On Sunday, October 31st at 10:15 am at the Ramat Rachel Hotel in Jerusalem, the Pups for Peace Project will be unveiled with a live demonstration before the Prime Minister's Mission of Jewish philanthropists from the USA organized by the United Jewish Communities, The Federations of North America (UJC). The mission will be welcomed by Jewish Agency Chairman, Sallai Meridor and Minister of Finance, Binyamin Netanyahu.
As part of the demonstration, 50 trained dogs and their trainers will demonstrate their operational capabilities to reveal explosives on public transportation. The dogs, which are Belgian Shepherds, Labradors, German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, were trained over a period of six months and will be deployed on buses in Jerusalem, Beersheva, Netanya and on Israel Railways.
The Pups for Peace plan entails the training of roughly 300 dogs per year for 3 years. The idea was born in early April 2002, in the wake of the Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in the seaside resort town of Netanya, Israel. The idea was conceived by Prof. Glenn Yago of Los Angeles, who felt extremely frustrated by the suicide-bomber attacks in Israel. Strongly motivated to help, Yago decided to take action and collect funds for the purchase of special dogs that would be trained to sniff out explosives and bombs, thus helping to protect the lives of Israel’s citizens.
Prof. Yago was joined by Mike Herstik, an expert dog trainer, Gilbert Sherer of the US and Ronnie Lotan of Israel. Together they founded Pups for Peace whose goal is to purchase and train 1,000 sniffer dogs to be transported to Israel and deployed by the security services in the daily war on terror. At the same time, a decision was made to assist and support the Israel Police canine unit as well as the IDF Special Forces Oketz canine unit, by donating dogs trained to detect bombs and explosives.
In May 2003, the first civilian pilot project began at the Netanya bus station, in association with Egged Bus and the Transportation Ministry. By early July, the pilot had been declared a resounding success. Egged requested dogs and training for bus stations across Israel as soon as possible. Other civilian applications are now in development and it is clear that the dogs and handlers are urgently needed.
The Pups for Peace work teams and the dogs they have trained were involved in preventing the attack on Jerusalem’s “Caffit” restaurant, and were also deployed in the search of the French Hill intersection during last month’s terror attack there.
Since its inception, Pups for Peace has purchased 120 sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives on public transport, to work in on-going police activity and in the IDF SF Oketz unit. The organization currently has 17 employees in Israel, 14 of whom are professional dog handlers. It runs 10 full work teams in Jerusalem and a further 10 teams in the center of the country. These teams deploy more than 50 dogs trained to detect explosives.
Pups for Peace is a humanitarian, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to reducing death and injury through the use of explosive-detection dogs to counter terrorism. The project is sustained by philanthropy alone and because of its importance in saving lives, the Jewish Agency raised a contribution of NIS 2.25 million from the Israel Emergency Campaign of UJC on behalf of Pups for Peace. The funds have made it possible to expand the activity to towns that are frequently targeted by terrorists - Jerusalem, Beersheva and Netanya, and teams of dog handlers have also been trained to work on Israel Railways. As a result, hundreds of thousands of citizens now enjoy improved security on public transport.