Loss of K9 leaves large hole for Whatcom County search and rescue community and her family
Kibeth loved her job as a wide-area wilderness search K9 with Whatcom County’s Summit to Sound Search and Rescue volunteer unit.
She loved training so much she’d stand “plastered” against the garage door waiting to go when handler Siobhan Gallagher started gathering her gear to head out into the field.
She loved working so much she once managed to hide that she had a herniated disc in her spine from Gallagher for two days so that she could continue to search for a missing person in Skagit County last year instead of being forced to rest.
But as much as she loved to work, there still was one thing Kibeth loved even more.
“She was very ball driven,” Gallagher told The Bellingham Herald. “She’d carry it around with her all the time and sleep with it in her mouth.
“Many dogs that work finding people in the field work for toys for reward, so when we were going out, I’d take her ball and put it in my pack. ... She knew when she found somebody and performed the alert by barking and I got there, I’d tell her we were finished and I would throw the ball for her. She’d play a game of fetch and make friends with everybody. That was her whole paycheck.”
Sadly, Gallagher won’t get to watch Kibeth enjoy either of her great passions any longer.
Kibeth died Sept. 20 of an unexpected cardiac failure at the young age of 6 at home with her family.
“The only loss I can imagine that would be worse would be losing one of my human kids,” Gallagher said. “She moved homes with us. She hung out with the kids. There is very much a big hole there.”
Rescue puppy to rescue dog
Gallagher and her husband got Kibeth as a rescue puppy when she was just 5 months old and they still lived in Texas.
Shortly after they got Kibeth, a “fun-sized” Belgian Malinois mix, she earned the nickname “Fly,” Gallagher said, “because she was always flying around.”
“She was part of the family,” Gallagher said. “We got her when she was just a puppy before our kids were even born. She wasn’t like a dog that slept outside in a kennel. She was very much a sit-by-the-fire dog. ... She was integrated into our family in every way.”
If you didn’t pay attention to her at home, Gallagher said you were likely to find Kibeth “up on the countertop looking for something to do if she got bored.”
But Kibeth’s life at home was only part of what made her so special.
In 2016, Gallagher and Kibeth were certified with the International Police Working Dog Association in air scent-live find and began working for Travis County Search and Rescue in Texas.
There are three tasks rescue K9s perform for search and rescue teams in the field, Gallagher said — searching for cadavers, tracking live people who may be on the move and air scent-live find.
The third type of search dogs, such as Kibeth, work off the leash and cover large areas of wilderness terrain, Gallagher said. They do not need to follow trails and they don’t need to be given a personal item to track a specific person by scent. Instead, they search a grid, looking for a scent of any live person in the area, making wide circles to clear large areas of land — up to 100 acres per day.
When Gallagher and her family moved to Whatcom County in 2017, she and Kibeth continued to work as volunteers, joining the K9 unit for Summit to Sound Search and Rescue, a group of 50 to 70 volunteers who are deployed on wilderness search missions at the request of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office.
Kibeth and Gallagher often got called to assist on searches for lost hikers, children, patients suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s and others in crisis. And though they were based in Whatcom County, they often got called out to Skagit, Snohomish or King counties or elsewhere in the state to assist on searches.
And when they weren’t actively working, there were hours and hours Kibeth and Gallager spent training together — perfecting their craft to be ready when they were called out.
Filling holes left by Kibeth
While they were in Texas, Gallagher estimated Kibeth participated in four or five searches per year. That jumped to seven or eight per year when they moved to Washington.
In all those searches, how many people did Kibeth locate?
“She never made a find in the field,” Gallagher said. “Found lots during training, though.”
But don’t let that 0-for fool you — Kibeth was extremely good at what she did.
“She never missed anybody, either,” Gallagher said. “When we were working that big search out in Skagit County last year, she cleared more than 100-120 acres. She was able to tell us there was nobody in those areas, so we needed to focus the search elsewhere.”
In her career, Kibeth ruled out thousands of acres where missing people weren’t.
And after her unexpected death, Kibeth left an even bigger hole. Whatcom County now only has only one dog certified to do wide-area wilderness searches, Gallagher said.
“They are doing fantastic,” Gallagher said of Summit to Sound’s other air scent-live find dog, “but they’re only one, and sometimes we got called out of the county.”
She added that another dog has just started training for wide-area searches, but it takes years to get trained and certified.
And any future search dogs in Whatcom County will have a lot to live up to.
“K9 Kibeth was known for her incredibly reliable working skills, her tenacity in the face of injuries and harsh working conditions, and her never-ending desire to play fetch,” Gallagher wrote in an obituary she sent to coworkers and friends. “She could cover many acres of land in a short amount of time and was eager to work at any time of day or night.
“Kibeth made friends wherever she went, and even in the wilderness environment her handler knew she had detected a person’s scent by her flattened ears and excited tail wag. She loved her job, and loved her people.”
And she was loved by her people.
Gallagher, who serves as the K9 unit lead for Summit to Sound, said she hasn’t ruled out finding another partner in Kibeth’s absence at some point, but she is taking a break to help other handlers get started.
And the impact of the loss of Kibeth on her family?
“We’re fostering some puppies to help fill holes,” Gallager said.
But Kibeth and all the miles they covered while working together won’t be forgotten anytime soon, said Gallager, who concluded Kibeth’s obituary with the same phrase she used when they had finished working or training in the field:
“All finished, Kibeth. Get your ball!”
