NI Search and Rescue Dog Association
“With his wet nose and sloppy kisses he mightn’t look like a superhero but rescue dog Jay is a true life-saver.”
Neil Powell
With his wet nose and sloppy kisses he mightn’t look like a superhero but rescue dog Jay is a true life-saver
Jay’s one of the small, intensively trained team that makes up the Newcastle, Co Down-based Northern Ireland Search and Rescue Dog Association (NISARDA) – funded with a grant of £10,000 from the National Lottery’s Awards for All Programme.
Between them over the years the dogs and their dedicated handlers have saved dozens of lives at home, elsewhere in the UK and around the world, travelling to disasters like the Pakistan and Algerian earthquakes.
And now this dedicated local team is setting new standards for the SARDA organisation nationally. The Awards for All grant has enabled them to become the first team in the UK to put its own purpose-built, fully equipped rescue vehicle on the road.
And as well as that the local organisation has also trained the UK and Ireland's first ever water victim search dog.
Thanks to hours of intensive work with his spaniel/springer cross Fern, NISARDA's founder Neil Powell has set new training standards which have just been accepted by the organisation nationally and will be used to train other dogs in water victim search across the UK.
Neil said: "I've been working with dogs since I was nine; they are a passion of mine. I used to get fed up wandering around the mountains looking for lost people. I thought, I'm sure I could train a dog to do this!"
"The funding we got from Awards for All was the first financial support like this we have ever received. It has given us such a boost to know that an organisation like this understands, appreciates and has now recognised the important work we're doing."
