Wigeon to the rescue!

Forgive my ignorance, but if she becomes full fledged rescue, does that mean that she goes and lives with a human partner with the rescue team, or does she always remain your family pet, and only "on call" to do rescue when needed?

Click to expand...

My husband is her human partner! He is a sergeant with the NH state police and has always wanted to get involved in having a canine partner, however he has been a commander with the SWAT team for several years now which takes up a lot of his time. This will hopefully give him a way to do both. He is lobbying right now for her to become a member of the state police as an "on call" dog. All of their current dogs which are either patrol/drug/tracking dogs (German Shepherds) or bomb dogs are on duty with the trooper so this would be different situation where she will be deployed as needed and my husband can still perform his duties on the SWAT team and as a supervisor. Things look good for this to happen but that will be in at least a year. There is a real need for SAR dogs since the first responder to a lost child or elderly person is a police tracking dog which stays on the exact track wasting time (a child can wander around and around for hours) and also they are trained to attack once they find someone since they are mostly searching for a criminal that fled. Police of course are on scene much faster than a volunteer could be so that is how a call typically goes. My husband hopes to change that.