On the slopes at Copper Mountain, three-month-old Aley, a Golden Retriever puppy, prepares to play what she believes is the best game ever.
Her owner, Bek Karjian, is a ski patroller at Copper. She holds Aley back by grasping her harness while a stranger runs away from them, screaming in excitement and squeaking a skinny, furry duck toy. Aley yelps back, but waits until Karjian says, “Search!”
On command, Aley runs across the snow and quickly finds the stranger behind a small tree. Then Karjian takes the toy away from Aley so she can focus on the stranger. She wants Aley to know that she is looking for a person, not for a toy.
“Victim loyalty is what we call it, so that she doesn't leave the person she's found,” Karjian said of the training method.
This search exercise is meant to simulate a real avalanche rescue. The goal is to train Aley to be a first responder and find people buried deep in the snow within minutes – even if they are not making any noise or have no tracking devices on them.
Studies have shown after an hour of being buried under the snow, the survival rate is less than 20 percent. It can be dangerous to send human first responders out into an avalanche site, and it can take them hours—or even days—to find a body, according to Karjian.
“In avalanches, you have a very short window of survival. You run out of oxygen very quickly,” Karjian said. “The time that it takes for you to be found is critical, and dogs help make that process faster. They can smell people under the ground. They smell a combination of our clothes, our hair, oils, all of that.”
Karjian knew she wanted to get her own avalanche dog after working with the other dogs at Copper Mountain as a ski patroller. She looked for Golden Retriever breeders in particular, since that type of dog is proven to be a loyal working dog. She even did intensive testing with some puppies to see if they were prepared to work in a noisy, bustling environment.
“We work with a lot of really dangerous things—for us and for the dogs—on this mountain, and she's going to have to be near helicopters and avalanche sites and all of that,” Karjian said. “So I wanted her to be afraid. I didn't want her to just run right into the fire.”
One of the tests Karjian did with the puppies was to throw a ski near them and see how they reacted. She said Aley would usually stop, stare at the ski, look back for approval, and then approach the ski cautiously.
But long before Aley proved to be a top dog, she knew Aley was the puppy for her.
“When I first walked in...and saw the puppies, I saw her pink collar," she said. "And I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, that's my dog.’”
Right now, Karjian is working on using Aley’s “whirlwind” personality to go search for people. The puppy has gone from being able to find her owner in plain sight to now finding strangers that are hidden behind trees. Soon, she'll be trained to use her nose to sniff for people. If all goes well, Aley will eventually choose the avalanche search over a scrumptious dog treat.
“There should be a bowl of food out next to a person, and she should still want to find the person," Karjian said. "Because (the search) is literally the best game ever.”
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She expects Aley to be fully trained and ready in two years, considering how fast the dog is moving through exercises. Until then, Karjian will keep playing with Aley on the Copper slopes this season to get her ready for that worst-case-scenario day.
"Her job and love in this life is going to be to find people buried under the snow, and she does a really dang good job of it already," Karjian said. "I am just so impressed."
Copper Mountain currently has two full-time search dogs as well as one part-time dog. Those who want to support the ski resort's dog program can donate to the Colorado Rapid Avalanche Deployment team, a nonprofit organization that partners with Copper Mountain and other ski resorts around the area.
