Caesar the SAR Dog
By Scott Nyborg

October 1999 Dan Crumrine awoke to the sound of hand drums. Caesar, Dan's yellow Lab, was already awake, quiet but alert, his head cocked to listen to the drums. It was cold: 50 degrees colder than the mild Virginia autumn at home. They were in a small motel on the Moose Factory Cree Indian Reservation, across the river from Moosonee in Ontario, Canada.

Dan rose and gathered his gear. Outside, the drums were being played over loud speakers as a sort of reveille. He and Caesar were quickly ushered to meet the Provincial Police helicopter that was waiting for them. As they went to board the aircraft, one of the Cree men thrust a coat into Crumrine's hands. Take my jacket, the man said. You'll be cold out there. Before Dan could refuse, he was aboard the helicopter with his Lab, lifting away toward the shore of James Bay. Caesar sat calmly beside him as the aircraft labored into the air. Dan rested a hand on his dogs back. Caesar was about to become a pivotal resource in the effort to recover eight bodies lost somewhere in the James Bay nearly two weeks earlier in a boating accident. The work would be difficult, but Caesar was equal to the task.

Caesar is an Airscenting Search and Rescue dog who specializes in searching for human beings lost in wilderness areas. Crumrine, Caesars teammate, trainer, and owner, is a volunteer. While their primary mission is to save lives by finding lost individuals before disaster strikes, this team has been instrumental in recovering drowning victims and giving closure to families. For nine years, they have helped do exactly that whenever called upon. During Caesars working career, the pair has participated in more than 100 searches.

The call had come two days ago. Dan and Caesar had been training together in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia, Crumrine's home state. In the middle of the training session, Dan received a call on his cell phone that a boating accident involving Cree Indians from the reservation in Ontario had resulted in eight drownings. Eleven people were thrown into the sea in rough water when one canoe swamped and the other canoe came to their assistance, says Crumrine. Eight of the people drowned, [but] the other three had made it to shore, found a hunting camp, and warmed themselves. [They] started a snowmobile left from the past winter, and rode it over the bare ground to town and sought help.

Caesar is trained to search for any airborne human scent. All human beings constantly give off the makings of scent: gasses from biological processes in the body, sweat and skin oil vapors, and tiny particles of dead skin all contribute to a persons scent. In the wilderness, this scent becomes airborne and can be moved by even the tiniest wind currents over long distances. Even a submerged human body continues to release scent. Because the particles and gasses that make up human scent are much lighter than water, the scent floats to the surface, where it becomes airborne. To a trained canine like Caesar, this airborne scent is like a roadmap to the subject. Caesar is able to detect this scent from shore or from a boat, and indicate the location of the submerged body. In a body of water like the James Bay, which is far too large to be canvassed by divers, Caesars ability to search the water from the surface became invaluable.

Labrador of the Month

It was by no accident that Dan and Caesar were brought to the James Bay all the way from Virginia. While there are certainly many trained Search and Rescue Dogs in the United States and Canada, not many teams can boast the combination of experience, high-level training, and dedication to the work that Crumrine and Caesar do.

Crumrine had become exposed to canine-assisted Search and Rescue (SAR) work when he and his son saw a demonstration given by a member of Blue and Gray Search and Rescue Dogs, Inc., a non-profit, volunteer organization of SAR dog handlers based in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I was very impressed, says Crumrine. Having been a dog lover all my life, I decided I wanted to do this. Labs make excellent search dogs because of their high energy, trainability, good-natured temperaments, and suitability to the outdoors. Crumrine purchased Caesar as a puppy in December of 1991, from breeder Martha Lee Voshell of Broad Reach Kennel in Free Union, Virginia.

As Crumrine soon found out, training a SAR dog requires an enormous amount of work and dedication. It takes, on the average, two years to properly train an airscenting dog and the handler is completely responsible for conducting the training program. Every week, I drove hundreds of miles and [spent] numerous hours [training] with experienced handlers, says Crumrine. Once trained, the team (dog and handler) must pass a battery of state-mandated tests to prove their effectiveness in the field. The team became operational with Blue and Gray in February, 1993 and began helping in missing person searches throughout the state of Virginia. Driven by a desire to utilize Caesars talents even further, they joined the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Virginia Beach Task Force in 1995, which required them to train for disaster searches as well.

Caesars first live find was an elderly gentleman who had been missing for three days. While working a drowning on the James River near Williamsburg, [Virginia] they were called off by VADES [the Virginia Department of Emergency Services] to search for this gentleman who might still be alive. Indeed, the man was, and thanks to Caesar and his handler, he was recovered in good condition. After ten minutes in the dense underbrush I could see Caesar was working scent and he took off out of sight. He soon came running back to me, jumped on me, and took me through a tangle of briars to an abandoned, junked automobile. I could hear a voice [from the car]. I recalled my dog while the law enforcement officer went in and recovered the gentleman. He had passed out in the car and couldn't get back out. He was a bit dehydrated after three days of 90-degree heat, but was otherwise okay, says Crumrine.

