Help Cooper Search and Rescue in Ukraine

Hi Everyone,

 

My name is Padraig O'Keeffe, and I am currently working on a project which would see a K9 USAR element deploying to Ukraine.

To get to Ukraine, we need to raise funds to prep and travel as soon as possible.

Please help us on our mission to carry out extended search and rescue operations.

 

My Background:

 

I served with the French military in the early 90's with deployments to Cambodia and the Balkans x 2. I have worked in Iraq, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Kurdistan, Benin, Togo, and Ghana in a private security capacity.

 

In 2010 in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake I was sent to Haiti on a locate and extract contract for the European Commission (I had previously worked in Haiti in a number of security roles) from there I worked with the BBC World News crews and with European Commission Humanitarian Organisation in a protective service role. While in Haiti I witnessed for the first time the amazing work carried out by the international urban search and rescue teams, especially that of the USAR dogs and handlers, so with that I went looking for the Irish team, days later through the coordination centre I found out that Ireland did not have a team on the ground. The seed which would become Disaster Response Team Ireland was sown.

 

When I returned to Ireland the seed that had been sown in Haiti during the earthquake started to grow, I set up Disaster Response Team Ireland, incorporated in 2012 , achieving charitable status in and around 2014.

 

I trained as a K9 urban search and rescue handler in North Carolina, in 2011 where I met my 10 year long partner, a young German shepherd called Mambo. During our working career we trained in the US, Norway, Greece and Malta (where we spent a year on the International SOS K9 unit) we also worked rescue operations in Italy in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2015, While Mambo was trained to locate live human scent under a collapsed structure he also had a nose for the dead he is accredited with 6 fatality recoveries from the rubble in Italy and here in Ireland 2 fatality recoveries from inland waterways and 1 off the coast.

 

While all this was going on Mambo was coming to the end of his career and I had to prepare to bring another dog on to take his place. I found the dog in Greece through one of the instructors I had trained under in the US, a Labrador Retriever called Cooper, I went to Greece in 2020 to collect Cooper and while there I had the opportunity to take part in an independent urban search and rescue course run by a certified INSARAG KG instructor.

 

Cooper has incredible potential and ability to help in Ukraine; please help us on our mission to carry out search and rescue operations.