Dog trainer helps in disasters, teaches basic obedience skills

When a tornado blew into southern Indiana towns last year, Jeremy Leming of Greenwood, Ind., and his dog, Gryce, were among the first to respond and look for the missing.

“I started search and rescue with search dogs in 1999,” Leming said. “I joined the FEMA task force in 2001, about four or five months after 9/11 happened.”

In 1999, Leming was given his first dog, a German shepherd. He said becoming a search and rescue dog trainer happened by accident.

“We were given typical puppy obedience class,” Leming said. “As I was walking into class one day, I heard one of the instructors talking about his search and rescue dog. And I interrupted his conversation and said, ‘Excuse me, did you say you have search and rescue dogs?’”

Leming said hearing about search and rescue dogs in Indiana shocked him.

“You usually think of out West or in the mountains, that type of thing,” Leming said. “And he said, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, you could bring your puppy out, and we’ll see how he likes doing that type of work.’ From that point on, I knew immediately that’s what I needed to be doing.”

The dogs are used mainly in disaster situations, such as the tornado and wind destruction that can occur in the southern half of the state during tornado season. But Leming said he’s taken dogs as far as New Orleans to search for survivors in the rubble of hurricanes, such as Gustav and Katrina.

“We bring all of our equipment down to make sure that we’re self-sufficient for at least three days before we’d need backup or supplies or fuel or anything like that,” Leming said. “We go down, and we look for people that are lost, trapped in a collapsed structure, that type of situation.”

Leming is currently taking a break from the search and rescue work and is working with basic obedience training with people’s pet dogs. He is also training dogs in the sport of Schutzhund, a breed suitability test for German shepherds.
 
He said he hopes to return to search and rescue work in the near future, mostly because he misses the bond between him and any of his search and
rescue dogs.

“It’s a bond that almost is so tight, it’s almost like mind reading,” Leming said. “The dog responds to you sometimes before your command even comes out of your mouth because you spend so many hours working obedience, off-leash control, agility, all sorts of work.”

Leming said this closeness is something most people never experience.

“You spend that much time working with an animal, you know each other so deeply and intensely, that I guess that’s the only thing that would come that close is someone that you’ve been married to for a long time,” he said.

He said this bond is by far his favorite part of what he does.

“Spending the time getting to know the animals, spending that much time with them and getting to know them that well, is definitely the biggest reward of all of it,” he said.