Back to New day northwest.
From the Oso landslide to the high
snow fields on Mount Rainier to the
lush forests of Olympic National Park,
my next guests have conducted hundreds
of search and rescue missions throughout
the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Their new book, A Dog's devotion,
gives an inside look at the remarkable team,
whose principal investigator is a
yellow laboratory retriever named Kevin.
Welcome back to new Day cab,
her handler, Suzanne else old,
and her search partner.
But I mean, still,
thank you all for being here.
It is a pleasure to see you again.
The last time we spoke,
there was a big award that Kev was up for.
And you have some good
news on that front, right?
Yes. She actually won the American
Humane Search and Rescue Hero Dog award.
And so now she is vying for
the overall Hero Dog Award,
which will be announced on November 11 at
the star-studded gala event in Palm Beach.
Ohh, wow. We'll be there.
And no matter what, you know,
all the dogs are being nervous. Right? So
all the. Absolutely.
And but you know,
Kev has a special place in our heart.
Obviously you know her.
Her career as a search
dog is pretty remarkable.
But your career is volunteers,
equally interesting stories.
Why did you decide to write this book?
Well, we felt we had interesting stories to
tell of the adventures that we have enjoyed.
But we also wanted to write a book
that told the stories of hundreds,
if not thousands of volunteer search
and rescue folks across the country.
Many people don't know that in our country.
Most search and rescue is done by volunteers.
That's true. That's a good point.
I don't think I realized that
the number was so large.
So how did you find Kev?
How did cab come into your life?
And then how did you decide this
is going to be a good search dog?
Yeah, well, I got my
first search dog in 2001.
9/11 was the catalyst for me getting
involved in search and rescue and I
had no idea what I was looking for.
So my first search dog was kind of a
medium low drive dog and I had to work
my tail off to get her to be or him
to become a really good search dog.
So by the time I.
Got cab, which was in 2010.
I I actually, I actually had
the help of a professional who
selects law enforcement dogs, OK.
And so she's the one that helped
me pick the line and helped
pick her out of the litter.
I I find that so fascinating
that that was the moment,
like you said, all most of search
and rescue is done by volunteers.
And it was 911. That was your moment.
What was your moment, guy? I had
been hiking and climbing
most of my adult life.
1 Winter I heard of an ongoing
search down at Mount Rainier.
I drove down. I volunteered.
I asked if they needed help and spent
the entire day on snowshoes doing grid
searching along the mountainside.
After that I decided that was
something I really like to do,
to have an adventure and also
help people and signed up with
my local search and rescue team.
I'm so glad you did.
You and Suzanne and Kev.
Many adventures, chapter two of
the book specifically details Kepts
work at the Oso landslide and you
wrote that as it was kind of a
turning point for your team. How so?
Well, it was, you know,
the kind of mission that you get get
to go on once in a lifetime if that.
Most teams don't end up doing
disasters like this, but it was,
you know, 43 people lost their lives.
We deployed over the course of a month,
cabin I deployed I think
a total of two weeks.
And it was just, you know,
we were working side-by-side with family.
With excavators, with the Marsh masters,
with boats, it just made us really
pull together and and after that
I think regional collaboration was
something that our team took on and
we subsequently founded Cascadia
Search Dogs a few years later,
which is in the business of
promoting regional training for
Keenan search and rescue teams.
Such important work,
what is the scariest thing?
I've ever encountered during
one of your searches,
you know. Yeah. I think well I I think
we were on a gruesome double homicide
case for a long time a few years
back and I was actually deploying
with Guy's wife, Jane Mansfield.
And we had just had kind of a scary
situation with cab we thought
getting lost in the banker system
which was built into a mountain.
And fortunately she came out
and but shortly after that.
June looked at her GPS and she stared
at me and she said Ohh Suzanne,
I think Kev is standing right
at the drop off a steep Cliff.
Ohh my goodness.
And so we hurried up and we saw kept
standing up ahead of us and we came up there.
I couldn't believe my eyes because
we were looking out over the
OSO landslide and this was like
four or five years after also.
And so it brought back all those memories.
But anyway we were able to
ease cab back down.
And everything,
you know, went fine,
but it was really scary at the time.
No, I'm glad that everyone is OK,
and I'm grateful for all
the work that you've done.
Kev is an absolute treasure to
us here in the Pacific Northwest.
So thank you so much for coming in.
We're so excited to read your book,
a dog's devotion.
True adventures of a canine
search and rescue team.
Thank you both so much.
Thank you.
And Suzanne and Guy will be signing copies
of their book tomorrow evening at
the Edmonds Book Shop. And you can
meet Keb, too, so you don't
want to miss out on that.