Dogs / Breeds
From the rubble of Wayanad's landslides to Kolkata's collapsed flyover, search and rescue dogs have become a familiar, essential presence at Indian disaster sites.
From the rubble of Wayanad's landslides to Kolkata's collapsed flyover, search and rescue dogs have become a familiar, essential presence at Indian disaster sites.
A search and rescue dog, commonly shortened to SAR dog, is trained to detect human scent and guide handlers to missing or trapped people, whether that is after an earthquake, a building collapse, a landslide, or a person lost in wilderness terrain. The work depends on a dog's sense of smell, which is dramatically more sensitive than a human's, combined with the stamina, focus and trainability to work for hours in genuinely difficult conditions.
India's National Disaster Response Force and the armed forces maintain dedicated canine units for exactly this work. During the devastating Wayanad landslides, Indian Army search and rescue dogs named Jaki, Dixie and Sara worked through mud and rain to detect human scent under rubble, part of a broader effort involving canines trained at the Dog Training Faculty in Meerut Cantt, a centre of excellence covering nine specialities including search and rescue. Similar teams, including dogs named Romio and Julie, were deployed internationally as part of India's disaster response contingent following the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, and had previously located survivors alive in the 2018 Majerhat flyover collapse in Kolkata.
The NDRF has more recently begun training cadaver dogs specifically, largely Belgian Malinois and Labradors, to locate human remains at disaster sites, a capability that had been limited within India's state rescue forces until this dedicated push. Meanwhile, the Border Security Force has trialled native Indian breeds including the Mudhol Hound and Rampur Hound for specialised roles such as helicopter insertion and river rafting alongside commando units, part of a wider push to bring home-grown breeds into frontline working roles traditionally dominated by imported dogs.
A specialised branch of this work happens at extreme altitude. The Indian Army, alongside the ITBP and NDRF, maintains dedicated avalanche rescue dog teams for the Siachen Glacier and other high Himalayan postings, where troops face genuine avalanche risk in temperatures that can fall below minus 40 degrees Celsius. These teams were deployed again during the February 2025 avalanche at a Border Roads Organisation site in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, working alongside drone-based detection systems to help rescue workers buried under the snow. It is some of the most physically demanding search and rescue work a dog can be asked to do, and a reminder that India's SAR capability extends well beyond urban disaster response.
SAR training takes months to years and covers scent discrimination, obedience under extreme distraction, physical conditioning for difficult terrain, and the emotional resilience to keep working through distressing environments. Handlers train alongside their dogs as a single working unit, since a SAR dog's effectiveness depends heavily on how well its handler reads its alert signals in the field.
Tags: search and rescue dogs, SAR dogs, NDRF dogs, Indian Army dogs, disaster response
Article content © Ravi Teja. All rights reserved.
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