Intelligence

In dogs we distinguish between three forms of intelligence: the instinctive, the practical, and the adaptive.

By instinctive intelligence, we mean all hereditary skills and behavior. A prime example is the hunting drive: every puppy runs after a moving object.

By practical intelligence, we mean the speed with which, and the degree to which, the dog conforms to the desires of the handler—roughly said, how quickly and how correctly the dog learns the different exercises. This is the intelligence used in the behavioristic approach: in training through classical and operant conditioning.

Adaptive intelligence can be divided into two abilities: learning proficiency, which means how quickly the dog develops adequate behavior in a new situation, and problem solving ability. This last is the dog’s skill in choosing the correct behavior to solve a problem it encounters. This is the intelligence we need in dogs searching in real missions. In our method the dog has the potential to develop and use its adaptive intelligence.

Although many search and rescue dogs are still trained in a mechanical way, years ago we moved our training successfully in another direction. We are convinced that only happy dogs, unspoiled by faulty training, are able to work out all the complex and challenging tasks necessary during real missions.

Figure 9.3 Besides the helper in the hiding place, good helpers on the surface are also important in training search and rescue dogs. The helpers need to close the hiding place appropriately for each dog, depending on whether it is a “pusher” or a “scratcher.”

Figure 9.4 Why not adapt the method to the dog, rather than trying to adapt the dog to the method?

Case Study: Spitak Earthquake, Armenia, December 1988

Around noon on Wednesday, December 7, 1988, Armenia is hit by a huge earthquake. People run in panic to the street. Men, women, and children are trapped in the rubble of their own houses, factories, and schools—desperate people in a world full of chaos. The Search and Rescue Dog Organization of Holland (RHH) travels to the area at its own risk and costs. A diary of this ten-day mission offers clear evidence that it is absolutely necessary to bring well-trained search and rescue dogs and their handlers to a disaster area as soon as possible. Only then is there a reasonable chance of survival for buried victims.

Thursday: The reality is brought home to the world. Estimates on the number of dead have climbed to 50,000 and later even 100,000. The number of injured is ten times more. I call the Soviet Embassy in The Hague and offer the services of our search and rescue dogs. They promise me to send a message to Moscow and I wait for their answer.

Friday: Starting early in the morning, I try to find a way to set up a mission for our search and rescue dog teams using my foreign contacts and via the Soviet Embassy, which has to organize the visa to Armenia for us. I call the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, but they say we have to wait until the USSR asks for our help. To me, that is as if someone has been in an accident and lies hurt on the street, and the bystanders have to wait until the victim asks for an ambulance!

Monday: Valuable days have been lost and there is still no progress. We start to think it is hopeless. Suddenly, we get the news that the Soviet Embassy has asked for our help. I can’t believe my ears. For a short time we consult with each other, but because we rescued a living victim out of the rubble after fourteen days in Italy in 1980, we don’t doubt for long and we decide: we go!

Tuesday: On our way to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, I hear somebody on the radio say that yesterday in Armenia people were dug out of the rubble alive. Then I know: our mission with seven search and rescue dog teams and one physician is meaningful. We leave at 5:30 p.m. on a cargo plane via Moscow to Yerevan. With us is a cargo of thirty-two tons of blankets and medicines.

Wednesday: The disastrous earthquake was exactly a week ago. So much time has been lost. At the Yerevan airport, a Bulgarian interpreter tells us that a rescue team waited here yesterday for ten hours for further transport. We take action, and one and a half hours later we leave in an old bus with our luggage and two interpreters, watched with amazement by the authorities, who didn’t expect so many surprises from the Dutch. Okay, they probably thought, the rowdies are gone now. Around noon, we reach Spitak. When we climb near a damaged monument to see the surrounding area, we are convinced: Spitak does not exist anymore! The city is one big rubble pile and everything big has been cleared away. About 20,000 people died under the falling rubble. The commander of the local government says that he has no need for search and rescue dogs in his town anymore. A little bit further we find a general who gives us permission to help in the villages outside the city. We drive our bus to Shirakamut, a village about six miles (10 km) from Spitak. This is where the epicenter of the earthquake was.

I am dismayed when we approach the village. There’s not a structure standing anywhere. The people in the village are perplexed about our offered help. In all that time (a week), nobody has shown up to help the inhabitants. With their bare hands and some other simple equipment, they have searched in the rubble piles for their family members and neighbors. Almost everyone has been salvaged, including more than 200 bodies of children in the school building, formerly the pride of the area.

As is customary with the Armenians, we get a warm welcome and are invited to take a place at the table set up near their campfire. Of course, we have to taste vodka they’ve made themselves and they share their scarce bread, bacon, and cheese with us. We cannot refuse, because they are so grateful that we have thought of their village. But they also tell us that we have to go to Leninakan (now called Gyumri), where the people need us urgently.

