K9 Murphy
Murphy is a Yellow Lab, who was born in December of 2013, in Kellog, Idaho. Murphy is also a brother and litter mate of K9 Duke. Murphy and Duke came to us from a breeder named Born To Hunt Labradors, of Kellog, Idaho. Kellog is a town a little East of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Coeur d’Alene, is where our team is based out of.
The K9s live full time with their handler, and both puppies came home with their handler at 7 weeks old. We select high drive dogs for the team. Since the day he came home, Murphy has been the definition of high drive. Often challenging me to keep him busy, he only had one speed: Fully on. Thus awarding him the nickname of the dog with no off switch. Where most dogs would train, exercise, work, etc. and then sit for a while and relax. Murphy has never known the term “Relax”. The benefit is that we were able to take that energy and focus it into a productive USAR Canine.
Much like people, we have areas we excel in, and areas that require more intentional effort. For Murphy searching came natural, which is great since that is our mission. For Murphy, searching is “The Best Thing EVER!”. One of the skills he mastered but struggled with was the down stay; where the dog has to lay down and stay for five minutes, while the handler walks away. He wanted to stay… he tried so hard to stay… but it was difficult. Do you remember the old Looney Tunes Cartoons. One of the characters would try hard to refrain from saying something… then they would start shaking and turning red… and ultimately blurt it out. When Murphy first started doing his down/stay training, he would lay down, then a minute in he would start shaking, and Shaking, and SHAKING. Doing everything he could to stay put. It took some practice, but this became one of his strongest skill sets.
It is important to expose the dogs to as many environments as possible. Whether it was testing or training, Murphy has been to many places throughout the country. Naturally he has been all over Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Montana. He has also traveled to multiple places in California, Chicago, Maui, Oahu, St Louis, and Memphis. With all of this experience, Murphy matured well and became a great asset to our team. He still has so much energy, we forget he is nine and half years old. He is still driven and loves to work. At this age, shouldn’t he be slowing down? Maybe, but the “Fireplace Dog” lifestyle never suited him anyway. In his free time he loves to go swim in the lake, hike in the woods. He’s my adventure fur-buddy. The dog that challenged me so much as a pup, far surpassed what I could have ever asked of him. Head over to Meet The Team to learn more about Murphy and all of our other canines.
K9 Murphy after a successful search. The dogs were lowered on ropes systems into this area to search.
