Safety | Super sleuths

There are times when the conditions for a search for buried victims are particularly bad. Today is such a day. No breeze is sweeping across the mountainside. It will be difficult for Baghira to smell the buried victim in the avalanche cone. Nevertheless, she seems to have smelled something - and runs off.

Baghira has to prove herself on this warm spring day in April: The two-year-old golden retriever is being trained as an avalanche dog in the Tyrol Mountain Rescue dog team. Every dog has to complete two training courses with its owner before being deployed - first the so-called A-course. A year ago, Baghira learned how to find buried victims in the snow. Since then, she has practiced incessantly with her handler Christian Michelitsch to become faster and more focused. Now the time has come: Baghira and Michelitsch are completing their second course in Kühtai. For a week, the two of them have to practise in the snow during the day and Michelitsch has to cram theory in the evening. At the end of the training week there is an exam. If Baghira passes, she and Michelitsch will be on the deployment list and will have to respond to avalanche accidents. Before that, however, Baghira first has to show that she hasn't forgotten anything over the past year. If that doesn't work, the two will have to repeat the first course again.

The Tyrolean Mountain Rescue's avalanche dog team is something special: where in other areas fewer and fewer volunteers want to become avalanche dog handlers, here the number of candidates is actually increasing. There are currently around 60 volunteers and their four-legged companions. They are also active as normal mountain rescuers at their local stations. Tyrol has a total of 4300 mountain rescuers - all of whom work on a voluntary basis. One of them is Stefan Hochstaffl, the training manager of the dog squadron. Hardly anyone has as much experience as the 40-year-old. He became an avalanche dog handler at 17 and has been training dogs himself for eleven years.

Baghira has now completed her task - for the time being. She will soon have to search for two buried victims with Michelitsch.
The training of Baghira and other new avalanche dogs is also necessary because a dog and its companion should normally always be on site after every avalanche accident. This requires avalanche dog handlers everywhere in Tyrol. Only in this way is it possible to be at the scene of an accident with the sniffer dogs just 15 minutes after a descent. Interestingly, the dogs can detect foreign scents up to four meters deep. However, the more compact and dense the snow is, the more difficult it is for the dogs. Finding a buried victim under a loose slab of snow is therefore less of a problem for the sniffer dogs than under a soaked blanket of snow. Depending on the type of snow, it also takes around 15 minutes for the scent of a person to penetrate to the surface. If an avalanche dog happened to be on site immediately after a descent, it might even find the search more difficult than starting 15 minutes later.

On average, two avalanche dogs search during an operation - depending on the size of the avalanche cone and the number of people buried. During training, the sniffer dogs have to work simultaneously so that they don't distract each other later on during a real mission.

Small dots on the opposite mountain slopes show other training groups. A total of 50 dog handlers and their four-legged friends are taking part in this training week in Kühtai, divided into six groups - including two women. Until now, the Tyrolean avalanche dog team has only had one female dog handler. Only since the 90's have women been allowed to join the mountain rescue service at all. Sigrid Vogl and her dog Najari, like Michelitsch and Baghira, are about to take their big test. Vogl is a vet. She treated numerous avalanche dogs years ago. The four-legged friends had often cut themselves on skis. Then Vogl became curious herself. In the case of Najari, she has now found out: The relationship with this dog has become much closer than before with her previous dogs due to the intensive training with her.

Michelitsch and his Baghira, who is "named after the panther from the Jungle Book", also spend almost 24 hours together. The workshop manager of a construction company is very lucky to be able to take his dog to work with him. And: his boss understands when Michelitsch has to go on assignments later. Baghira and Michelitsch have already got to know the helicopter. At first, the dog sniffed at the aircraft, jumped in and out, got used to the rotor blades and their noise. She now loves flying - on one condition: she insists on a window seat.