On our way to Leninakan, we pass a large cemetery brimming with people. To our dismay we see dozens of people in old cars and on open trucks on their way to bring their nearest and dearest to their final resting place. In a passing station wagon with an open tailboard, a woman is hanging over a coffin, crying. I grab my camera, but I can’t take a picture. I can’t record the sadness, misery, and poverty around me. The cemetery is crowded. Everywhere people are digging or standing around a grave. It looks like a ghastly film, but it is the reality of Armenia.

In the afternoon, when we enter Leninakan, I immediately discover that here, there is work for us! On the rubble piles people are searching desperately for victims. Also, here they have to work with their bare hands, because they do not have the right equipment. We immediately go to look for the commander of Leninakan. But when I meet him, he is sitting bowed over a map of the town, crying. I discover that the largest part of the map is shaded red. For me, it is clear: Leninakan, a town of almost 300,000 inhabitants, has been about four-fifths destroyed. In answer to my question of where we can work with our dogs, the man draws up his shoulders and looks sadly at us with a tear-stained face. I understand. He doesn’t know anymore where to begin. The disaster is beyond imagining.

It is time for us to take the initiative. A friendly woman from the local government advises us to have a look at the shoe factory. Five hundred laborers were buried under the rubble, but the leader of the salvage team has no hope. The factory became a mass grave for almost the whole staff. Of the hundred dead bodies already salvaged, about twenty are lying beside the road on stretchers covered with plastic or other materials from the rubble.

Large numbers of people are standing by the gate and waiting until family members are salvaged out of the rubble. Heartrending crying makes it clear that again somebody has recognized one of his dearest. Also, for him or her, rescue came too late. Bystanders help the family lay the dead person in a coffin. Family members have to transport their deceased to the cemetery on old trucks or even on a roof rack of a passenger car. I watch as helping hands come out the window of a passenger car to keep the coffin on the roof of the car—they couldn’t even find a rope to fasten the coffin with.

Figure 9.5 Families sometimes have to transport their deceased to the cemetery on the roof rack of passenger cars. (Leninakan, Armenia, 1988)

Later I even see dead bodies transported without coffins. Others can’t find nails to fasten the lid of the coffin. The tragedy is so large it can hardly be described. Of course, we are all deeply affected by the sadness that prevails here. But we do not allow ourselves to become paralyzed; we have to do the job!

On the rubble of what once had been nice five-storey apartments opposite the shoe factory, I see people digging in the rubble. In the rubble pile to my right, neighbors are searching for a composer and his wife. On the left, a little old man with a sad face is digging for his daughter. We let our dogs search, and very quickly, we know where the composer is lying. His wife is more difficult to locate, because she is lying thirteen feet (4 m) deeper, beneath fine rubble. After that the missing daughter is found under concrete slabs. All three are dead, crushed under the enormous mass of rubble. Locating dead people isn’t a good experience for the dog either, but the reward and satisfaction of the handler makes them happier.

In the middle of a public garden, our handlers set up on a spot that we later call the public garden bivouac. There the handlers and their dogs can keep themselves warm at a fire made of wood picked out of the rubble. My shoes are covered in mud—because of the damaged water works and sewers, the streets in Leninakan have a surface of mud at least two inches (5 cm) thick. The rain and snow have only added to the mess.

Leninakan is at an elevation of almost a mile (1,500 m). During the day the temperature is reasonable, but at night it goes down to minus 4°F (-20°C). The clothes, materials, and experience we picked up during avalanche courses in Austria are to our advantage now. Dogs and people sleep that cold night in their tents, close to each other on the ground.

Thursday: Jorge, our interpreter, comes back from reconnoitering and tells us that our help is needed at a few collapsed apartments. We search carefully in the heavy, dangerous rubble. At four points the dogs alert to dead people. We know that because the dogs always give a passive alert at dead bodies; the happiness they show when people are alive is then absent. As soon as a victim is salvaged, the search and rescue dog is once again set up on the same place, because victims are often found lying very close to each other beneath the rubble, which also happened this time.

Two other handlers are searching with their dogs on a gigantic rubble cone beside the apartments. Here once stood seven-storey apartment buildings, of which nothing is left. According to our interpreters, we are now standing on the fourth floor, and the dogs are searching very well. Three dead people in a corner of what was a stairwell, then a baby in the bedroom, crushed in his cradle; and at the neighbors’ apartment, an older man is still half sitting in his chair. The dogs are all doing good work, and there we only find dead people. We also find a seven-year-old girl in a corner of a classroom. Survivors seem out of the question.