TAKING THE LEAD

Karen Kelly, Civil Defence’s first female dog handler, and Meath Civil Defence Officer Shane Quinn, talk to Adam Hyland about the organisation’s K9 Unit

The Civil Defence was in the news in March when it was announced that they have recently added two new dogs to their Victim Recovery Unit, with volunteer member Karen Kelly having quali ed as the rst female dog handler with the organisation. e expansion of the specialist units within Civil Defence, the volunteer-based organisation supporting frontline emergency services, is necessary, enabling them to carry out, among many other services, search and rescue operations, and this is very much welcomed by Meath Civil Defence

O cer Shane Quinn, who oversees the region in which Karen and her dog Rossi, a Springer Spaniel, work.

“I’ve been involved with Civil Defence since 1994, long before there were K9 or boat units, back when searches were done by groups of volunteers out on the ground in mucky boots,” he tells me. For him, staying so long has allowed him to see the improvements made, but also to see the dedication his team has.

“I joined the Auxiliary Fire Service back then and my plan was to stay for a year, and almost 30 years later I am still here,” he says. “ e way I see it, there are two types of volunteer in the Civil Defence: those who come and reap the bene ts of being in the organisation and then move on a er getting their certi cates and improving their CV, and then there are the rest of us. In Meath, thankfully, the majority of us are ‘the rest of us’.”

Following time with the Auxiliary Fire Service, Shane got involved with search and recovery on boats, but then “found a niche” in instructing re ghters and being involved in Rope Rescue and Technical Rescue.

“Everyone in Civil Defence does the missing person search responder course though,” he adds, “and all of us can be tasked with conducting searches. You have the likes of Karen then, who come in and do a speciality on top of the normal training and duties, and having her as a dog handler is fantastic for us.

Specialists

“All counties have drone capabilities now that can be really helpful, but only four counties have K9 units. Similarly, every county has access to a rescue team but only six have a Rope Rescue team, and while every county has access to boats and swi water capabilities, only six have kayak specialists, so we are fortunate to have Karen working with us as part of our team but also as part of the K9 Unit.

“ e support of the K9 Unit, as we have with Karen and Rossi, is the biggest improvement in search and recovery in all the time I’ve been here,” Shane adds, “because a dog and handler can cover a lot more ground a lot more quickly than a team of 20 volunteers on foot. ey are irreplaceable.”

Karen joined Civil Defence almost ten years ago as a volunteer, assisting the team while also working for her family business Phibsboro Electrical, and she says that much like Shane, she didn’t plan to stay for so long.

“I initially joined to broaden my CV because I wanted to join the Gardaí,” she tells me. “But when I got into Civil Defence, I realised it was a much broader community than what I thought the Gardaí would provide, so I stayed on and decided to keep my job and give back to the community in a voluntary way. I also met so many good people through Civil Defence that it would be hard for me to leave now.”

As a dog lover and dedicated volunteer with Civil Defence, it was natural that Karen would want to qualify as a dog handler.

“I’ve always been an animal lover, but speci cally dogs,” she tells me, “and to be able to put them into use where they are such an asset is phenomenal. e training involved and the whole process of bringing a dog on to be able to do such a rewarding job is great.”

Training

at training involved a year-long course that included 150 hours of guided training from a National Association of Specialist Dog Users recognised body in the UK.

“150 hours may not sound like a lot when it comes to the job we are doing, but it is actually an enormous amount of work,” Karen says.

On top of the skills that both handler and dog need to learn, the most important part of the process is forming a bond between the two that will see them live together and successfully work together to locate missing or deceased persons in all terrains and weather.

Bonding

“ e easiest part of it was actually the bonding process,” she adds. “I’m actually Rossi’s h owner and nobody had made a bond with him before. He was originally a trial dog, then a gun dog, but when he came to me, thankfully he took to me immediately. He’s my shadow, but I only have to say the word and he gets to work. When I get the call, I usually just have to rattle the keys and Rossi is in the van with me, ready to head o on a search.”

In terms of how an operation involving a search and recovery dog works, Shane tells me that for missing persons, he will receive a call from An Garda Síochána, and he then calls Karen to see if she is available.

“Generally, we try to make sure there are two dogs and handlers for each search,” he says, “just for safety reasons, but if there is only one dog, one of us will walk 50 metres behind her, just in case something happens to them and they need assistance.”

