In times of great despair, great heroes always emerge, these days Mexico has catapulted more heroes than anyone, among their beloved rescuers, there is one that wears wide protective goggles, a harness, two pairs of boots and is covered with beautiful golden fur.
We are of course talking about Frida, a 7-year-old Labrador who is the star of the Mexican navy’s Canine Unit. Throughout her career, Frida has detected 52 people — 12 alive — in a variety of natural disasters.
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Two weeks ago, she was in Oaxaca when the earthquake hit, and there she detected the body of Juan Jimenez Regalado a 36-year-old police officer from Juchitan.
Now she’s in Mexico City gracing us with her superb nose and trade, helping to find survivors in the wake of Tuesday’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 270 people in five states. The quake’s epicenter was on the border of the states of Puebla and Morelos, about 80 miles southeast of the capital.
Fifteen dogs have been deployed by different rescue groups to search for people just in Mexico City, but none have as many fans as the beautiful Frida. The navy tweeted some pictures of Mexico’s favorite dog last week, boasting her 52 rescues. In a few minutes, it got more than 4,000 retweets and 7,000 likes and counting. People see her a symbol of hope, a hero and have even made efforts through social media to send her more boots.
Frida was on the grounds of the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school, where 11 children were found alive and 25 people, including 19 children, bodies were recovered.
On Thursday afternoon, she took a well-deserved nap in her break room, along with her two Belgian Malinois colleagues, Evil and Echo. Frida’s handler, Israel Arauz Salinas, told the media that she was completely exhausted after searching the school Wednesday, but that her spirits were high and she would return on Thursday fully recharged.
Salinas said that Frida is Evil and Echo’s senior and that these two young canines are the ones to go into collapsed buildings first. If they detect a person, Frida follows up and confirms. She usually spends no more than 20 minutes inside, but these are special circumstances and the dogs are pushed to further limits.
The dogs bark if they detect signs of life. If they find a body, they stop suddenly and proceed with caution.
The spaces and conditions these work under are extreme, they crawl into tiny spaces that are usually not higher than 20 inches, getting into places where human rescuers couldn’t hope to reach.