In Cairo Montenotte, in Piazza della Vittoria, Mayor Paolo Lambertini hosted a handover ceremony of location detection devices for the dog units of the Gruppo Cinofilo Volontari di Protezione Civile I Lupi di Albisola (Albisola Volunteer Civil Defence Dog Group).
Federico Bertuccio, Site Manager of the FERA Group, presented to Barbara Astaldi, President of the Gruppo Cinofilo Volontari di Protezione Civile I Lupi di Albisola (Albisola’s Dog and Civil Defence Volunteers Group), equipment consisting of GPS collars and handheld devices capable of monitoring the four-legged friends up to 10 kilometres away, whether they are in the countryside, in the hills, or immersed in a dense forest. In an emergency, the devices use satellite technology, with the possibility of sharing the position with others.
Paolo Lambertini said: ‘Supporting Civil Protection is an important sign of closeness to our volunteers, who are always ready to intervene in any circumstance. I would like to thank FERA for its willingness to help on this occasion as well’.
‘For a long time, the dogs trained by I Lupi di Albisola have been roaming around our wind farms and we always wanted to find a way to support their work – said Federico Bertuccio – One day, talking to Barbara, what they needed became apparent and we were happy to help them to do this very important work’.
‘We are very grateful to the FERA Group, who wanted to help us by donating equipment (gps + collars) to make our search and rescue activities even more efficient. Our training sessions often take place in the vicinity of their wind farms, and having the right tools to assess the training of our canine units allows us to be better prepared during actual search operations. – said Barbara Astaldi – The possibility of monitoring, even in real time, with precision the movements of a dog during the search is useful both for dogs performing scent detection (to establish the ability to follow the tracks of the person to be searched, ignoring others), and for those working by tracking, (to know the range of movement with respect to the handler). This type of work analysis makes it possible to assess the dog’s actual preparation and reliability, also in relation to atmospheric elements such as wind, rain, temperature, etc.’.
The Civil Defence Volunteer Dog Group I Lupi di Albisola was founded in 2007 as the autonomous Ligurian section of the national group ‘I Lupi’ (The Wolves), an association founded in 1976 by Giuseppe Gallotti, a pioneer of training dogs to search for missing persons on the ground and under rubble. With the reform of Third Sector organisations, the association became completely independent.
