The time and money spent training a B.C. search dog unit is significant, but the only K9 handler in the Northwest for a search and rescue team says it is absolutely worth it.
Lance Barrowman and his dog Jagger volunteer with the Houston Search and Rescue group.
Barrowman has been involved with various search and rescue groups for a long time, previously working in Kitimat with the marine search and rescue. His love of dogs inspired him to look into the idea of training a search dog. They were validated for the first time last September, and this year, they’ve been deployed five times.
“We are the only canine team west of Prince George, so we are actually a regional asset, and we work closely with all of the other search and rescue teams, especially the Bulkley Valley in Smithers,” Barrowman said. “We’re almost honorary members there.”
After leaving Kitimat and moving to Bulkley Valley, he contacted the Houston Search and Rescue team with his dream and said they were ecstatic and extremely supportive of the plan.
He has now been a part of the team for almost four years. He and Jagger recently went to Merritt to revalidate through the RCMP to ensure they can continue operating as an official BC Search Dog unit. Once again, the pair passed their wilderness validation test.
He bought the German shepherd from a breeder four years ago in southeastern B.C. and started training him right away.
“I got Jagger as a puppy. I bought him. He is my dog. Unlike the police services, where they are issued dogs,” Barrowman explained.
“We buy our dogs. They are our dogs, and we keep them for life. So I got Jagger as a pup.
“He was seven weeks old.”
Barrowman said the investment in the dog is high because a breed with a high drive and work ethic is required, and that is on top of the regular dog costs such as vet bills.
He said the bigger challenge in having a search dog is the time.
“You have this high-drive dog who just wants to work. He’s living to work. So you’ve got to be training every day, sometimes two to three hours a day,” he said.
“We do some long searches, which are even longer than that, to prepare them for working for an entire day, basically. So it’s getting to the point of what we call validation, basically the qualification you’re looking at is about 1,500 to 2,000 hours of just training.
“It’s a huge time commitment. So it’s actually a way of life. You can’t just have this as a sort of side gig. You actually start living it.”
But he added, it is worth it and could be life-saving.
“They’re basically a force multiplier,” he said.
“A canine can do the work of 20 searchers on the ground. They cover ground incredibly quickly. They can pick up scent from quite a long way away, and you can clear areas for searches quicker than you can with humans.
“Basically, it is another tool that you add to your toolkit.”
Barrowman and Jagger, as the only K9 team in the Northwest, have been called out to help other search and rescue groups. In September, they went to Terrace to help find a missing mushroom picker. However, the missing person managed to find his way safely to the local community, ending the search.
He said the other rescue groups he has helped have mentioned they would love to have a K9 unit on board.
“If the subject is covered in, say, leaves or snow, a human is not going to find that. Whereas there’s a much, much higher probability of detection with the dog scenting, because the scent still comes through,” he noted.
Barrowman and Jagger are now doing some boat training for drowning subjects.
He said sometimes the scent still comes up through the water, and the dog can actually pick up on it.
The Houston Search and Rescue team recently purchased a new truck to help Barrowman and Jagger get around quickly.