Ventura County Star
In Haiti, Pearl ventured deep inside collapsed buildings, into gaps in the rubble too small for her 6-foot-6 handler, to sniff out survivors of that country’s devastating earthquake.
Deployed in an international rescue effort just three years after she was plucked from an animal shelter by the Ojai-based National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, the 4-year-old black Lab helped find a half-dozen people who were pulled alive from the wreckage.
This shelter-to-savior story earned Pearl the title of 2010 Dog of the Year from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“She was a shelter dog and she was rescued,” said Emily Brand, an ASPCA spokeswoman. “She’s now the rescuer.”
Pearl and her handler, Capt. Ron Horetski of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, will be honored Nov. 11 at the ASPCA’s annual Humane Awards Luncheon in New York, along with people and animals in five other categories.
About 450 people are expected to attend the awards event, which will feature video montages about Pearl and other winners, ASPCA officials said.
Pearl was the only dog chosen among hundreds of animals and people nominated for the awards. The Lab and her handler were among seven canine teams from a Los Angeles County search and-rescue force who spent 16 days searching for survivors in Haiti after a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Jan. 12, leveling much of Port-au-Prince and killing at least 200,000 people.
The canine teams, all trained by the Search Dog Foundation, found 12 people who were later pulled alive from the rubble, Foundation officials said.
Pearl was among three dogs who found a woman trapped in a collapsed building five days after the quake, missing some fingers but still alive, Horetski said. When rescuers pulled the woman out, her family and other Haitians began singing and praying, he recalled.
“She went above and beyond what we trained for,” Horetski said of Pearl.
That same intense personality landed Pearl in a shelter. Her first owner was often away from their Reno, Nev., home, and she jumped the fence so many times that her owner gave her up, according to the Search Dog Foundation. Pearl’s disposition, however, convinced a Foundation volunteer that she would make a good search team member. After completing her training, the Lab was paired with Horetski in 2008.
They now live in Riverside and train frequently in Ventura County. Most of the Search Dog Foundation’s dogs start out as rescue animals, said Wilma Melville, the organization’s founder. Melville called the ASPCA award “startling and delightful.”
“There are a lot of dogs in the country,” Melville said.”It is an honor to be selected by them.”
By Adam Foxman