Rip

He was a stray, found in the rubble of a raid on Poplar in 1940 by an air-raid warden called E. King, who fed him once and could not then get rid of him. There was no such thing as a trained search dog in Britain at the time — the idea had not been tried — and nobody taught him anything. He simply began doing it. On a site he would work the debris, stop, and dig; the wardens learned to trust it and dug where he did. Over the course of the Blitz he was credited with finding more than a hundred people buried alive. His method was his own, and it was good enough that the authorities took notice: he is the reason the government began deliberately training search and rescue dogs, which by 1945 were doing the same work under instruction. He was given the Dickin Medal in 1945 and wore it on his collar for the last year of his life. He is buried at the PDSA Animal Cemetery in Ilford. His medal was sold at auction in 2009 for £24,250.

Loved by · Warden E. King

Honours

• 1940–41Credited with finding more than a hundred people buried in the Blitz, untrained
• · His work led Britain to begin training search and rescue dogs deliberately
• 1945Dickin Medal, worn on his collar for the rest of his life
• 1946Buried at the PDSA Animal Cemetery, Ilford

Their kind

Terriers were bred to work underground alone, out of earshot of any instruction — which is why a good one keeps going after the handler would have called it off.

A life in seasons