Corgi on track for royal recognition

Not many dogs can lay claim to correspondence from Buckingham Palace, but WA’s only operational tracking dog – fittingly a corgi named Manhon from Albany – has her very own letter from one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting.

When Albany State Emergency Service tracking dog handler Glenys Nottle first broached the idea of lending her corgi’s tracking services to the SES, she was met with raised eyebrows.

Labradors, Alsatians and Belgian shepherds are renowned for their work as tracking dogs, but corgis are probably better known as the Queen’s pooch of choice.

Fast-forward three years and, thanks to her owner’s persistence, Manhon is bucking the stereotype in her own fluffy way as the only operational tracking dog in the SES canine unit.

Manhon’s trailblazing might never have come about if Mrs Nottle hadn’t fallen into tracking by chance about 12 years ago with her first corgi, Lara.

Two friends at her local dog club requested Mrs Nottle’s assistance as a track layer for competitions, which – literally – gave her a captivating whiff of the sport.

“I had corgis but I thought, ‘Well they won’t think of using corgis as trackers’, but one of the girls suggested we try the corgis at competition tracking to see how they’d go,” Mrs Nottle said.

“My first dog took to tracking like a duck to water, so I started competition tracking with her.

“One of the judges said he couldn’t believe a corgi would work, he likened her to a shortlegged German shepherd.”

After training Lara to become an Australian champion tracker over five years, Mrs Nottle decided to pursue the sport further with her new puppy Manhon, who achieved the same level of accreditation within 18 months.

After 10 years with the SES as volunteer radio operator and air search observer, it seems logical Mrs Nottle should combine her two passions.

At Track West, where she continues to be involved in competitive tracking, other members of the SES tracking unit suggested Mrs Nottle see if her corgi was capable of tracking in a working capacity.

“I asked the question – I got some funny looks in return – and I said, ‘Look please be open-minded about it’, which my co-ordinator (FESA canine training coordinator Ian Spreckley) is, and it went from there,” Mrs Nottle said.

There are just five dogs in the SES canine unit in WA, four of which are Perth-based area search dogs.

As a tracking dog, Manhon is trained to track scent-specific articles to locate missing or lost people, unlike area search dogs, which detect the scent of any person in a given area.

Since Manhon became officially operational for the SES in August last year she has respon-ded to two tracking call outs in Denmark and Kulin.

It’s been a steep learning curve for Mrs Nottle to develop and translate her own skills as a handler from competitive tracking to locating missing or lost persons.

“Manhon knows what she’s doing but it’s me that had to learn how to read what she’s telling me,” Mrs Nottle said.

“It’s all to do with the dog’s body language, the position of the tail, where the ears and head are, if the tail is wagging profusely…

“The hardest part is to remain focused on exactly what you are doing without getting distracted.

“As a handler you need to take yourself out of your own mind and body and think how that missing person may act is the hardest part of the lot.

With competition tracking there are rules and regulations you become savvy with.

“The difference is when you get out in the bush you have no idea what that person (who is being tracked) is doing.”

It’s a massive commitment to maintain Manhon’s operation abilities, with monthly trips to Perth for competitive tracking and training.

“It is a religion,” she said.

“It’s like ultra-marathon runners or top sportsman, it’s a constant thing, you don’t reach ‘the top’ and think, ‘OK I’m here now, I’m done’, because the moment you think that you’ll take the biggest fall ever.”

Ms Nottle’s passionate commitment to the SES – not just with Manhon, but in picking up the slack doing administration duties and as a veteran radio and communications operator — was recognised when she was named the Albany SES’s most dedicated member in 2011.

“I do it because I love it,” she said.

“To me it is needed in society because we are getting less and less volunteers and if you can put a dog out to search, that is 30 volunteers you might not have to ask to traipse through bush or down streets unnecessarily.

“I’m getting to the age where there’s a lot of things you can do when you’re younger that you can’t do when you’re older, but that doesn’t you mean to give up because there’s a lot of information you can pass on to the younger generations coming through.”