Labrador ‘Bosh’ gets award

MANILA, Philippines–It wasn’t President Benigno Aquino III who was asked for selfies this time around but a Labrador named “Bosh.”

The eight-year old dog turned heads after he was presented with an Award of Coast Guard Search and Rescue Medal and Ribbon by Aquino and Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya during the Philippine Coast Guard’s  113th Anniversary celebration in South Harbor, Manila.

Bosh was cited “for being instrumental in recovering four cadavers during the search and retrieval operations in the aftermath of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Bohol” October 15 last year.

His handler Petty Officer 3 Zandro Fred Jismundo said Bosh was donated to the PCG and had been with them for two years.

“Ang training natin, bale umabot siya ng 10 months (His training took up to 10 months),” he said, explaining that they start with obedience and tracking before teaching the dogs how to detect cadavers.

Jismundo said Bosh’s Bohol assignment was not his first since he also helped retrieve fatalities in Compostela Valley after a typhoon resulted in landslides.

Dogs are very effective, he said, since they have a very strong sense of smell.

“We deploy them sa mga search and rescue. Merong mga explosive, meron doon sa mga drugs, at saka doon sa mga chemicals, so iba-iba sila,” PCG spokesman Cmdr. Armand Balilo explained.

(We deploy them for search and rescue. Some detect explosives, others drugs and also chemicals. So they have different assignments.)

He said they now have 205 dogs, from only 10 dogs more than a decade ago.

He said it was in the early 2000s that they had a hard time recovering those buried in landslides and realized that they should have a search and rescue dog to ensure that everyone, dead or alive, is accounted for.

Balilo said “working dogs” receive a salary equivalent to that of an apprentice seaman, which is about P14,000. The salaries of working dogs are pooled together and allotted for their food and other needs.