Dusty

by Jane B. Mason

  Dusty scampered over to them, unable to move slowly now that he could see his target! The ceiling was too low for the children to stand, but Dusty could move freely. He approached each child cautiously, listening for breath. He could smell that they were alive, but they weren’t moving. He nosed each body in turn but got no response. The children needed help. That’s what he was here for. So he sat down beside the closest child and did exactly what he was trained to do—he barked. He barked and barked and barked.

  Perched on the edge of the destruction heap, Luis worried. He paced back and forth on a small piece of solid plywood. It took all of his will not to leap into the pile that had recently been a school and start digging in the spot where Dusty’s little flag of a tail had disappeared into the debris. It had been a long time since he’d gone in. Too long.

  Luis sank onto his haunches, touching one hand to the dirt. He listened as hard as he could. He waited to hear a bark, a whimper, a footstep … anything. The search site was noisy, and getting noisier as the sun rose and more and more teams came to help. Firefighters, police, military personnel, construction workers with large machines, and even concerned citizens flooded the search sites. They came from all walks of life and wore the same frustrated and haunted expressions, especially in their eyes. They wanted to do something to make the situation better, to help, to save victims. Many understood that with each second that ticked by, the chances of finding people alive grew slimmer.

  Luis let the sounds of the rescue workers console him. He reminded himself that everyone was doing what they could, including Dusty. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. The din of people and machines suddenly went silent. Opening his eyes, Luis looked up and saw a man in yellow safety gear on the pile. He was holding his fist high in a call for silence. Someone, somewhere had heard something! He put his own fist in the air—the sign that told everyone to stop whatever they were doing to listen.

  Luis’s ears rang with the silence. He strained to hear … something. Seconds passed. Thirty. Sixty. Everyone waited, on edge and ready to focus their efforts on an area where they might find somebody alive. Finally the man in yellow put his arm down. The rest of the arms soon dropped as well. It was a false alarm. Whatever they thought they heard, they had not heard again. The general search resumed.

  Cautiously Luis climbed the pile to the crack Dusty had entered. He leaned as close as he could and wished for the thousandth time that human ears weren’t so useless. He wondered, if he called out, would Dusty hear him? He wanted to let Dusty know he had his back. That he was right here, waiting. He knew it would be a mistake to call the dog’s name. Dusty needed to be wherever he was, doing his job. Sometimes the hardest part of SAR work was letting a partner do his job.

  Luis was reaching for his water bottle when he froze. There. He thought he heard the sound he’d been waiting for—a familiar bark. He waited, wanting to hear it again and afraid that his mind was playing tricks. He looked around at the people nearby to see if they had heard it, too.

  A Mexican navy rescuer stilled among the chunks of concrete he’d been lifting. “Did you hear something?” he asked, catching Luis’s concerned look. Luis squinted up at the man. The sun was higher and the worker was standing in the light. Luis nodded. Yes, he did.

  The worker, standing higher on the pile, shouted and held his fist in the air. “¡Puños arriba!” All around them, people repeated the movement. They stopped moving. Stopped talking. Stopped looking. Engines were shut off, and everyone listened with fists raised. It was almost silent.

  Luis felt his heart stop before it began pounding again, furiously and in time with the barks of the bravest dog he knew.

  “Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!” It was Dusty. He was alerting him. He was alerting them all. He had found people alive!

  Dusty sneezed and kept barking. His snout and throat were filled with dust, but he wouldn’t let that stop him. He couldn’t let that stop him. “Yip, yip, yip, YIP!”

  The three children he’d found were still immobile, but one of them was conscious. She’d woken up when Dusty began barking. He sat as close to her as he could so she could feel the heat of his body and know he was there. He understood she wasn’t fully aware of him but that staying close was good. His spirits lifted when she raised her hand and weakly touched his back.

  Between barks, Dusty nosed the hands of the other two, hoping they would wake up as well. One of them moaned softly.

