K9 “Keb” entered my life in 2010, a few years before my first search and rescue dog Bosse retired. She was named Kebnekaise – Keb for short – after the highest mountain north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. My husband Scott and I, along with our daughter Linnea and fiancée submitted its glaciated peak shortly before we picked up puppy Keb. 

Keb was carefully selected for her working lines and while building drive had been a constant project with Bosse, it was a non-issue with Keb, who was always “full speed ahead.” It was my job to channel all that energy to help her become a solid search dog. She was quite a handful from the get-go and quickly earned a nickname: The Kebinator. I initially trained Keb as a wilderness airscent dog – trained to find lost people that are alive. Our K9 team required all our dogs to develop a “trained indication” – a way to communicate to us in no uncertain terms when they have made a “find.” Our airscent dogs work off leash and I foolishly let Keb pick a behavior which seemed to come naturally for her  – a “jump indication.” In her case (and to my enduring dismay), this evolved into a full-body slam, as Keb started her take-off five feet or more from me and would impact my body as a small furry missile.

Keb turns out to have a high drive with a “turn-off” button making her a nice member of the family as well. While she has a strong independent streak – which comes in handy as a search and rescue dog must have confidence and be able to work and problem-solve on its own – she is a gentle soul and a great listener often acknowledging me when I am talking out loud with little woofs, nudges or lingering licks.

To train a search and rescue dog you must have a reward that your dog values above everything else. For Keb that turned out to be a blue and orange magical ball: Her Most Favorite Toy in the World. (photo of me and Keb with ball)

As Keb matured she started training for both human remains detection and avalanche rescue and by 2014 she received her first human remains detection national certification which enabled her to deploy and make three finds on the largest disaster in the history of the State of Washington, the OSO landslide which eradicated a whole community and took forty-three lives. This tragic event led to our relentless commitment to finding the dead and the missing in the PNW and honing her scent detection skills to a level I would have never believed possible.In the years since OSO we have searched for human remains in rugged wilderness and urban settings ranging from lost hikers, mushroom pickers and hunters, lost children, subjects with dementia, and murder victims.

Over the years I have tried to imagine what Keb’s world is like. She basically her nose. For her, all humans exist more as different odors than visual images. Her olfactory system is a finely tuned piece of biology. She has several hundred million scent receptors lining the caverns of her nose, compared to my skimpy six million. Her olfactory bulbs make up a big part of her brain – a vomeronasal organ sitting above the roof in the mouth. Bottom line: she can smell of stuff we humans cannot even start to imagine.

My first search dog Bosse lived until he was three weeks shy of sixteen. He dedicated his whole life to SAR and was my true blue dog who allowed me to make all the mistakes I needed to become a better handler, though truthfully my dogs have all been so different that my approach to training has had to adapt (I have also learned a lot and evolved as a handler and trainer).

As of this writing in 2021 K9 Keb is still actively deploying as a human remains detection dog and is certified at the Crime Scene level with the International Police Working Dog Association (IPWDA)

In late 2018 puppy, Kili joined our family. He is a single discipline dog certified with the National Search Dog Alliance (NSDA) with a special focus on working clandestine graves and cold cases.

My dogs have allowed me to become a better version of myself. I am their spiritual guardian and they mine. Forever grateful!