To The RescueCB Avy Dog School is about more than tricks and treats

Heavily bearded, burly, mountain-man Shawn Williams, also known as Knuckler, is running in circles, jumping up and down, waving his hands in the air and screeching like a fifth-grade girl at her first slumber party. His audience is even more excited than he is.
Blonde, slight of frame, and not even two years old, Joey is practically doing back flips as she chases after Williams while rag-dolling an old piece of blanket that she holds lightly in her mouth. When they both finally stop, Joey drops the blanket and shakes her entire body from the tip of her black nose to the end of her golden tail. Then she raises her ears and looks at Williams. Though she doesn’t speak, it’s easy to tell what she’s saying: “That was awesome! Let’s do it again!”

The whole production is part of a three-day-long Dog School hosted by the Crested Butte Ski Patrol, aimed at standardizing training for avalanche rescue dogs in Colorado.
Joey, a purebred golden retriever, is one of a handful of dogs from around the state that participated in this year’s program, and Williams is a tenured Crested Butte Ski Patroller and proud member of the Crested Butte Avalanche Dog Program. Although Williams and Joey do not share a connection beyond Dog School, they both are committed to safety in the mountains, teamwork and avalanche safety.
“Every day I’m out here with my dog, we’re working on training,” said Williams, the proud human father to Ziggy, a four-year-old chocolate lab that tips the scales at more than 80 pounds. “Ziggy was brought into the Crested Butte program as a pup, and was fully certified under the CARDA standards as a Crested Butte Avalanche Dog when he was one and half years old.”
CARDA, or the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association, offers the gold standard for avalanche rescue dog training and certification, said Frank Coffey, CBMR’s snow safety director.
“The United States doesn’t really have a standardized system for training and evaluating avalanche dogs,” said Coffey. “The Crested Butte Mountain Resort program adopted the CARDA standards several years ago, and now we’re working to help train other areas, and patrollers from other programs in the criteria.
“We have two CARDA instructors down working with Dog School, and our hope is that eventually all dogs will be trained to the same high standard so that in any circumstance, at any location, rescue personnel will know what they are getting in an avalanche rescue dog.”
Dogs have been used in search and rescue operations for hundreds of years. With their heightened sense of smell and enhanced agility over rough terrain, properly trained dogs can be powerful tools for locating humans lost in the backcountry. In the 1930s the Swiss Army went one step beyond what had previously been done, and began training their dogs specifically for avalanche rescue, with great success.
Today, according to a Canadian avalanche control research committee, a single well-trained avalanche dog has capabilities similar to a 20-person search team and can search an area in an eighth of the time it would take the human team.
Watching Joey, who is still just in the early stages of her training, search the Dog School training area for “victims” and “targets” like the blanket scrap makes it hard to dispute the time-saving aspect of trained dogs.
Less than 20 seconds elapse between when a CARDA trainer gives the search command and when Joey bursts into the snow cave where Williams had been buried. Even at a run, with a beacon, an experienced human searcher would have barely entered the site within that time. A fully trained dog would likely have been even faster.
“Every second counts when someone is buried,” said Coffey. “Our Crested Butte dogs, and dogs trained under the CARDA standards, are incredibly efficient during a search. Unfortunately, because of where avalanches occur and the speed in which a victim must be dug out in order to survive, dogs most often enter a scene once it has become a situation of body recovery.”
That’s one of the hard parts of training an avalanche dog in Crested Butte, adds Williams. Avalanches that trap skiers are almost unheard of at the resort, so while on the hill the dogs are more of a public relations tool than anything. However, skier-triggered avalanches in the valley’s surrounding backcountry are all too common, and it is there that the dogs are truly put to work.
“Because of the training of our avalanche dogs, we’re often called to assist with search and rescue operations,” said Williams. “Unfortunately by the time we’re on the scene it’s often past the golden period for recovery. The dogs are still out there, and they’re still doing their job, but many times the most we can do is provide some closure for families of the victim.”
This was the case in 2008, when a local resident was caught in an avalanche in the Happy Chutes on the northeast flank of Mount Emmons. He was skiing alone and was not wearing a beacon. Crested Butte Search and Rescue looked for his body for a couple of days before calling Crested Butte’s Ski Patrol and requesting help from the dog program. After about half an hour of searching, Digger, one the program’s most seasoned canines, located his body under several feet of snow.
“Digger went out and did his job, and did it very well,” said Williams. “A large part of the training we do is making sure the dogs know when they are successful and rewarding them for that success. That’s why I ran around with Joey.
“But now, think about being the patroller in that situation. She needed to show her enthusiasm and pride for Digger’s work, but at the same time she was dealing with a death of someone in the community. It can be a very hard situation, and it’s part of why we’re constantly training.”
Dogs and handlers trained under the CARDA standards must meet several requirements and criteria in order to be recognized and registered as an avalanche rescue dog team. This includes passing a validation test, which illustrates the effectiveness of the handler and the dog, both as individuals and as a team.
“Ziggy passed the test the first time, but I had to retest,” said Williams. “He went right to the sites and did his job and I was running all over the place. It really is a system that relies on both the handler and the dog having been well trained and understanding what needs to happen.”
Currently the Crested Butte Ski Patrol has five dogs in the avalanche rescue dog program. These are likely the pups that can be seen out on the slopes, riding the chair lifts and hanging out in the base area, and while they may look like pets, let there be no doubt that each one is a trained professional.
“We want people to know our dogs are out there, to ask to pet them, and to see what they can do,” said Williams. “A large part of Dog School is about sharing knowledge, and the same can be said for sharing our program with the community.”