  Pausing in his alert, Dusty listened to the noises coming from above. They had stopped briefly but were now growing louder. He could hear scraping concrete. Shouts. Motors. And Luis! He barked and barked and barked. The timbre of his partner’s voice was as unmistakable as his smell … Luis was coming for him! For all of them.

  After several attempts to locate the spot closest to the sound of Dusty’s barking, the rescue crew had zeroed in. Because victims could only survive inside small pockets within a collapsed structure, it was too dangerous to use big diggers to move the debris quickly. The risk of an excavator could trigger another collapse. Instead the building fragments had to be removed painstakingly slowly, by hand. But now that they had a target, the effort could remain focused. Luis worked with the rest of the available workers forming human chains, passing bricks, wood, buckets of rubble, and chunks of pipe and concrete from person to person, moving pieces of the destroyed school off the pile. A few people with hand tools carefully broke up big pieces. A single backhoe working with a spotter was used to lift the largest pieces from the pile. Each enormous chunk was strung up on wires and carefully lifted and swung away. With each load they inched closer to their goal. The barking grew louder.

  Luis swallowed his impatience and continued to pry, lift, and haul away every scrap he could. He was still anxious, but at least now he was occupied, and helping!

  In the dark hollow, Dusty barked less and less … just enough to let the rescuers know they were on the right path. He could hear them getting closer!

  Suddenly Dusty’s hair stood on end. He heard the deep distant growl before anyone else. It sounded exactly like the one he’d heard before! A few seconds later a strong aftershock hit, making the ground pitch and buckle. Dust and small chunks of debris rained down on Dusty and the victims. The girl cried out in terror. Dusty trembled, unable to bark.

  All at once it was over. The aftershock stopped as quickly as it had started. The earth quieted. Atop the massive heap, the rescue crews were also quiet as dust rose off the pile. Everyone stood frozen, waiting. Then they heard it: the brave bark of the Chihuahua.

  Luis let his breath out in a gush. Dusty had not been crushed by the shifting pile. He was still in there. Alive! And doing his job. But they needed to get to him and the victims before the unsettled earth shook again.

  Grabbing a chunk of concrete, Luis used all his strength to hoist it up. A woman in a hardhat and safety vest caught the other end before it toppled, and together they moved it off the pile. They were one layer closer to Dusty and the victims.

  Time passed more quickly now that Luis was actively working, but still seemed to trickle by.

  “Here.” A woman in a green vest who’d been working nearby for the last few hours handed him a bottle. Luis paused, mopped his brow, and accepted the water. He’d been working for six hours. Sabrina and Thor had been called off, replaced by the next team. When Laura had radioed to tell Luis he should take a break, he’d refused. “I’m staying until we reach Dusty,” he told her. “I won’t quit while he’s still working.”

  The Incident Command leader hesitated. It was her job to make sure that the dogs and handlers were cared for. If they got too hungry, tired, or stressed, they could make an already dangerous situation worse. She knew where Luis was coming from, though. She was a handler, too. And handlers stick with their dog. “Be safe,” she told Luis, and signed off.

  Luis took a second swallow of water, which did nothing to clear the sandy feeling in his throat that came with zero sleep and an excess of dust and smoke. The day was
warm and would soon be hot. Capping the bottle, he heard a cry from the rescuers and saw several men waving their arms, motioning him closer. There’d been a breakthrough!

  Within minutes someone arrived with a long ladder that they lowered slowly into a murky opening. People on the edges arranged the rubble in attempts to shore up the unstable pile. Then, slowly, the way he had watched his dog do it, Luis placed his feet carefully and moved down the ladder. He was only a few steps in, followed by an emergency medical technician, when Dusty barked again so loudly it made Luis grin.

  “Dusty!” At last he could call his dog’s name.

  Luis’s eyes adjusted and Dusty jumped and spun in small circles near his feet. “Good dog, Dusty,” Luis told him. He reached down and gave him a quick pat. He’d have liked to snatch him up, climb out of the volatile cavern, and do nothing but play tug and administer belly rubs for the rest of the day, but their job wasn’t done … not yet. He crouched down and moved with the tech and firefighter to the three living victims. There was no time to waste.

