Distinctly Montana Magazine

LIKE OUR DOGS? COMMENT ON DISTINCTLY MONTANA'S FB PAGE DENVER BRYAN - IMAGES ON THE WILD SIDE "YOU THINK DOGS WILL NOT BE IN HEAVEN? n early morning call went out to the Absa- roka Search and Rescue team, reporting a missing 10-year-old boy in the Beartooth wilderness area in Montana. This 900,000-acre area is home to Granite Peak, Montana's tallest peak at 12,799 feet, towering above the Beartooth Plateau where the fam- ily who reported their son missing had hiked the evening before. The boy had lagged behind and not made it back to camp. A Chris Dover worked as a "Flanker," carrying the radio, map, and compass to help guide a search and rescue dog and handler team to help locate the boy. Only an hour into the search the dog alerted slightly, stopped to sniff, and raised its head in the direction of a steep, gnarly drainage. Beyond just this slight cue, the team had no more information to go on. More teams were searching an area up higher, but turned up nothing. Hours later, after the dog again gave an alert in the direction of the drain- age, a helicopter was called in to take a closer look. As the helicopter dropped in the drainage, the boy was spotted. The dog's slight head lift had been the right cue. Search and rescue dogs detect human scent in a variety of forms including scent-carrying skin cells, evaporated www.distinctlymontana.com I TELL YOU, THEY WILL BE THERE LONG BEFORE ANY OF US." -ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON perspiration, respiratory gases, and even decomposition gases on human skin or tissues. For Deb Tirmenstein of Clarkfork-Bitterroot Search Dogs, who works with a seven- year-old black Labrador named Wibaux: "It really doesn't matter what it is you ask her to look for, she just wants to work. You give her a job, she's happy." One of the best parts about enjoying the Rocky Moun- tains is getting into the remote backcountry in the summer to camp and hike and in the winter to lay some fresh tracks in deep powder. With these activities comes a certain amount of risk, so if tragedy strikes and a hiker be- comes lost in the wilderness or a skier gets swept away in an avalanche, this astute canine sensory system goes from being simply awe-inspiring to absolutely critical. Search and rescue dogs can be trained specifically for rubble searches, water searches, or for avalanche searches. Look for the furriest member of the ski patrol next time you're on the slopes. In the scent realm, dogs definitely have the advantage. The canine brain is dominated by an olfactory cortex and an olfactory bulb that is 40 times bigger than that of humans (relative to brain size). With 125 to 220 million scent-sensitive cells, dogs can discriminate odors at con- 15 DENVER BRYAN - IMAGES ON THE WILD SIDE EAGLE MOUNT

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