Our Beautiful Black and Tan Bloodhound Becca

In charge of Bellowing in the Backyard. Harder to capture than black dogs, in my opinion, because my shots never quite seem to show her beauty. Maybe, it's because I'm prejudiced and she's really not that beautiful. Nah, that can't be it!

[Update] Just brought this post to the front for some exciting news: Jan and Becca actually saved a life, today! Out of respect for the person's privacy, I don't want to go into a lot of details, but police, including a helicopter, couldn't find him, so they called us. Since it was in the city next to where we live, Jan was the first of our team on scene, but it was not an easy find and she had to crawl on her stomach for a while to untangle Becca, who had tangled herself in some thick brush. Turns out that if she could have gotten through that brush, she would have made the find that much sooner.

The subject was in pretty bad shape, but the second member of our team to arrive is a surgeon, who used to work in a trauma unit and she ended up beating the ambulance to the scene, so Southwest Search Dogs was very fortunate to be able to provide a huge service to our community. It doesn't happen that often, but this is what we live for!

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Explore #190, 10/26/08.

My wife's dog, Becca. She's as sweet and cuddly as she looks. Almost everybody who touches her comments on how soft she is and she is most affectionate, if not overly demanding. She is also a bit of a shy dog, so Jan conditions her to new people and experiences at every opportunity. Today's training should be especially interesting and a new experience for all of us. We'll be training at Petco Park, the home stadium for the San Diego Padres baseball team.

Becca is the younger half-sister to my Bloodhound, Jessie, who's even sweeter, but not quite as pretty. We've had Becca since she was six weeks old. She is now six years old. We decided to keep Jessie after a failed attempt to temporarily foster her only until we could find a permanent home for her. She was five years old at the time and is now eight.

Besides trailing, cadaver and water search, Becca is certified in scent matching, which she has to re-certify in every six months. Scent matching is an exercise where she is given a scent article that she sniffs and then has to choose which among four identical articles, spread out on the ground, about 15 feet apart, has the human scent that matches the target article, and then sit next to it in order to indicate that it is the correct one. The practical use of this certification doesn't come up that often, but it is impressive and fun to see in public relations demonstrations.

View On Black | View Large On Black

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An last but not least, our founder (along with a little help from her friends) and my wife, Jan, anticipating a big wet one from our beautiful and cuddly Bloodhound, Becca. At nine years old, Becca has already exceeded the average life span of Bloodhounds by two years and she is still going strong.

Because it caused us to form our own group, after a couple of us were removed as volunteers with the Sheriff's Department, for political reasons, I often say that getting kicked off the Sheriff's Department was the best thing that ever happened to me (although it was devastating at the time.) If that hadn't happened, I'm sure that we would still be volunteering our time with them and I would still be upset and usually angry about the inefficiencies and incompetence of the bureaucracy. Today, I am proud to serve and have tons of fun working with the loves of my life!

Tags:   Becca Bloodhound Search dog wwwsouthwestsearchdogs.org

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Saluting our friends in San Luis Obispo for their recent find. I remember being a subject for Lassie on her certification test for NASAR and playing with my iPhone, when I played the call of a Mountain Chickadee and a wild one answered back, which was quite a surprise as I didn't even know there was one in the area.

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Tags:   Bloodhound Search dogs

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