Book Review: Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners by Wilma Melville, Paul Lobo

Title: Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners

Author (s): Wilma Melville,  Paul Lobo

Stars: 5 stars

Review:
Hero Dogs is the book for animal loves around the world. I do not like reading about Animals dying so when I decided to review this book I knew what I would be reading.
I loved reading the amazing stories of animals that help in tragedies from around the United States.  How they are just as much hero's as the people who sacrificed their own lives.
I learned so much from the talent people who trained almost a majority of recuse animals to find the living as well as the dead.

This is a must read book for anyone interested in training animals or service animals.  Readers will get amazing insight into the level of training a service dog goes though as well as the dogs and trainers go though to become a Search and Rescue dogs.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of Wilma Melville and Paul Lobo Hero Dogs.

Synopsis:
In 1995, Wilma Melville volunteered as a canine search-and-rescue (SAR) handler with her Black Labrador Murphy in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. At the time, there were only fifteen FEMA certified SAR dogs in the United States. Believing in the value of these remarkable animals to help save lives, Wilma knew many more were needed in the event of future major disasters. She made a vow to help 168 dogs receive search-and-rescue training in her lifetime—one for every Oklahoma City victim.

Wilma singlehandedly established the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF) to meet this challenge. The first canine candidates—Ana, Dusty, and Harley—were a trio of golden retrievers with behavioral problems so severe the dogs were considered irredeemable and unadoptable. But with patience, discipline, and love applied during training, they proved to have the ability, agility, and stamina to graduate as SARs. Paired with a trio of firefighters, they were among the first responders searching the ruins of the World Trade Center following 9/11—setting the standard for the more than 168 of the SDF’s search-and-rescue dogs that followed. 
Beautiful and heart-wrenching, Hero Dogs is the story of one woman’s dream brought to fruition by dedicated volunteers and firefighters—and the bonds they forged with the incredible rescued-turned-rescuer dogs to create one of America’s most vital resources in disaster response.

Hardcover, 336 pages

Expected publication: January 8th 2019 by St. Martin's Press

About The Author: 

WILMA MELVILLE is a retired Physical Education instructor and grandmother of six, Wilma founded the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation (SDF) to address this gap in our nation’s disaster response network. Still active within the Foundation, Wilma serves on the Board of Directors and is involved with the planning of the National Training Center. When time permits, Wilma enjoys piloting her experimental airplane, an RV7A, based at her hangar at Santa Paula Airport.