three or four times a week. It can take up to a year and a half before a dog and its handler are able to pass the demanding tests required for certification as an avalanche rescue team. And it all starts with choosing the right puppy.

Cardinale has been training avalanche rescue dogs for more than 15 years and runs training classes for dog teams from other ski areas every other year. In January 2007, 35 dog/handler teams took his five-day course, which costs $700 and includes everything except food and transportation to the resort. He recommends shepherds, retrievers and labradors as rescue dogs because they're known breeds that have proven highly effective in the field.

Size is another key consideration. The actual search work is intensive and exhausting, more like a sprint than a marathon. In order to ensure that the dogs are well-rested going into a search, the handlers will often carry them to the search site, either by cradling the dogs in their arms or by draping them over their shoulders. So medium-sized dogs, about 40 to 60 pounds, work best. Dogs are also transported on ski lifts, snowmobiles, sleds or toboggans, and in helicopters.

TRAINING NEVER ENDS
Cardinale says it's best to start training and bonding with the dog when it's about seven weeks old. "At first it's just basic obedience and getting them familiar with a ski area environment like snow and chairlifts," Clark says.

From there they move onto search scenarios, which look more like human/canine hide and seek. Someone holds the dog, and the handler runs off and hides behind a snowbank or in a hole near a tree. "While this is very serious to us, to them it's just a big game," Clark says. "They know their handler has disappeared and that there's snow involved." With each new exercise, the trainers add a level of complexity to the search, until the dog can find a person buried about five feet deep in a snow cave.

While most dogs are trained to work with multiple handlers, the bond and understanding between the dog and its primary handler is very close. "I can tell when [my dog] Summit has picked up a scent because I know his reactions," says Colton Terry, ski patroller and avalanche dog rescue coordinator for Heavenly. "His whole attitude changes and it's very consistent. It's also very different from when he's just searching. So it's up to a handler to notice their dog's indicators."

Most ski areas follow the testing guidelines set by the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association (CARDA). Wasatch Backcountry Rescue (WBR) in Utah, which tests many of the dogs in the U.S., models many of its testing procedures after the CARDA tests.

The dog and the handler are tested as a team. Before the team gets the basic level of certification, they must find one person buried at least four feet under the snow in less than 20 minutes from the time the call goes out.

The next level of certification involves a more complex search. At the WBR, they take the dog to a different ski resort so it's working in unfamiliar terrain. There the dog must find two buried people and a buried article such as clothing or a backpack in a 100 meter by 100 meter search area in 20 minutes. Usually it takes a dog just minutes to complete its part of the test.

"When I tested Summit he found all his stuff, both people and the article, in three minutes and nine seconds," Terry recalls.

Dogs that have passed this more advanced test are considered fully certified and are often deployed not only at the ski area, but also with the local county sheriff's office in search and rescue scenarios.


A HELPFUL PARTNERSHIP

Doug Meyer works with the Teton County Sheriff's Department as the search and rescue coordinator. He says they call the dog teams at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort any time they have an avalanche rescue, but also for other types of search and rescue, including lost persons and even drownings.

But, in the case of backcountry avalanches, the dogs are usually deployed for body recovery. By the time they get to the scene, it's often too late. As mentioned previously, since Coup found Drew Dunlap in 1992, dogs have only found two other avalanche victims alive, both in Canada.

"Of course you're always hoping for a live recovery," Meyer says. "But if you can have a dog that does find a body, there are a lot of people who benefit from that. For example, the family isn't waiting until the snow melts to recover their loved one.

"But the ultimate was digging up that guy after he'd been buried for 90 minutes and seeing him walk away from it," he says. "That's what you train for, and the live find makes all the time and training worth it."