Well, Sky is an Australian Shepherd.

We got her at 8 weeks old with the purpose in mind of training her into a search and rescue dog.

A search and rescue dog, especially an avalanche rescue dog, is a dog that 's trained to find human scent

that comes out of the snow, so when somebody gets buried in an avalanche,

the dog is there to find that bit of scent that 's coming out so that we can locate that person.

What she 's doing is, she 's going through the area and looking for that scent and then when she comes across it,

she sources it, and lets you know about it.

It's that sourcing and communication that's really the key difference between a search dog and just any other animal.

We got a call on Christmas Eve a couple years ago that a coast guardsman had gone missing from

Air Station Kodiak. They needed some dogs to come down and help.

And we flew down on Christmas Day, and got down to Kodiak where the weather is always horrendous.

It happened to be a beautiful, beautiful day, and we went up into the mountains,

and, uh, found our subject and got him back to his family before Christmas was over.

It really is a twenty-four seven thing for she and I.

We're out in the mountains a lot. It's part of who she is as well.

Our job now is to keep her happy and healthy for the rest of her life.

She 's contributed her whole life, so we 're going to help her have a good time the rest of hers.