TEXAS \u2014 For years now, when disaster strikes, there has been a statewide volunteer group on the front-lines when backup is needed. They bring a special partner with them.<\/p>\n
Two of those team members are Samantha and Leila.<\/p>\n
\u201cSamantha\u2019s 5,\u201d said George Ramirez fondly.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re Belgian Malinois, and they\u2019re almost like your average house dog. Samantha and Leila love to play fetch and chase after squirrels, but when Ramirez says \u201cheel,\u201d they\u2019re immediately all ears.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to have control over them because of all the distractions,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
Ramirez is their owner and handler. Every day, regardless of the weather, he takes them out to train.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what we call environmental,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
Spectrum News caught up with him at a Fort Worth park in the hottest part of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir favorite treat is my favorite treat,\u201d said Ramirez, holding out a Nulo treat as he asked Samantha to bark. Nulo partners with Texas Search and Rescue, or TEXSAR.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have them as a personal pet is awesome, but to be able to work, to be able to make such a difference, it\u2019s really a good feeling,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
George Ramirez is among roughly 800 human volunteers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be surrounded with this kind of people that\u2019s just out of the goodness of their heart. and they just want to serve the community, that\u2019s what TEXSAR is made of,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
There are about 30 dogs on the team too, like Samantha, that train to find living people.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019ll bark. She\u2019ll say, ‘I found,’ and I\u2019ll say, ‘Show me,’ and she\u2019ll take me right back to you,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve had been deployed to some of the state\u2019s worst natural disasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went to Kerrville, and TEXSAR was absolutely amazing,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re also called to find missing people, like older adults who get lost.<\/p>\n
All the training and travel is paid for by the volunteer. It\u2019s a price worth every penny in Ramirez\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the fact that I came from a public service career, I was used to giving and rescuing and helping and working for the people, so once I retired, I wasn\u2019t ready to give that up,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
He comes from a long career in law enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just comes from my heart. It\u2019s what I\u2019m about,\u201d said Ramirez.<\/p>\n
While Spectrum News interviewed Ramirez, we let Samantha get a little practice in searching for our reporter, Lauren Rangel.<\/p>\n
While Samantha got suited up in her search and rescue gear, Lauren hid behind a large tree in the park.<\/p>\n
Exactly one minute and thirteen seconds later, Samantha came running up to her and then went to report to Ramirez that she had found Rangel by barking.<\/p>\n
Then, it was right back to being a normal dog by playing a game of tug a war with her dad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 For years now, when disaster strikes, there has been a statewide volunteer group on the front-lines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[14209,132,1570,102,116,118,117,56,14210,11586,82,27,26986,1569,835],"class_list":["post-443470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-app-human-interest","tag-austin","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-houston","tag-human-interest","tag-lauren-rangel","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-editors-picks","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}