  The EMT assessed the children as quickly as she could, mobilizing to get them out. All of them were exhausted and dehydrated and traumatized. Since there was no way of knowing the extent of their injuries, all three were secured to backboards and carried up and out. The conscious girl was disoriented and had a large bump on her head—possibly a concussion. It was good that Dusty had helped keep her awake. The black-haired boy sitting in the middle had a broken leg that needed stabilizing before he could be moved. The third child, breathing but limp, had lost a lot of blood from a puncture in her thigh and was rushed away for a transfusion.

  Dusty spent only a moment with Luis. He was elated to see him and also aware that they were still working. He ran back to the two remaining children as they were loaded onto stretchers, offering small licks. He would not leave them alone until they were out, safe and getting the care they needed.

  Dusty and Luis stood in the gloomy wreckage until everyone else was out. “Okay,” Luis said.

  This time Dusty did not slow himself down at all. He bounded up the ladder, his paws barely touching the rails, and raced into the sunshine with a victory bark. He jumped around the opening, licking Luis’s face as he emerged.

  Luis had never been happier to kiss a dog. His radio crackled, and the duo heard Laura’s familiar voice. She’d been marking the progress and getting reports, and knew the team was out. It was time for them to get checked out by their own medical attendants. Time to get some rest. “I’m not taking no for an answer this time,” she told Luis.

  Luis lifted Dusty and pulled Bear from a vest pocket, offering it to him. He felt the small dog who loved to walk on his own feet relax in his arms. They were both exhausted. “We did it,” Luis whispered. “Good dog.” Of course he knew the job wasn’t finished—there was still a lot of work to do. But they had found three living people, and that was incredible.

  He started the slow walk back to the base. All around them people stopped their work. They clapped their hands together for the tiny hero dog and his big man partner. They patted Luis on the back. They reached out to pet Dusty. Several were crying.

  “Gracias,” they heard again and again. Finding three children alive had given everyone the hope they needed to keep going.

  “¡Hermano!” Paco rushed up to his brother and embraced him. “You are a hero!”

  “Dusty is the hero,” Luis said.

  “Dusty.” Paco shook his head, amazed by the little perrito. “You are tesoro.”

  “Hold on a sec, okay? I’ve got another call coming in,” Shelby told Ryan before putting him on hold. She looked at the number blinking on the screen and realized that it was an international call, from Mexico. They hadn’t received one of those since …

  “Oh my gosh!” Shelby whispered to herself. “Hello?” she said, half holding her breath. The phone crackled with bad reception.

  “Is this the Sterling ranch?” a deep voice asked through the buzzing.

  “Luis, is that you?” Shelby half shouted.

  Luis let out a chuckle. “Sí, it’s me. I wanted to call and tell you about Dusty’s first mission.”

  “Hold on!” Shelby cried a second time. She switched back to Ryan and explained that she had to go. “I’ll call you back! It’s Dusty on the other line!”

  Ryan laughed aloud. “Now the miracle Chihuahua can talk?” he quipped.

  “Oh, no!” Shelby babbled. “It’s really Luis. I just meant—”

  “I see how it is,” Ryan continued to tease. “I’m only your number one until a certain Chihuahua calls you up!”

  Shelby was smiling, getting it, and glad Ryan’s feelings weren’t hurt. “I’ll call you back!” she promised before clicking off and hitting the intercom button that connected the welcome center to the canine pavilion. “Luis and Dusty are on the line! Come quick!”

  Unable to wait, Shelby begged Luis to fill her in.

  “He was incredible,” Luis reported. “He crawled into a tiny crack and was out of sight for several hours. He found three unconscious children, and all three are going to be fine. Everyone is calling it a miracle!”

  As Shelby listened she could almost feel the warmth of Dusty sitting in her lap. Of him licking her hand, or strutting across the floor. That tiny, mangy little puppy had transformed himself—with help, of course—into a hero.

