Some great tips and advise for St Pauls School students.

On Saturday September 10, 2011 St Pauls put on a fantastic fate for the school students with some great talent on show and heaps of fun rides to keep the kids happy.

As we have all seen in the media a lot of talk about dog attacks recently, it was a great opportunity to talk with the kids on how to avoid a dog bite. The students were great and really keen to learn some dog safety tips and the parents learnt a lot as well.

After the talk Security dog handler and Owner of “K9 Security” Adam Sessions gave the students a close up of an aggressive dog. We even managed to get one of the school staff in the bite suit and bitten by Conan. It was a great day and it is a real pleasure to be able to contribute in helping our kids be safe around dogs.

To check out more photos go to our Multi National K9 facebook site and don’t forget to hit the Like button.

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Maya the Koala Detection Dog

It has been a busy time at Multi National K9 and the several environmental K9′s in training. After the success of the first Koala Detection Dog Oscar, Maya was put into a program so she can be utilized on North Stradbroke Island.

Environmental dogs require a different selection process compared to other detection dogs such as Explosives or Narcotic dogs. The training program is also much more complex then other detection dogs. As an example a narcotic dog can search a car or a room and will find the narcotic odour. The Narcotic odour is foreign to the local environment and the dog generally indicates when he is within a foot of the odour {Draws, shelves etc} There is also fewer distractions for searches in a house.

The koala detection dog has to work large areas of bush land that is saturated with native wildlife from Kangaroos, wallabies, lizards, foxes, birds and hundreds of other animals. The areas are also full of scats, food scrap, dead animals and many many more distractions. The Koala dog has to be able to work in this environment and show no interest in these distractions but be activly looking for Koala scat and Koalas.

A koala can climb a tree 24 hours before the search but as the koala is 20 metres off the ground and constantly urinating and dropping scat depending on the strength of the wind the scent pool can be massive. There are many more things to consider to ensure the success of the Koala dog so it is a slow ongoing process.

Maya has passed the evaluation and extensive testing and has just completed the first stage of training. Maya can now activly locate Koala habitat and is on North Stradbroke Island to complete the environmentel conditioning within her working areas. Once this second stage is complete Maya comes back to MNK9 for the final stages of training.

Maya will be living and working with the very talented Koala Researcher Romane Cristescu and assistant Russell Miller {Pictured with Maya} We wish all the best and every success to the wonderful people actively involved in saving our little Aussie Icon the Koala and of course Maya.

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Search and rescue dog k9 training is a very important job and many S & R dogs have located  trapped victims in earthquakes, found missing bush walkers but sadly it is very underfunded so it is left to dedicated volunteers. Over the past 20 years I have seen many people giving so much of their time to train and have available S & R K9′s. In many cases the politics stopped a lot of people in their tracks, but the great news is we are now seeing good progress. There are many great Aussies doing their best and keeping the dream alive, people from all over Australia that are spending months of their own time to train up and have available S & R K9′s to help our fellow Australians. Great people like Slade Macklin, Alex Withers, Elke and Peter Effler that has given so much to establish a strong S & R K9 community.

Australian search and rescue dogs are now on the world stage and ready for service to assist in saving peoples lives and with the hard work of the S & R K9 community the future looks very bright. It was a pleasure at MNK9 to assist in training S & R K9 Ishara and contribute what we can to assist Barry Lowday. Here is a little bit more about him.

Barry Lowday has been training Search and Rescue Canines since 2003. Barry says he has been very blessed with his two excellent working dogs Ishara and Tilda. He has also been extremely fortunate to have been “in the right place at the right time”

Barry was apart of the first ever dog and handler team to deploy Urban Search and Rescue {USAR} canines from Australia. The work Barry does is all voluntary with Queensland Fire and Rescue Service’s USAR Task force 1

This is a real credit for the innovation and commitment of our Queensland Fire and Rescue Service http://www.fire.qld.gov.au/ who lead Australia in this very important area.

Some of Barry’s search and rescue career highlights include;

2008 Deployment with search and rescue dog Ishara to PNG to assist at a land slip incident by searching for buried victims.

2011 Deployment with search and rescue dog Ishara for the Christchurch earthquake

2011 Deployment with search and rescue dog Ishara for the Japan earthquake and tsunami incident.

We wish Barry and the entire S & R community all the best in the future.

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Australia still has several islands that remain Cane Toad free such as the beautiful Moreton island and great Groote Eylandt in the NT. Cane toads will wipe out many animals if they manage to get a breeding population on these islands. The Islands remain Cane toad free due to the great management, dedication and education of the public.

People such as Chris Hanlon and his team from Queensland Parks and Wildlife that are pro active, vigilant and working very hard so Moreton Island can remain cane toad free and our Gem on the bay. I had the great honour to meet the good people from Moreton Island Protection Committee including Mr. Alan Genninges who has so much compassion with protecting Moreton Island.

We are all proud of our Queensland Volunteers during natural disasters such as the massive 2011 flood cleanup by the great “Mud Army”  I got to meet some great silent heroes of  Moreton Island, the hard working volunteers of the Moreton Island Protection Committee that give up their time to maintain our Moreton Island.

During our time on Moreton with Rusty the Cane Toad Detection Dog we managed to search target areas covering the entire island from the Cape Moreton light house to Kooringal including a big search where the Cane toad was found. We targeted the dumps, and several camping grounds including the wrecks area.

I was very impressed with the staff from Tangalooma resort http://www.tangalooma.com/info/home/ who were all doing their bit to help stop the Cane Toad including stopping shipments of Mulch from the main land that may contain baby cane toads.

I was able to share information with them on what other communities such as Groote Eylandt was doing to help stop the cane toad. It is a real credit to Tangalooma Resort Manager Mr. Trevor Hassard who is doing a great job and is a fantastic leader.

If you havent been to Moreton Island I suggest you give Trevor from Tangalooma Resort a call or visit their website and enjoy a great holiday right on Brisbanes door step.

If you want to help Moreton Island Protection Committee protect this island paradise give Alan a call on 07 3321 1463.

And make sure you check your camping gear, 4wd and trailer to ensure you are cane toad free and when you arrive say g day to Chris and the team of park rangers.

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[Pictured back Jim McDonnell Logan City Council Gary Jackson Multi National K9 front Lloyd Hancock with Kuna Amanda Harris with Sparky]

It has been a very busy week for the Quoll detection dog team conducting searches in several locations for the Logan City Council. World’s first Quoll detection dog Sparky and new Quoll detection dog Kuna put in a massive effort and was able to locate Quoll sites so camera and traps can be placed. With the fantastic guidance of one of Australia’s leading Quoll experts Dr. Scott Burnett and the extremely compassionate and dedicated team from Logan City Council the Quoll detection dog teams did very well.

Logan City Council should be proud of the high quality staff working in the environmental department, the staff are very dedicated and compassionate about the wildlife and all are fully committed to making a difference in protecting the native wildlife. I first met some of these talented people in June with the Koala surveys and Oscar the world’s first koala detection dog.

Logan City Council has always been very innovative in many areas and are clear leaders that other councils look up to. Under the Guidance of Mr. Jim McDonnell his very valuable team are doing a fantastic job. I was very impressed with the teams extensive knowledge, attention to detail and the training of newer team members.

I had the great privilege to work with some very talented people  including Rebecca Condon, Anna Markula, Renee Domalewski, Rachael Booth, Nicole Walters and Katie Hawton. It is also very clear that using Quoll detection dogs the wildlife at Logan are in very safe hands.

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