2005 Codorus Water
Rescue Demo
reported by
Mark McKeel
Event Chairperson
CNC hosted their annual
Water Rescue Demo
on June 25th at Codorus State Park in Hanover, PA.
The Demo was held in conjunction with the park’s annual
Summer Blast Festival.
It was a pleasure to put on a demonstration of our
Newfoundland’s water rescue abilities for the public as well as
to thank Codorus Park staff for the opportunity to water train
and conduct our water tests at Codorus.
As the event chair, I served as
the MC. We had a great group of volunteers, water dogs and
handlers:
·
Trisha Fornaldy and
her dog, Onyx demonstrated the
single retrieve.
·
Julia Sharkey and
her girl, Wendy demonstrated the drop retrieve from a
boat.
·
Tommy
owned by John and Cindy
Flowers stepped up to the water (so to speak) and showed us
various examples of taking articles out to drowning victims. He
aptly demonstrated the take-a-line
and life ring exercises.
·
Conner
owned by Lisa LaMartina
demonstrated his life saving hauling abilities in a big way. He
rescued a group or chain of drowners,
and later towed-a-boat full of Newfies
and people.
·
Buoy
owned by Christie Smith really showed us his talents by doing a
both a boat-to-boat rescue and
rescue of an unconscious victim.
These are both advanced exercises that are not even part of the
NCA WRD exercises.
·
Brandy,
owned and handled by Dan Stultz demonstrated her terrific
jumping abilities by soaring through the air to
retrieve a paddle from a boat,
and she also towed-a-boat.
Actually, she towed an empty raft to shore illustrating how a
dog can find a rope with attached bumper tow a boat without aid
from a human.
·
Don Sharkey, John
and Cindy Flowers were tremendous help rowing boats.
·
Julia Sharkey,
Christie Smith, Lisa LaMartina and Tara all served as
drowning victims in one capacity
or another.
·
Thanks to John and
Cindy Flowers for bringing Virginia Kelly’s boat.
·
And, I would also
like to thank Rose Miller for providing me with a script thereby
making my job much easier.
While there, many members enjoyed
the festivities of the Summer Blast Festival. The day
was filled with continuous live bands, hot air balloons,
demonstrations (like our Water Rescue Demo), Lifeflight and
Coast Guard helicopters, food vendors, craft vendors, and much
more followed by a display of fireworks over the lake at dusk.
The organizers of the Summer
Blast told us they will make sure CNC is invited every year
because our dogs are one of the big attractions.
A
big thank
you to everyone for helping put on a successful water
demonstration!
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