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The Four Rivers SAR website
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When Jade detects a suspicious scent, she circles and barks. Zoie plops down. Wendy pokes the suspicious area with her nose. They are Search and Rescue (SAR) dogs, trained to detect blood and bones, critical members of the Four Rivers Search & Rescue Team tracking for missing persons. One of their cases is the Tabitha Tuders case here in Nashville.
“I was a first responder at the Tuders home when Tabitha went missing” in April 2003, Chief Sandra Green explains. Chief Green purposely goes into a scene without briefing so she remains unbiased. “My dog tracked Tabitha to the bus stop, where she was last observed that day.” The dog also tracked Tabitha’s scent to a local store where Tabitha had perused the candy aisle days earlier, and to a friend’s home where she had played.
Chief Green founded Four Rivers about seven years ago. They are based in Western Kentucky, but cover Western Kentucky, Illinois, and Tennessee. They are affiliated under the division of Emergency Management. There are 28 members and all are volunteers; the team is a nonprofit organization. There are divers for underwater searchers, mounted patrol, and of course, the SAR dogs. The SAR dogs were involved in the Shawn Hornbeck search in 2002; Shawn was found alive in 2007 after being abducted. “I knew he was still alive based on the search dog’s behavior,” Chief Green says with conviction.
Andy and Stephanie Spalding, a married couple who volunteer with Four Rivers, work with their dog, Wendy. Wendy was rescued from euthanasia at the Calloway County Humane Society where Stephanie volunteers as the Head Instructor for Puppy Socialization. “Wendy had been severely abused, burned with cigarettes, starved,” Stephanie says. “She had lots of energy and she needed a job.” Now Wendy is an excellent SAR dog trained to find missing people, and is in training to be a cadaver dog to locate bodies. They are truly a team and they love their work; it is evident in watching them. Andy even proposed during SAR rescue – search training: when Stephanie and her dog ‘found’ him he was on bended knee with a ring.
The job requires a delicate mix of dedication, critical thinking, science, animal psychology, knowledge of plants and history can help, and even construction. “Those are eight by eight planks,” one SAR team member points out during a search. “Notice how the nails on one side are newer?” This is cause for suspicion. The team, says Chief Green, attends a lot of training: disaster response, survival, safety, team building. Searches can occur on a highway or in a thick brush, rappelling down a cliff or walking for miles. This nonpaying job takes “dedication, commitment, effort, and training,” says member Chris Brown, “but it’s worth it.”
Four Rivers assists law enforcement and emergency responders in bringing answers to families of lost loved ones. Their community education helps keep children safe. One of their goals? “I want to find Tabitha Tuders,” Chief Green says, “I want to take her off my ‘Missing Persons’ wall.”
All photos by J. Yates and may not be copied without permission
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More information on locating the Missing
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