Sniffer dog who was ‘too friendly’ for drugs role excels in Taiwan earthquake rescues

Roger may have once been fired from drug-sniffer training but is now winning hearts finding survivors

A former drug-sniffing dog named Roger, who was fired from his job for being too friendly, has redeemed himself by helping search teams after Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in 25 years.

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit the island on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people and leaving more than 1,140 injured. Rescuers have been facing a range of threats from landslides, rockfalls and aftershocks as they continued working to evacuate the remaining trapped and missing individuals.

The fire department released footage on Saturday showing Roger, an eight-year-old Labrador, climbing atop a boulder that was lying on a hiking trail near Hualien’s Taroko National Park.

In the video, a rescuer can be seen asking Roger if he’s found something and to move to the other side. But Roger’s refusal to budge helped the rescuers find someone trapped.

“Roger must have found some clues, and his confused look made the handler feel something was up, and then they found the victim,” said Chen Chi-mai, the mayor of Kaohsiung, in a Facebook post titled “The Paw Paw Team’s feat”.

Kaohsiung sent a rescue team and dogs to help with the search, and the mayor said Roger specialises in “rubble pile search and rescue” and is trained to look for survivors.

A rescuer locating the body of an earthquake victim with the help of Roger (Hualien County Fire Department /AFP)

Roger’s handler Lee Hsin-hung said Roger found his first survivor within “just five minutes after setting off”, despite the unfamiliar terrain.

As a puppy, Roger was trained as a drug-sniffing dog but was later switched to search-and-rescue missions because of his over-friendly nature.

“He’s very agile,” Mr Lee told reporters. “Like this time when he went to Shakadang Trail, it’s not a rescue site we can simulate [in training] but he’s not scared.”

Roger, who is due to retire soon, has won hearts in Taiwan for his boisterous nature, as AFP reported him lunging at “reporters’ microphones during interviews and also destroying a chew toy given to him after his mission”.

But Roger isn’t the only one helping in Taiwan. A three-year-old Jack Russell terrier named Wilson has been following in Roger’s footsteps, as footage emerged of him tirelessly scrambling among boulders.

Despite the Taiwan quake being Wilson’s first mission, he was able to locate two victims, going beyond handler Tseng Ching-lin’s expectations.

“He did not perform that well at tests compared with other dogs,” he said to a reporter.

“He’s very smart, but he likes to play and he runs to other places,” Mr Tseng added.

Wilson, a Jack Russell terrier, helping rescuers locate victims of an earthquake in Taiwan’s Taroko National Park in Hualien (Hualien County Fire Department /AFP)

Central Hualien was rattled by at least 50 aftershocks overnight after the initial 400 tremors recorded from Wednesday morning into Thursday night by the Central Weather Administration.

At least four of the dead were killed inside the Taroko National Park, a tourist attraction famous for canyons and cliffs in mountainous Hualien. One person was found dead in a damaged building and another was found in the Ho Ren Quarry. Rescuers also carried out the severely wounded body of a man from a hiking trail on Thursday.

Hualien was last hit by a deadly quake in 2018 which killed 17 people and brought down a historic hotel.

Taiwan’s worst recent earthquake struck on 21 September 1999. A magnitude 7.7 shock, it caused 2,400 deaths, injured around 100,000, and destroyed thousands of buildings.