The Two Oceans Aquarium offered its space to the K9 Search & Rescue Association‘s Western Cape team for training, and the dogs had a blast.
The dogs are trained to assist Wilderness Search & Rescue and emergency services when a hiker goes missing or following the trails of a missing person. Search dogs are brilliant at their job, especially because they can find people hidden in unusual places humans wouldn’t think to look.
The aquarium is a complex building with nooks, crannies, industrial pumps, equipment hums, and glass barriers which makes it a great location to train both search dogs and their handlers as they need to pay close attention to the dog’s body language and signals so that they don’t miss anything the dog tries to indicate to them.
Two Oceans Aquarium is filled with a lot of distractions such as flashy lights bouncing off of fast-swimming fish, and the ‘unique’ smell of penguins that makes this sensory wonderland just the right place to train the dogs for their upcoming days in the field.
PICTURES: Two Oceans Aquarium