The pair was called on numerous other searches, notably among them the search for missing persons following Hurricane Opal on the Gulf Coast of Florida. One of the most important for Crumrine, however, occurred closer to home, in Virginia. This search was significant to me because it is the only time in nine years that I have doubted my dog, says Crumrine. He and Caesar had been called to search for a woman who had drowned in a Virginia lake. However, when divers searched underwater in the spot Caesar and another dog indicated, they found nothing. When authorities decided to drain the lake two months later, they also found no trace of the body. It wasn't until later that the woman's body was found tangled in a construction fence in a stream fed by the lake. The fence had been placed on the lakes dam to keep her from floating out in case she was there, says Crumrine. Sometime during the two months between the time Caesar indicated the body's position and the draining of the lake, the woman's body had become tangled in the fence, which had come loose and floated downstream. Caesar had been right after all and Crumrine learned an important lesson: to trust your dog.

Because of Caesars field experience, he became the model for the Area Search Standard for Canine Solutions International (CSI), a standard that is today considered one of the highest, most stringent standards for Search and Rescue dogs in the world. To the best of my knowledge says Crumrine, who compiled the document, this is the only standard in the world that requires the dog to be able to find live, deceased, and drowned victims, as well as articles [i.e., clothing or other objects containing human scent] all in the same standard.

It was because of Crumrine's involvement with CSI that he and Caesar were asked to help in the James Bay search. The morning after the call came, he and Caesar flew to Timmins, Ontario. From there he was transported to the Moose Factory reservation by bush plane and helicopter. Crumrine was briefed that night by the entire tribe. At one point in the discussion, an older gentleman started talking and pointed to the map, says Crumrine. He spoke in his native tongue, so another gentleman translated for me. [He] said, I walked here and when I turned to the sea, I wept. So I walked further, and here I turned to the sea again, and I wept.

The next morning the helicopter left the pair at a small camp that had been established for the search on the shore of the Haricanna River, two miles from the bay. We were now some 200 miles from any roads, plumbing, electricity, and all the other creature comforts we become so accustomed to, says Crumrine. He was quickly introduced to the camp personnel: Charlie, who was in charge of the camp the two cooks and their helper, Juju Boy, who was to do or get anything they needed Boat Boy, the young man in charge of handling the boat two guides and other searchers.

Within 30 minutes we were in a canoe and on our way to our search area. Five of the drowning victims had been recovered before I got there, and I was looking for the other three. Caesar and I worked [from] the boat. The wind was offshore [carrying any scent out to sea], so it made no sense for me to work [from] the shoreline. Almost immediately Caesar alerted as we were going through a channel. Unfortunately, I couldn't pursue the alert because the water was too shallow for the boat, but too deep to walk. About 30 minutes later, a helicopter came down and hovered just above the surface of the water. Two men jumped out and recovered a body from the flat directly in front of us. [Caesar] knew she was there we just couldn't get to her.

Caesar worked long, cold days from the boat, searching for the remaining victims. When Caesar got chilled I put the coat that the gentleman [at the reservation] had given me on him. It saved my dog from getting too cold, allowing him to work all day, says Crumrine.

Crumrine's guides, experienced bushmen who knew the area by memory and took him to the various search areas, also kept Dan and Caesar safe. One day, when searching from shore because of rough seas, Crumrine asked one of his guides why he carried a gun. The man replied that two moose had been spotted in the area, and that he would shoot one if it attacked. On another morning, Dan put Caesar on a down-stay while he hurried into one of the camp huts to get a cup of coffee. When he returned, a line of men stood in front of Caesar. They pointed to a black fox that had wandered into camp and they were guarding my dog from him. What wonderful people! Crumrine says with a smile.

After four long days of searching, Crumrine and Caesar had to leave. They had not recovered the remaining two victims yet. Before leaving, Crumrine indicated areas to the remaining searchers that he considered high-probability areas for a find. One [of the victims] was found there ten days later, says Crumrine. Twenty days later, the final body washed up on shore.

Five of the eight victims were from the same family, says Crumrine. A husband and wife and their three children The other three were from another family and included a woman and two men. One of the men that died had tied two of the boys hands to the thwart on a canoe to assure that they would float to shore and be found. They were. Several bodies were recovered from both places that the older native man described.

Tragic as some of the searches are in which the team participates, on the whole, SAR work is enormously rewarding. Crumrine acknowledges that not every dog team is up to the challenge of Search and Rescue. When asked what gets the job done, Crumrine smiles. We are best friends, he says. We will do anything for each other. For Dan, Caesar, and the dozens of people that the pair has helped, its been enough to make all the difference in the world.