View Archives2007 Hernandez Canine Sponsorship Recipient - Curt Engle
The National Search Dog Alliance and Kai Thompson Hernandez are pleased to announce the award of the 2007 Hernandez Search Dog Sponsorship to Curt Engle of Clovis, California. NSDA is very pleased and honored to be able to partner with Mrs. Kai Thompson Hernandez to present this sponsorship.
Curt Engle was chosen after thorough review of all applications. Curt has been involved in canine search and rescue since 2001 and is a member of California Rescue Dog Association, Madera County SAR K-9 Team. When notified of the award Curt replied, "I am honored to have been selected for the sponsorship."
This sponsorship was established to honor the memory of Kai's deceased husband, Glen Thompson, who was killed during the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. It also honors the others who lost their lives as well as all those who responded and conducted searches in the aftermath of the attack on our country.
Kai has said that she was so touched, impressed and appreciative of all who responded that she wanted to give something back. She was especially drawn to the search canines and their handlers who responded and put themselves at risk in their attempts to help. She knows that there is a great deal of time and personal expense borne by the canine handlers. This sponsorship is one of her ways of saying THANK YOU and helping ensure that there continues to be qualified handlers and canines.
Award Winner Profile
Curtis (Curt) E. Engle of Clovis, California, is a member of the California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA) and Madera County SAR K-9 team.
Curt has been involved with K-9 SAR since 2001. Since that time, Curt has achieved Mission Ready Status as an area handler for CARDA, certified as a NASAR type 1 area handler and become the K-9 team leader for his Madera County SAR unit.
Curt's current working K-9 is over seven years old and will probably be retired in the next year and a half to two years. Because it will take that amount of time to bring a new puppy to operational status, Curt wanted to start a puppy as soon as possible.
The correspondence sent to Curt by Review Committee Chairman Art Wolff stated, "After reviewing your application, it is obvious that you are a person dedicated to SAR. You have received a high level of training and we have no doubt that you will continue to represent the SAR community well and continue to serve the victims in their time of need."
Curt's response was, "I am so happy to hear this wonderful news. I feel honored to have been selected for the sponsorship."
Update 05/05/09
I thought that Chance’s one year (April 5th)
birthday would be a good time to update NSDA on him.
We are making good progress. Chance has completed his third obedience class. The first two were basically puppy socialization and the third got down to business. He was successful in all three classes.
We began our official CARDA K-9 skills in February. I took him to his first CARDA weekend training. Chance was able to get sign offs in agility and obedience. The agility was a snap. As you have seen from his 9 week old pictures, I had him on my agility equipment as soon as he came home.
We are doing long runaways both semi blind and visual. He knows how to scent for a person and that was a wonderful moment to see he realized it was not all visual.
We have had some serious health issues the last two months. We live in a pecan orchard, and when the harvests occurred, he managed to get whole pecans in the shell lodged in his small intestine. This required a 4:00 AM Sunday morning visit to the emergency room. 18 stitches and week later he was fine. He has recovered well and was back to his old rollicking self in about 2 weeks.
Following this, on a retrieve, he hit a tree snag
at a full run. It was hidden in the grass and really surprised both of us. He yelped and limped for a minute then was as good as new, I thought. Since then he has limped
on his right front side intermittently. I finally realized this was not going away with rest so we did a complete set of X-rays: hips, shoulders, wrists, vertebrae, the whole
thing. A spot showed up on his right shoulder and an orthopedist confirmed he has either a minor tendon tear or a divot out of the bone next to the tendon. I was relieved to
see it was not a dysplastic or genetic problem but we are now facing arthroscopic surgery to clean up the tear or smooth out the divot. Once the arthroscopy is finished, the vet feels he
will make full recovery within two weeks.
Through all of this, my Chance has remained bubbly and his good spirited self, a remarkable feat considering he has had to endure lots of prodding, sticking, poking etc.
I believe, with his drive and intelligence, despite the set back, we will make MR [mission ready] status within the 2 year time frame. He is a great addition to the family and we enjoy his antics bunches.
UPDATE 07/10/08
Curt searched long and hard for that right combination
of drive, temperament, sociability, and all of the other traits in a working dog. He has selected “Chance” to be his new canine partner in training.
Curt’s comments regarding his choice of name for the new pup were, “Chance as in giving the lost person a second Chance”. We are all involved in search and rescue to help, to give those who are lost, who have become the victims of both natural and man made disasters and others who need our services a better chance.”
Curt is hoping to return some of the benefit and pleasure of raising and training Chance by sharing with the NSDA community. Curt recently sent these pictures. His description of Chance is, “We have an agility set in the back lot and I thought I would introduce him to it. Chance took to it well. You might say he was a bit of a ham. I think he is so young, he has not figured out why he should be fearful. He followed my Maggi doing just as she did. Now he wants to go onto it without coaching.”