Canada stops using 'avalanche dogs' for rescues in Rocky Mountains, stirring outrage
A 55-year-old dog rescue programme that has found missing hikers and children in the Canadian wilderness was axed as part of government budget cuts.
Scott Ward can still recall the relief he saw on parents' faces when a search and rescue dog he was working with found their children safe in Canada's vast and heavily wooded Banff National Park.
Another time, his canine partner led him hiking up a steep mountainside for two hours until they reached a man with a broken leg who was close to dying from hypothermia.
Now 73 and retired, Ward spent 17 years as a dog handler in the wilderness of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, work he described as gratifying.
For 55 years, the government used rescue dogs in the Canadian Rocky Mountains who were trained to trace "everything", Ward said, from a small paper clip to shell casings to a human body.