Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners
By: Wilma Melville, Paul Lobo / Narrated By: Will Damron, Xe Sands
Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
Stories of sadness; stories of triumph
Paul Lobo wrote Hero Dogs from Wilma Melville’s perspective even though she wished to stay out of the story’s limelight. But as he says, how on earth could you tell the story of the SDF, Search Dog Foundation WITHOUT the woman?!? Impossible, I tell you! Absolutely impossible!
I mean, the woman got into search and rescue after she retired from teaching—when she was in her early 60s for cripes sake! Me? As I look forward to my own 60s, I’m planning on sitting on my comfy chair, banging away on my keyboard, writing out audiobook reviews. And I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
But age did not, and does not, hamper Melville one iota. She took her own search dog, her own trip to the Oklahoma City bombing, and turned both into a dream that one day, there would be more search dogs, someday maybe even ENOUGH search dogs.
The audiobook describes what is necessary for a good disaster search dog: physical stamina and a prey-drive outta this world. Indeed, most of these dogs are dropouts from service dog schools: They’re simply toooo spastic and hyper to be of any use. But pair those dogs with rigorous training as work, and give them a treat or a squeaky toy after a find, and they blossom. The funniest image that made me laugh was when Harley, the search dog, comes across an ENTIRE wall of Beanie Babies as he combs through the rubble of the World Trade Center. He’s absolutely done because he just came across his own private Heaven. Still, he’s a good boy, doesn’t go for them, but visions of Beanie Babies dance in his head.
Hero Dogs is pretty hard-hitting too. Disasters covered in graphic detail? Well, how about the Oklahoma City bombing? The World Trade Centers? Hurricane Katrina? The Haiti earthquake? The writing is such that you feel you’re right there with the dogs and their handlers, seeing the devastation they see, smelling the death they smell, hearing the silence of not a live victim to be found. It’s utterly captivating.
You’ll love the dogs, even though the story is old enough by now that we know all the dogs in it have long since passed. But they had great lives, filled with love, filled with purpose, filled with the respect of many. And while they worked efficiently a great deal, they also offered comfort as a side gig. Really remarkable pups.
Xe Sands, who I know is a seasoned professional, does a marvelous job with the narration. She captures every emotion possible (and the story runs the entire gamut of possible emotions), but she does especially well with the awe and emotional devastation that comes with seeing environmental ruin and having but the vaguest hope of finding anyone alive. I have quite a few more audiobooks with her as a narrator and will be listening to them when I can; she’s THAT good.
As my “Animals” pick for this week, Hero Dogs was just what I needed. Some adventure, a lotta love, and one helluva lot of pathos, all rolled up in a pack of wild and furry reprobates. Magnificent.
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