COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- The American Red Cross Pikes Peak Chapter is honoring hometown heroes highlighting individuals and organizations who exemplify courage, kindness and unselfish character through their acts of heroism in our local community.
FOX21 News will be highlighting this year's winners.
This year's Hometown Animal Hero is a bloodhound named Winnie the Pooh.
Sadly, Winnie will not be able to accept her award as Hometown Hero because she was hit by a car. Her life couldn't be saved, but as a search and rescue dog, Winnie saved the lives of countless others.
With a face full of wrinkles and a heart full of love, Winnie the Pooh spent most of her time with the El Paso County Search and Rescue Team.
Winnie was born with extra skin folds over her eyes, making it difficult for her to see.
"The best way I can describe Winnie would be Mr. Magoo," Kasie McGee, Winnie's handler, said. "She couldn't see very well because she had a lot of furnishings on her face, so when her head was down or at a normal level her eyes were covered. Her eyeballs themselves worked fine but she had too much skin to see through the curtains."
But Winnie's lack of vision didn't hinder her at all as a search dog. In fact some think it may have even made her better.
Winnie is the only dog in Colorado and one of only five in the nation to achieve the National Search and Rescue Level One Canine Tracking certification.
McGee said Winnie was a valuable asset to the team.
"She easily achieved that certification," McGee said. "She was really funny, whenever we were training and we'd say 'oh we need to try this with her' it was like she could understand us. We decided one day we needed to teach her how to trail people getting into a car because that conceivably happens often in both populations of people that we normally look for with Winnie, children and the elderly. So the person that we were trailing at the time, we were having this conversation, had his car at the end of the trail so we trailed there, he got in his car and drove back to the parking lot, and Winnie looked at Kim and I like we were boobs and proceeded to trail him on the road for a mile back to the parking lot."
Winnie's ability to determine and follow a trail of direction helped the team save time, something they don't always have.
"She could come out of a house that is highly contaminated," McGee said. "Think about it, you live there so every day, you're laying layers and layers and layers of scent. She could go into a house, she could leave their yard and establish the last direction, the freshest trail of that person leaving that contaminated scene. For a search manager that really narrows where you have to put your resources. So it saves you time and manpower and makes it more likely that you're going to find the person that you're looking for."
McGee said Winnie was a stubborn dog, and while some see that as negative, she said it's a good quality to have in a search dog.
"A dog that is stubborn to me has stick-to-itiveness, it's gonna keep after it," McGee said. "It's gonna keep trying, and she did. I mean I would take her on missions, I mean we trailed on one mission 13 miles. The dog never quit. I mean she was exhausted, but she never quit. She kept going, slowly, but going. She was just that stubborn that she was not gonna give up, she didn't give up easily."
Winnie preferred love to treats and could bring a smile to anyone's face.
"You could watch people walk toward you, and they'd look at the dog and they'd kind of smile, and then they'd look at the dog, and by the time you passed them they're grinning, just like 'oh my god that's the cutest thing ever.' She lived for being loved on and petted by everybody. That was what she worked for. We tried everything. We tried chicken, we tried liver, we tried toys, we tried everything, and she was like 'no that's nice but if you could just rub right here that would be good.'"
Winnie's niece, Raisin, has taken Winnie's place on the team and is learning the skills McGee said Winnie knew naturally.
"We never had to show her what we wanted," McGee said. "We would just lay a trail like that with a car or a bike or a motorcycle, and she'd trail it, and you could tell if it was a car or a bike or a vehicle versus a person just by how she trailed and where she'd look for scent."
McGee said while Winnie was her dog, she always felt that Winnie belonged to everybody, and truly was a hometown hero.
"To be a hero doesn't have to be someone who went into the World Trade Center, it's just somebody that brightens somebody's day, and belongs to everybody, and provides a service to everybody in the community, and I believe that Winnie did that," McGee said.
McGee is accepting the Hometown Animal Hero award on Winnie's behalf and said it's an honor.
"This is a wonderful way to honor her memory and to let everyone see how wonderful she is and maybe see the things that I got to see on a daily basis that not everybody did," McGee said.
The American Red Cross Pikes Peak Chapter will be honoring the ESPO communication dispatch center and the rest of the hometown heroes winners at a dinner and fundraiser March 10 at the Antlers Hilton. For reservations call 719-785-2711.
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forKXRM