It's my life purpose

For Kaori Oshima, working with dogs is an indispensable part of her life. In a very personal interview, she tells us why she considers search and rescue dog work to be her reason for being.

How long have you been doing search and rescue dog work and how did you get started?

I started working with search and rescue dogs in 1994. Before that, I had been involved in training guard dogs. When a major earthquake occurred in an urban area of Japan in 1995 and search and rescue dogs from overseas came to help, I knew that we needed more qualified search and rescue dog teams in our country. Japan is prone to natural disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. It is therefore important for us to be prepared for emergencies and to be able to respond quickly with our own well-trained search and rescue dog teams. But there is also a very personal reason for my commitment. Around the same time as the earthquake disaster, my sister was diagnosed with an illness and only had a few years to live. I was unable to save her, but the thought of saving the life of someone in need with the help of dogs strengthened my desire to invest my energy and time in training search and rescue dogs.

What was your motivation to get involved in a volunteer search and rescue dog unit?

In 1998, I had the opportunity to be involved in the founding of the non-profit organisation "Rescue Dog Trainers Association", an organisation for search and rescue dogs – of which I am still a member today. For me, it is a privilege to be able to make a contribution to society with our dogs. It is very unfortunate that the first director, who was the driving force behind the founding of the organisation, passed away ten years ago. But the majority of the founding members are still active. Over the years, they have become close friends to me, with whom I have experienced both sad and many joyful moments.

My dogs mean everything to me – they are friends, heroes and my anchor.

How can you balance regular training and deployments with work and family?

I am very lucky that my passion is also my profession. I run a dog training centre where I mainly train family dogs alongside search and rescue dogs. My team consists of six young professionals. Working with search and rescue dogs is something very special for them too. Each of us wants to invest as much time as possible in working with our search and rescue dogs. To make sure we can do this on top of our core business, we all help together. In addition, my partner and my family are very supportive of my search and rescue dog activities. That is a great emotional support for me.

What was a particularly memorable deployment for you?

The Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 was one of the biggest natural disasters in Japan in recent years. We were brought to the earthquake zone by helicopter and searched for survivors in the towns affected by the tsunami with just six local police officers and three search and rescue dogs. The number of rescue workers was completely inadequate in all areas. An additional burden was the fact that we had taken shelter from the predicted tsunami just a few hours before the mission ourselves and learnt about the explosion at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima via police radio. This rescue mission made us realise very clearly that we were putting our lives at risk to help other people. I only managed to stay calm in this situation thanks to the search spirit of my canine buddy and the warmth of his body snuggled up to me during the search breaks.