Contributed photo/Nate BodenstabHOULTON — The Houlton Rotary Club met for its luncheon meeting on Dec. 19 and the group won’t be meeting again until Jan. 9 because of two Monday holidays.
There were several guests in attendance. Frankie White was the guest of her father Rotarian Scott White and Brandon Ward was the guest of Rotarian Steve Bither. Caribou Rotarian John Kavin was present with his mother Natalie Kavin.
Also present was the guest speaker Roger Guay and his wife Jolynn. The mood was festive in the pre-holiday excitement, as the “Happy Dollars” shared by Rotarians expressed. President Matthew Nightingale reminded the club that the next meeting on Jan. 9 will be pretty special as The University of Maine System President Susan Hunter will be the guest speaker.
Torrey Sylvester reminded the members of the effort to eradicate polio worldwide and encouraged the club to be 100 percent behind the effort.
Nelson introduced his guest speaker, Guay, who served Maine as a warden from 1986 to 2010. His specialty was canine search and rescue. He has received many awards for his work. Guay and his family used to live in the area and retired to Guilford, Maine to be near family. He mentioned what a spectacular drive it was from Guilford to Houlton.
Guay also said that the last time he spoke to such a large audience was a deer drive in Danforth. He launched into his program sharing a story about Bob Smith from Masardis who was never found and the event pressed Roger into learning dog handling. A freshly trained dog can shorten a search from five days to 20 minutes. Guay had an opportunity to work the jungle in Panama and he prepared for his trip learning about the animals and snakes to watch out for, forgetting about spiders. He quickly learned to let someone else lead through the jungle because there were spiders everywhere.
Guay trains other people to be dog handlers and he stressed that it is easier to train a dog than a person. From 1995 to 1996 he lived on Timoney Lake and had the task of finding a 3-year-old child in Oakfield. He shared how he set up the dog to go out on trail with the scent of the child. They were observed by a huge crowd and all his dog did was to go behind a building and pester a snow sled covered up with a tarp. Guay kept urging the dog to take the trail but the dog would not leave the sled so he finally felt around under the cover and found nothing.
Guay went back to the crowd kind of scratching his head to address the crowd. Suddenly the mother was screaming “Where have you been?” as the child came out from behind the building. The response was that he was taking a nap on his father’s sled. He had crawled up between the handle bars so he was beyond the seat Guay had searched. Trust your dog was the message loud and clear. Guay shared that he had wanted to name his book “A Good Dog With aMan”.
Guay said he is partial to labrador retrievers for search and rescue dogs as they are less threatening with their rounded hang down ears. He begins training when the dog is eight weeks old. What really matters in his work is the relationship between the handler and he dog. That relationship dictates success. A dog is fully trained by one year of age. A handler must listen to their dog as humans cannot think the way dogs smell. Studies have been done to show that dogs even smell insects and they definitely sense fear and so can track a person who is running scared.
He explained that his book is based on his whole journey, not on stories and he shares the good, the bad and the ugly. It is his experience and how this has affected his life. The book can be found on Amazon or on Facebook, a great New Year’s read.
