“The area around the house is quite mountainous and is a very inhospitable terrain to roam in, so she walked a good distance with her dog who was completely loyal to her,” Phipps said.
He added that the steep slopes dotted with lush vegetation made the rescue mission more difficult for police and volunteers. Fortunately, her grandmother heard her faint cries.
While Max is truly a hero, it is not uncommon for dogs to participate in search and rescue (SAR) missions, as their ability to detect human scent can prove invaluable in missions afterward, natural disasters or the location of missing persons. Since then, many states have incorporated search and rescue dogs into their police forces and adopted their own training programs.
In the United States, search and rescue dogs are essential to the work of FEMA’s urban search and rescue squad. According to their website, Labradors, German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, Malinois and Border Collies are the breeds most commonly found on their assignments. The dogs go through 600 hours of rigorous training, during which dogs learn to look for human scent and lead their owners to their discoveries like a “game.”
Either way, he was fortunate that Max was in the right place at the right time when he found Aurora. Just like the Queensland Police Department put it in a tweet, he really is ‘such a good boy’!