  Blinking, Shelby realized that she was crying tears of happiness. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, sniffling. By the time her family and Pablo made it to the welcome center she had dark streaks running all the way down her cheeks.

  “Oh no,” Pablo said, alarmed.

  “It is bad news?” Forrest asked.

  Shelby shook her head. “He’s a hero!” she shouted, and put Luis on speaker so he could tell the tale again.

  “Yip!” Dusty barked in the background.

  While faces exploded into expressions of happiness and excitement, Morgan watched her older sister a bit warily. When Luis finished telling the story a second time, she walked over and whispered, “Shelby, your mascara is running. Um … badly.” Shelby blinked back her happy tears, her face exploding into the widest grin Morgan had ever seen on her sister’s face.

  “Who cares?” Shelby cried. “Dusty is a rescue dog of giants!”

  Pedro handed Shelby a tissue, nodding. “Thank goodness Sylvia didn’t mistake that little pooch for a piece of dusty roadside trash,” he said. “That little perro is pure treasure.”

  As bona fide dog lovers we jumped at the opportunity to write stories about rescue dogs. Knowing that the project would require extensive research, we excitedly explored websites, books, articles, and anything else that could help us learn about rescue dog training, handler pairing, and the disasters dogs assist with. We found dozens of inspiring stories about real dogs doing what they do best: acting selflessly, loyally, enthusiastically, tirelessly, and heroically to save people in peril. We were won over by these incredible tales of canines and their companions, and inspired by the dedication and hard work so many two- and four-legged creatures undertake in service of others. We also learned that there are many differing theories and methods of dog training.

  It can take years of training and discipline to develop dogs’ natural gifts into skills that make them both safe and effective helpers in the aftermath of disasters. Dozens of canine search and rescue agencies all over the world do this important work, and while they all share the common goal of creating well-matched and successful dog and handler teams, each has its own philosophy and style. There is no single path to becoming a certified search dog. Though we were particularly inspired by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, established by Wilma Melville and her Labrador, Murphy, we pulled from several schools of thought regarding both training and searching to create these dog-inspired fictional stories. We hope you enjoy them. Woof!

  Want more Rescue Dogs?

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at Jet!

  The black-and-white border
collie pup dozed in a dirt patch, his feet twitching. He dreamed of running. Fast, with no collar. He dreamed of chasing butterflies. He dreamed of eating until his belly felt full. Then, all of a sudden, he was jolted awake. In the dim light he saw the short leash and the stake holding him hostage in the dusty yard. He heard an awful grumbling noise, and it wasn’t his empty stomach. It was deeper and darker and coming from everywhere at once. No. Not everywhere. It was coming from the sky far away. He raised his nose and sniffed the air. He smelled something like metal. Or electricity. He heard the distant rumble again.

  The pup sat up, alarmed. He had never heard this noise before. It wasn’t a car or an animal. The sky was darker than usual. And the air felt heavier and wetter with each passing moment. The air felt like he could lick it.

  A flash of light startled the dog, and he began to pace as a large wet drop landed on his black-furred head. He shook it off and walked one way and the other and then one way again. He barked, afraid. Whatever this was, it was scary. No, it was terrifying!

  The drops started to fall faster and soon the dog could feel them seeping through his fur to his skin underneath. He trembled and whined. He chewed at the tether holding him to the exposed spot in the yard, even though he knew it was useless.

  A few minutes later the back door to the house swung open and a boy appeared. His shoulders were hunched against the water coming from the sky, and he ran the few steps to the center of the yard and squatted down.

  “It’s okay, Mutt.” The boy unclipped the tether from the pup’s collar. The sky boomed again and the pup shook. The boy scooped him into his arms. “Shhhh,” he whispered, wrapping him in an old towel that smelled like mice and stagnant water. “You’re coming with me.”

  As the boy carried him toward the back steps, the dog looked around nervously. He’d never been in the house. He wasn’t allowed in the house. He huffed, blowing out air to get the bad smell of the towel out of his nose.