Hanging up the harness: Retirement day for Sheba the search and rescue dog

Monday was a very special day for Sheba.

She officially retired after 11 years as a search and rescue dog.

Working out of Wilmot Township, Sheba was specially trained to work both on land and in the water.

“She’s had a back injury, she’s had major surgery,” said trainer William Bolton. “It’s time for the lady to take it easy from now on.”

The Labrador-Huskie mix has assisted in over 100 searches. Several high-profile cases locally include: Robbie Reiner, Kaden Young and Andreas Pfenning.

Reiner was only five-years-old when, on Dec. 26, 2014, he fell through the ice on the Nith River. His body wasn’t found until four months later, 12 kilometres downstream from where it was believed he went into the frigid water.

At the time Reiner went missing, Sheba was only trained for air scenting and tracking.

“She, at that point, was a year old,” said Bolton. “She wasn’t trained. But that certainly gave me a lot of inspiration about how difficult water searches are.”

Reiner’s disappearance also inspired Bolton to expand Sheba’s training to include Water Human Remains Detection.

“That’s when she’s on a boat and would detect bodies that are under the water. She’s done really well at that,” added Bolton.“Water is very intense because it’s just such a vast area to get a dog to be able to scent on the water [and] to determine an area where divers can go down and then determine where the person is.”

Currents also make that search more complicated.

Bolton said Sheba was a natural at it.

“When you get a dog and you train them for search and rescue you don’t know how it’s going to go,” he explained. “Everything I threw at her she picked it up and ran with it, she did very well.”

Outside of work, Bolton said Sheba is very friendly, very vocal and very much still a puppy at heart. But she always knows when it’s time to work.

Sheba’s retirement, however, won’t be all treats and naps.

Bolton said he’ll continue to use Sheba to help train other search and rescue dogs.