“The terrain was dangerous, the ground was shaking, and Atos is not aware of the danger, he is doing everything to fulfill my wish. My heart would not bear it if something happened to him,” says rescuer Almir Tabaković from Zenica.
Specially trained dogs were of great help to the rescuers who bravely responded to the first call for help to the Turkish people affected by the devastating earthquakes.
They located many people under the rubble. They are trained for search and rescue even as puppies, and they can participate in actions up to the age of ten.
One of the dogs that heroically completed the mission in Turkey was Atos. Playful and always ready for action, he gained sympathy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey.
His trainer and owner Almir Tabaković (36) from the Mountain Rescue Service of the Zenica station already in the first days he responded to the call and went with Athos to Turkey.
Tabaković has been in the Mountain Rescue Service since 2018.
“Athos is three years old. He was three months old when I got him. He was a gift from my friend. He has a female, and Athos was left alone. He didn’t know what to do with him, and I told him to give it to me. I had some the idea of him being a rescue dog, which he eventually became. We started training right away, when he was about four months old. He trained every other day until he was ten months old. We had to train him five times a day. He should have been brought into all this”Tabaković told Anatolia.
Today, Atos is a true rescue dog that gives great hope to people in need.
“Today we came to the conclusion that he is a dog that deserves this attention. A dog that perfectly does its work as a rescuer. Even beyond Turkey, he participated in search and rescue operations. Wherever there was an opportunity for the dog to work in the field and where we had the opportunity let’s go, he went too”explained Tabaković.
They had several actions in Zenica, but also in other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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“My heart wouldn’t bear it if something happened to him”: Atos, a search dog from Zenica, a big help to rescuers in Turkey (PHOTO)
A dog in the field is a great help to rescuers.
“One dog in rescue operations replaces 25 people. He trained primarily based on the direct scent of a person. In our field, there is usually one person who disappears, so objects are taken where the dog picks up the scent and directly searches for that person. However, this was a different situation in Turkey. Work was done on recognition and location. Wherever he could draw that scent, he marked it and showed that he had something. And it turned out that there is. All the dogs were very helpful in Turkey. We worked constantly. I think we had 100 percent performance with the dogs. They did the biggest and hardest work. Maybe they rested for four or five hours. Everything else was a race against time. We were all just thinking about work and rescue, even the dogs”said Tabaković.
Considering that Athos is part of his family, Tabakovic says that feared for him during the rescue operation in Turkey.
“My heart couldn’t bear it if something happened to it. It was a dangerous terrain, the ground trembles, and he is not aware of the danger, he does everything to fulfill my wish. It was as if they knew, and they probably also had that instinct, that it was a matter of life or death and that it was a race against time. They showed their true side. Athos located more people under the rubble. Wherever he and the other dogs from Sarajevo pointed, there had to be someone there. I think this is a “gadget” that will never go wrong. He can hardly make a mistake“, said Tabakovic.
Training a dog like this is not an easy job, it takes a lot of effort and time.
“There is a lot of sacrifice, nerves… First of all, a person has to love it, to connect with the dog. You have to spend a lot of time with him to get to this. He is a member of my family. I think that all of us, all the teams, showed a kind of heroism in Turkey. He is three years old, and he can work up to ten years. Another seven years and then he goes to a well-deserved retirement.”said Tabakovic in an interview for Anatolia.
Athos lives a normal life. He plays, he enjoys, but when he works, he is up to the task.
In Zenica these days, everyone wants to take a photo with Atos.
Speaking about the rescue mission in Turkey, Tabakovic said that they could not imagine that there was a living person under those ruins, but there were.
“Before going to Turkey, we saw footage on television. We thought we were ready for that terrain. However, when we got there, everything was different. I don’t think any rescue team in the world, not even the best, was ready for that what happened in Turkey. It’s hard to imagine it in the human head. All those pictures will remain in our memories. We all have feelings. I think we will all have to talk to the professional staff, purely to protect ourselves and our family.”added Tabakovic.
(Anatolia)