SEADOGS train for disaster response
- Natalie Buttner
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 10 hours ago
Search and rescue dogs practice for the worst as the nation increases landslide awareness
Colton Scrudder lay nestled in a pile of logs on a muddy hillside, waiting to be found. One by one almost a dozen dogs came to his rescue. They are search and rescue dogs with Southeast Alaska Dogs Organized for Ground Search (SEADOGS), who completed training this weekend to gain confidence and skills for responding to disasters.
Finding Scrudder within a pile of logs was one drill in a weekend training in which 12 dogs and their handlers received guidance from Sonja Heritage, a handler, trainer, instructor and evaluator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The terrain, torn up in an early stage of a Chilkat Vista housing development project, simulated the unstable ground of a mudslide.
SEADOGS is a group of volunteers that train and certify search and rescue dogs. The dogs and their handlers are deployed by the Alaska State Troopers to locate missing persons.
Many SEADOGS handlers have been with the organization for more than a decade and have trained multiple dogs.
“The severity of the operation has definitely changed,” Lorne Cook said. His dog, an 11-month-old Belgium Malinois named Zara, is the third dog that Cook has trained as a search and rescue dog.
“My oldest dog worked the landslide in Wrangell and it was an eye opener of what you would encounter in a landslide,” Cook said. “All the training that we did circa nine years didn't amount to the work in the mud.”
“Everything is moving and sinking,” handler Marcy Larson added.
The 2023 Wrangell landslide tore up over 37 acres of land, submerged two houses and killed six people.
“After the Wrangell slide it was like, holy smokes,” Larson said. “There is so much. And this is starting to happen a lot. We had been called to the other Sitka slide, the Haines slide, now this slide, and it's like, this is starting to happen. We really need to up our game.”
In addition to those mentioned by Larson, there was a fatal landslide in Ketchikan in 2024, a total of four fatal landslides in Southeast Alaska in the last decade. According to the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, atmospheric rivers are becoming more frequent on the West Coast, which can increase the risk of landslides. Some experts believe climate change is making landslides more common nationwide.
In the wake of this series of fatal landslides, many communities in Southeast have mapped landslide risk in their area. A nationwide landslide susceptibility map released by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2024 indicates that 44% of the country could experience landslide activity.
FEMA uses dogs to locate victims of natural disasters across the country. SEADOGS have their own certification process, with standards influenced by the FEMA certification. In the case of a disaster in Southeast Alaska, Juneau SEADOGS would be first on the scene. SEADOGS organized the training to get more guidance on the skills and equipment needed to find missing people in a disaster like a mudslide.
Dogs and handlers from SEADOG teams from Wrangell and Sitka also attended the training.
“When we invited the FEMA person up from California to give us this training, we thought this is a perfect opportunity to involve more teams throughout Southeast. Because a lot of times on slides, we get called, all of us get called,” Larson said.
The weekend seminar included an agility course for dogs to gain confidence moving through unstable terrain. The agility course also helped the dogs practice obedience and follow directional commands, simulating when their handler may not be able to remain near them due to unstable ground.
They also conducted drills using hiders and human remains samples — such as hair donated by salons or teeth from dentists — at the simulated landslide site as well as the Hagavig Regional Fire Training Center that was used to simulate a damaged building.
“This isn't normally what we do on all of our trainings, we're all about setting up problems and having the dogs actually search,” said Alicia McGuire, who provides team support for SEADOGS.
Sitka handler Tess Lee agreed these sorts of drills are unusual, but exposing the dogs to new activities and new environments is helpful.
Sonja Heritage, owner of Heritage K-9 , chose the exercises, gave feedback on the handler’s communication with the dogs and the dogs’ response to each problem.
According to Larson, each dog has a different final trained response or a way of reacting when they locate a person or human remains. Responses can include barking, lying down or digging at the ground. Their reaction can also depend on how close they are to the source of the scent.
Search and rescue dogs also have specializations. Some dogs train for wilderness searching, finding any person within a wilderness area. Others specialize in “trailing” or following a specific person based on a scent sample. Some dogs are best at searching for bodies in the water from a boat, while others train for avalanche rescues.
Geoff Larson, president of SEADOGS and Marcy’s husband, has seen the nature of rescues change over the 20 years he has been with the organization. He said in the past SEADOGS would receive more calls searching for people lost and dogs with wilderness skills were used more often. Now that most people hike with communications devices and GPS, trailing dogs are more likely to be deployed to find people who can’t communicate or do not want to be found.
A combination of dogs was recently deployed to locate a cruise ship passenger reported missing after hiking from the Goldbelt Tram in early July. Dogs specializing in wilderness search were deployed to rule out areas. The trailing dogs waited for an item with the missing person’s scent to be delivered from the cruise ship, which had already left Juneau. She was ultimately found dead. The terrain was too steep and the weather was too bad for the dogs to reach the woman. However, the dogs narrowed the search area and she was located by helicopter.
“It was a tough one,” Marcy Larson said.
Sitka handler Sheila Swanberg spoke to the difficulty of handling a dog in these intense situations.
“You can't react, because if you react negatively to finding something or some situation that happens, the dog is going to pick up on that,” Swanberg said. “So you have to just control your own emotions, kind of read through it and then let the dog only read what it needs to from you.”
Handlers keep training fun, rewarding the dogs for good work with a quick game of tug or a favorite snack.
“The cool thing is, you get to play with your dog a lot, the sad thing is you're not always in fun situations when the real thing hits.” Marcy Larson said.
SEADOGS expressed gratitude to the community for supporting this training, especially Chilkat Properties, Geoff and Marcy Larson, CCFR Chief Rich Etheridge, Tyler Rental and Alaska Electric Light & Power for donating training locations and equipment.
Mike Huemann, owner of Chilkat Properties, allowed the SEADOGS to use his property for the exercises. The land had been cleared in the early stages of building housing. The development of the land resulted in it being torn up, creating similar terrain to a landslide.
“It's a real privilege to be able to offer our land to be used for something like this in the community,” Huemann said, “We’re happy to help out any way we can.”
• Contact Natalie Buttner at natalieb@juneauindependent.com.
