White River K9 Dakota and his dogged determination save lives

Erica and Philip Daniel and their beloved canine, Dakota, make up the Lowveld's own volunteer search and rescue team.

July 1, 2022

Chelsea Pieterse 2 minutes read

Dakota trains with his toy for a few minutes before practising his search and rescue skills.

It took just a matter of minutes for search and rescue canine Dakota to find a “missing” Lowvelder reporter and excitedly alert his handlers in one of his weekly training sessions at Ingwenyama Conference and Sport Resort on Friday June 24.

However, the incredibly bright and friendly Dakota, a beautiful two-year-old Belgian Malinois, is just one of the main components in this operation. His handlers, Erica and Philip Daniel, are the driving force behind the team and altogether, they form a volunteer search and rescue group, ready to be called to an emergency at any time of night or day, anywhere in the Lowveld.

The small team belongs to non-profit organisation, Ground Search and Rescue South Africa (GroundSAR), which is one of a few non-profit volunteer-based search and rescue groups in the country. These teams act as a vital extension to state rescue and dive teams, police and medics, and assist in many operations in which either the state does not have the capacity or the correct resources.

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The Daniels said most of the GroundSAR members are based in Gauteng, but a Lowveld branch was recently created. “All of our members are volunteers, and own and train their own dogs. We try to train together at least once a week, with the exception of our Lowveld team, which travels to Gauteng to train about every second month,” they said.

Philip and Erica Daniel train with Dakota.

“As the Lowveld team is still small, we train on our own, often depending on friends to assist us by being ‘missing people’.” This Lowvelder reporter became this missing person on Friday afternoon and was highly impressed by the teamwork, dedication and skills shown by the team, especially that of Dakota.

“We train our dogs to find any human in a wilderness area. This way, we don’t need a scent article of the missing person. If the dog finds the wrong person (a hiker, for instance), we reward them, and then carry on searching,” said Erica. “Our dogs are trained to work off-leash and to air scent.

“Once the dog has found a person, he is trained to return to his handler and to bark. Then the handler asks the dog to ‘show me’, and the dog leads the handler to the missing person,” she said. This exact exercise was carried out on June 24 with Dakota finding the reporter and showing his handlers where this person was in a matter of minutes.

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Due to GroundSAR being a volunteer-based organisation, this means that all costs for training and care are carried by each member for themselves and their dogs. These include equipment like radios, navigational equipment, human and dog harnesses, veterinary costs as well as travelling costs to training and deployment. “When members deploy, they also have to take leave from their jobs. This truly is a labour of love, and the reward is in doing it,” said Erica.

Dakota practises searching for a missing person.

The provincial disaster coordinator for search and rescue, Jacques Benade, said the dedication of these volunteer teams is seen and supported by the community.
“These groups are vital to the province and have shown that, when correctly coordinated through the relevant structures, our success grows and our turnaround times for rescues are reduced,” Benade said.