Irma and Psyche

The unprecedented success of Mrs. Griffin and her dogs in London stimulated other people to help search for victims. Irma and her half-sister Psyche located 223 victims beneath the rubble during the war. Twenty-one of them were still alive. Both dogs worked off leash on the rubble piles. Because Mrs. Griffin knew her dogs well, she was able to pick up the signals that the dogs had found a victim. She said that laying ears to the neck was a signal that Irma had found a dead person. Upon finding a living person, Irma scratched in the rubble.

Besides Mrs. Griffin’s Irma and Psyche, the German Shepherd Rex was well known for his valuable work. Beauty, a Fox Terrier, also had exceptional achievements, and Rip was a mixed-breed dog that saved himself from a bombed house in 1940. Together with E. King, who took care of Rip, he went into action after every air raid alarm to search for victims under the smoldering rubble piles. These dogs were able to save many lives.

Figure 1.6 The Civil Defense organization in the Netherlands trained the Saarloos Wolfdog, a Dutch breed, for search and rescue work. (1961)

Mrs. Griffin’s Notes

March 6, 1945: Both females gave alerts at a location that had already been entered many times by rescue workers. But their alerts were so convincing that a team of rescue workers began to dig as quickly as they could. After a few minutes they heard a weak rustling under the rubble. The men worked madly.

They reached a collapsed floor and got from there a clear answer to their calls. As soon as they broke through the floor, the rescue team found a woman buried between two floors and lying jammed under beams. Fortunately she was lying in such a way that her chest was free. Only her legs were badly wounded, although not broken. The woman had been buried already for sixteen hours under the rubble. She was still conscious, but she would have died soon from shock and cold weather, if the dogs had not found her.

Dogs of Exceptional Merit

Everyone who saw these search and rescue dogs working was deeply touched and impressed by their work. Their steadfast searching in the debris piles, often while bombs were still falling and the planes of the enemy still flying overhead, led to these brave dogs being granted the Dickin Medal for animal bravery, the highest British decoration for an animal, granted only for exceptional merit.

Just after this great achievement in World War II, the German Shepherd Jet of Iada went into action after a mine accident in England. At great risk to his own life, the dog saved the lives of a group of mine workers by making clear to his handler where the people were trapped. This story touched the hearts of all dog lovers in England after the war, because, as one writer noted, “the dog, in spite of danger to his life, had gone through mine dampness and fire.” The stories about such rescues were often (and are still) much exaggerated. People love stories about heroic dog rescues. In spite of their successes, search and rescue dog work was rare after World War II, and this was not an active area of dog training in Europe.