SEATTLE (KRT) – Highly trained and obedient, focused and tireless, Ricky, a 3-year-old Rat Terrier, is the smallest urban search dog in the country. He can climb aluminum ladders, run complex patterns on command and tell the difference in the scent of the living and the dead.
For 10 days starting Sept. 19, Ricky and his trainer, Janet Linker, a Seattle firefighter and dispatcher, worked the night shift at the site of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, searching for survivors and, toward the end, bodies.
They were sent as a part of Puget Sound Urban Search and Rescue – 62 firefighters, police, doctors, engineers, public-safety personnel and three other search dogs. They were one of 28 elite teams coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Ricky sat quietly recently on top of the podium in front of the Seattle City Council, wearing his official vest adorned with official patches from FEMA and Puget Sound Urban Search and Rescue, while the human members of his team received thanks and commendations.
Linker and Ricky worked together with trainer Kent Olson and his canine search partner Thunder, a golden retriever, to locate several victims in the rubble, among them a firefighter and a policeman.

_{— Caitlin Cleary}