As we leave 2022 behind and jump into 2023, we hope that you will take a moment to read our “Reflections” on this past year. You can read it here.
We are grateful to all who have supported us and we look forward to lots of new quality trainings in the New Year!
We are pleased to announce the election of our new Board Officers for 2023!
Janiece Miller, President
Candice Church, Vice President
Brenda Stone, Secretary
June Mansfield, Treasurer
We also added two new Board members to our existing roster – Kris Lesperance and Jessi Beyer.
We are grateful to the incredible work done by our outgoing President, Suzanne Elshult, over the past 4 years. Suzanne has led our organization since its founding in 2018 and has been the steady hand driving us to what we are today. Suzanne continues to serve on the Board as the Immediate Past President, and we look forward to the continued benefit of her wisdom, guidance, and sense of fun!
Suzanne Elshult and K9 Kili recently passed their National Search Dog Alliance recertification in Human Remains Detection. We are so proud of this dedicated and talented team!
Suzanne and K9 Kili also have a certification in Historical Human Remains Detection from the Canine Forensics Foundation.
All of our team members get their certifications through national organizations. This is important as national certifications confirm that a working dog is trained to a known high standard equivalent to other dogs at that level.
We are so honored to be selected for a grant from the Corey Borg-Massanari Foundation to support our Snow & Avalanche Training being held in January, 2023! This project is funded in part by the Initiative Foundation, a regional community foundation.
We are so grateful for this support that allows us to host exceptional trainers for our Snow & Avalanche Training. This also helps reduce the cost of attendance by Northwest K9 Teams looking to up their skills!
Thank you!
At a star-studded gala held in Palm Beach, Fl. on November 11, 2022, Shelter Dog Ethan was announced the 2022 Hero Dog Winner! You can read more of Ethan’s incredible story here.
Our very own Keb was announced as the winner in the Search and Rescue Category and was one of seven dogs competing for the overall title. You can see Keb’s video that was shown at the gala here.
We are so proud of all of the dogs that were nominated and competed for this award this year and truly believe that each and every one is a winner!
We are grateful for every donation that we receive to support our work. Recently we got a very nice donation from The Flatirons Flamingo. They designed a fantastic sticker featuring a black lab (their dog Rocinante) on a Cascadian Flag background and donated all of the profits from the sale to us!
Our team black labs, Parker, Mo and Makalu, join us in saying thank you! You can check out the sticker here.
Congratulations to CSD Member Chris Terpstra and K9 Makalu on their recent certification in Human Remains – Open Water/Shoreline!
Chris and Makalu add this new certification to their others which include Airscent, Avalanche and Human Remains – Land. This versatile team is truly an asset to our community!
We are so pleased to receive a grant from The Creag Foundation to support our in-person training and education program! We feel very strongly about bringing the very best Master Trainers to the Pacific Northwest so that local K9 SAR teams can continue to learn and grow and in turn, positively impact the communities we deploy in. We are grateful for their recognition of what we bring to the K9 SAR Community.
The Creag Foundation is a local grant making foundation committed to supporting innovative nonprofit organizations. We look forward to sharing more about our 2023 workshops soon!
We are incredibly grateful to be the recipients of a grant from Digital Lift so we can upgrade our Zoom license to the webinar format. This will allow us to continue our mission to deliver educational content to more K9 SAR Volunteers.
Digital Lift’s objective of this initial grant offering is to help remove the cost barrier to bringing new “software as a service” platforms to nonprofits across the country.
As a smaller nonprofit, we are thankful for the assistance provided to us!
We are all so proud and happy that the book “A Dog’s Devotion – True Adventures of a K9 Search and Rescue Team” written by CSD’s very own Suzanne Elshult and Guy Mansfield has been published! This book represents a collection of real-life Search and Rescue stories that resonate with many who volunteer their time to search for the lost and the missing.
True to their dedication to the Search and Rescue community, Suzanne and Guy will be donating a portion of their proceeds to local SAR organizations, including CSD. If you are interested in learning more about the book or ordering it, you can find it on Amazon.
3 days of learning over in a flash! We were so pleased to bring Robin Greubel with the K9Sensus Foundation to the Pacific Northwest. K9 teams and auditors worked hard to improve their skills and we all got to enjoy the company of great people and wonderful dogs!
We cannot host incredible instructors like Robin without support. We were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Tulalip Tribes Charitable Fund which helped offset the cost of attendance and allowed us to award scholarships to several deserving teams! This support allows us to provide exceptional training to local volunteer search and rescue handlers and helps us to contribute to making sure that quality K9 teams are deployed to search for the lost and the missing.
On September 17, 2022 CSD Members Suzanne Elshult with K9’s Keb and Kili, and Dan Merrifield with K9 Belle, passed their third party Canine Forensics Foundation Historical Human Remains Detection certification!
This kind of work requires fine gridding and dogs trained to be very methodical as they search for ancient graves and very old cold cases. Work is done in tandem with archeologists and historians along with utilizing special technology such as ground penetrating radar.
While K9’s Keb and Kili are also currently certified in crime scene human remains detection, this was K9 Belle’s first certification – achieved at 16 months old!
We are proud of the work done by these teams and we look forward to continuing on their journey with them.