Pittore’s special dog qualifies for state team
Spring Pittore has been performing this special kind of emergency service for a long time.
"My husband Pat and I were on the rubble of the World Trade Center the night of Sept. 11 with our search-and-rescue dogs," Ms. Pittore said last week.
She and her dog Thunder — a chocolate Labrador retriever named after one of the dogs deployed to the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks — recently qualified as a mission-ready State Urban Search and Rescue K9 team for New Jersey Task Force One.
Ms. Pittore and Thunder passed the "mission ready" evaluation at the joint McGuire Air Force Base-Fort Dix site in Lakehurst.
Making the grade posed an arduous challenge met by Ms. Pittore and her latest search-and-rescue dog. The test included the search of a simulated building collapse with two "victims" buried in the rubble. They were required to find both victims within 15 minutes. (They did it in eight minutes.)
The evaluation at Lakehurst also included standards on canine agility and obedience, including crawling through a tunnel, climbing a ladder to a six-foot elevation and showing direction and control by going to five targets placed 25 yards apart.
"I’m proud of Thunder. He did really well," said Ms. Pittore, who’s been training and handling rescue dogs for nearly 20 years.
"One of the hardest disciplines for dogs is rescue work," she said. "We ask so much of them — agility, obedience, and working independently, off the lead. When they’re off the lead, they need to go where you tell them to go."
Thunder is a recent graduate of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center of the University of the Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
"Thunder got a good foundation at Penn Vet before he came to me," Ms. Pittore said. "You try to pick a good pup. Only one in 100 will make it and qualify as a search-and-rescue dog."
She knew the dog she picked would be "a family pet first." Laughing, she explained: "You see, we already had five dogs at home before Thunder. So you want to be sure you pick the right dog! We researched our choice. Penn Vet instilled a lot of the basics. We brought Thunder home and started working on building that bond."
Ms. Pittore is certified as a K9 search specialist by the State Urban Search and Rescue Association and SAR Tech II by the National Association of Search and Rescue (NASAR). She is president of the Palisades Search and Rescue Dog Association of Lambertville. She is the school nurse at West Amwell Elementary School.
New Jersey Task Force One provides advanced technical search and rescue capabilities to victims trapped or entombed in collapsed buildings. NJTF1 mirrors the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s guidelines on urban search and rescue and complies with the National Fire Protection Association Standards.
The members of NJ-TF1 develop skills and abilities needed for technical rescue training brought on by natural or man-made disasters, including hurricanes, floods, fires, explosions, earthquakes, or incidents that are caused by weapons of mass destruction incidents and that are beyond the capability of local emergency services.

