Lower Kiski Search & Rescue to train in Saxonburg
Lower Kiski Search & Rescue division, a part of Lower Kiski Ambulance Service, based in Leechburg, is coming into Saxonburg on Saturday night, Sept. 23, to train their rescue dogs to look for missing people at night.
Kathy Otruba, commander of the search K-9 team, said the training will mainly be concentrated around Saxonburg’s main street and some side streets.
“These dogs are trained to find lost people,” Otruba said. “Either a lost child or somebody with dementia, a hunter that didn’t come back for some reason — these dogs are trained to find them.”
Lower Kiski’s Search and Rescue team features 12 dogs of various types that search for missing people after being trained on a familiar scent belonging to that person, such as an item of their clothing. These are known as “trailing dogs.”
“We're gonna give them a scent object: maybe a hat, a scarf, pair of sunglasses,” Otruba said. “They're gonna smell that scent and then they're going to go and follow wherever the person walked in the community.”
Otruba saidLower Kiski has a strong relationship with Saxonburg’s own rescue agencies and has worked with them in the past, which is why they are conducting the exercise in Saxonburg.
“One of our members, Susan Bronder, is a member of the fire department up there,” Otruba said. “We know the police chief and the mayor, so we have a real good working relationship with them and they've opened up the community to let us train there. We're always looking for new venues to expose the dogs to different things.”
Lower Kiski organized a similar missing person training exercise with the Saxonburg Volunteer Fire Company in October 2023, although that was held during daylight.
Otruba said Lower Kiski will make every effort to ensure the rescue dogs will not be a nuisance to Saxonburg residents during the training period on Saturday night.
“Our dogs are all people friendly,” Otruba said. “We have one or two people that are what we call ‘flankers’, meaning they're ground personnel. So they would watch for traffic. They would watch for people walking down the sidewalk and we would stop our dog, let the people go by, and then we would continue on the trail.”
