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Re: Search Dogs to Work Vietnam Recovery Missions

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: February 11, 2003

"Specially Trained Dogs To Aid In Search For Missing Soldiers In Vietnam

A Hawaii Army team is heading to Vietnam next week. They'll be searching for missing American soldiers with the help of two very special and highly trained dogs.

Max and Pranzer are German Shepards that are trained to track missing people, usually dead people. Next Monday, these dogs will be going on a very special mission.

Max's trainer, Matthew Zarrella, a veteran Rhode Island state trooper, has spent the past year getting the dogs ready for next week's trip to Vietnam.

"This will be a great opportunity to see if these dogs can be of some assitance over there," says Matthew.

For the first time, these dogs will be used to search for missing soldiers in Southeast Asia. The idea of using the dogs came from family members.

"We get a lot of ideas from the families, and last june we were at a family update and families asked why aren't you not using these dogs, and we thought we didn't have a reason," says Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O'Hara.

It's a tedious job that the joint task force is hoping the dogs will make easier.

"We dig a site, we don't find anything so we dig another site, and it gets bigger and bigger and it gets more expensive and more expensive."

Max has been trained to detect human remains in the ground as deep as six-feet. And the longer the body has been in the ground, the easier it is for Max to find.

"There going to go for the whole time, 35 days for seven cases, if they're successful, we have a plan for more cases," says O'Hara. 

"We're just looking forward getting out there and doing the best we can," says Matthew.

Currently there are 1,889 American soldiers still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.


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