In order to be ready for a search call, Karen says that home life has a regime that helps bring out the best in Rossi, including a 6.30am walk so that if there is a call later that day he has had time to rest, and no food in the morning so that Rossi doesn’t have to work on a full stomach.

Operations

When the call comes in, Karen says there are cues to let Rossi know that it’s time to go into work mode.

“Initially I put the harness on Rossi, and a lot of people will say the click of that going on sets the dog into work mode, but with Rossi, him just seeing me put on my tact vest is enough to switch him into action and he knows something is about to happen.

“I put the harness on him and walk to the start of the search area, and as soon as I take him o the lead and tell him to ‘go nd’ he is gone searching.”

Unlike other dogs in the Unit who bark when they make a discovery, Rossi gives o body language that Karen has learned to interpret due to their close bond.

“ ere is a long list of di erent types of body language he gives o ,” Karen tells me, “and I don’t know what it is but we both communicate really well and have gotten to understand each other, so I can read what he is saying to me.”

Most search dogs also work o a reward incentive, but Karen says Rossi is just happy to be acknowledged. “He really does the work just for me to play with him and give him a ection,” she says. “I do try to reinforce that reward by giving him a tennis ball to play with, because I can’t be sure he will always want to work just for my a ection, so the ball is there as back-up, but for now he is more than happy for me to make a fuss of him.

“With other dogs, you have to make a big hullabaloo and jump around to show your appreciation, tell them how great they are, but with Rossi it is more of a quiet, intimate moment where you just scrub his ear and tell him he is a great lad and that is the happiest he will ever be.”

When not working, Karen says Rossi has “a great o switch” and is a real couch potato.

“Normally with Springer Spaniels they are always on the go, but with Rossi you can just open the door to his crate, or open the sitting room door, and he will just plop down on the ground. Sometimes a er our morning walk, I will be sitting at the kitchen table and he will lie on the cold tiles just to be near me, while my other dogs are running around. He just wants to be beside me.”

Groundbreaker

Regarding becoming the rst female handler in the Civil Defence, Karen is proud but also pragmatic.

“ ere was really no reason why there wasn’t a female handler in the K9 Unit before me,” she says, “and in Meath we actually have two other women who act as bodies for training purposes. I would always push the message that those antiquated views of females doing certain jobs no longer have a place, they are old and gone. When you look at the National Ambulance Service, there are probably as many women as men, or at least much nearer equality than ten years ago.”

Shane con rms this, and admits that when asked to ‘body’ for a training operation with the KY Unit’s rst dog, he baulked at the weather forecast and said he didn’t want to hide in a ditch in the sleet and rain, but wasn’t surprised when he heard that Karen and the other women in the group were already on board for it.

“Karen, and the others, have put in the work and are reaping the rewards,” he tells me. “Since the K9 Unit started bodying training, the two bodies have been female, and Karen’s position now is the reward for the hard work she has done.”

Shane adds that the publicity around Karen becoming the rst dog handler in the organisation has been a great bene t for the Civil Defence.

“Every other day, somebody wants to talk to her about it, and that is great for the K9 Unit, and for Civil Defence in Meath, because it draws massive attention to what we do,” he says. “Even on St Patrick’s Day we were being asked if Karen and Rossi were going to be in the parade, because she was in the news. at was great publicity and promotion for the organisation, not just in Meath but nationally, to let people know we have this team of dogs and handlers who do this vital work, and of course in

Meath we are bene tting hugely from having Karen and Rossi with us.

“ e publicity doesn’t do any harm in terms of attracting volunteers either,” he adds. “Since the launch of the K9 Unit on news outlets at the start of March, I’ve had 32 applicants to join the Civil Defence in Meath, so you can’t knock that. In Meath we have 215 volunteers, while nationally there are 3,000, so there are plenty of people doing it, but there is plenty of room for more, because we could never have enough volunteers.”

Talking about that publicity, Karen laughs, saying she has gotten a lot of good-natured slagging over it, with her husband Darren, who is also the Meath Civil Defence kayak instructor, teasing that he was the youngest ever Advanced Paramedic in the country when he rst quali ed, and it is Karen who is getting the publicity.

“I’m very grateful to him for his support,” Karen laughs, “but the publicity has been good for the organisation. Just to be able to promote females in any area is exceptional, and it means so much to me to be the rst female in anything, to be honest. It is something I absolutely love to do and you get to help your community, so what more could you ask for?”

If you are interested in volunteering with the Civil Defence, go to https://www.civildefence.ie/join/.