Cork man and his dog Cooper bound for Ukraine to help with search and rescue
Padraig O'Keeffe and Cooper the dog who will be helping with the search and rescue efforts in Ukraine.
A Cork man and his dog are travelling to Ukraine where they hope to assist with search and rescue operations in the war-torn country.
Padraig O'Keeffe has been training Cooper, a Labrador Retriever, to work in urban search and rescue, as well as cadaver recovery, and they are set to begin their trip to Kyiv on Saturday. The Cobh man has years of experience working with dogs, having spent 10 years with his previous working dog, Mambo.
Mr O'Keeffe served in the French military in the early 1990s and has worked in private security in countries such as Iraq, Haiti and Dominican Republic. It was in Haiti that he first saw the work of urban search and rescue (USAR) dogs and their handlers.
In 2011, he trained as a K9 USAR handler where he began working with Mambo, who was trained to locate live human scents under collapsed buildings. The German shepherd is accredited with six fatality recoveries from the rubble in Italy following a 2015 earthquake as well as two fatality recoveries from inland waterways and one off the coast in Ireland.
In 2020, after Mambo came to the end of his career, Mr O'Keeffe started working with Cooper who he found in Greece. Mr O'Keeffe said that Cooper has "incredible potential and ability to help in Ukraine".
He first met Cooper in Athens through a colleague and when the first Covid lockdown ended, Mr O'Keeffe took the chance to go there and train with the dog. They spent a number of months training but with Covid cases rising again at the end of 2020, Mr O'Keeffe took Cooper back to Ireland.
When he got back to Ireland, the ability to continue his training like in Greece had been lost but when the war started in Ukraine, Mr O'Keeffe said he felt Cooper could play a part. He "ramped up" the dog's training, creating scenarios that they might encounter in Ukraine.
The trip will see him use Kyiv as his base of operations where he has an apartment secured and where he will meet his interpreter, who has already been in touch with emergency services in the region.
While Cooper is still a work in progress, he has a strong foundation and will be learning on the job. Cooper can help with both search and rescue and recovery, he said.
Mr O'Keeffe said the goal is to help, adding that when the war in Ukraine started, it brought back "unsettling" memories of when he had served during the Balkan Wars.
"I just felt with my experience, the experience that I have personally and my experience with the search and rescue and on the cadavers. And I have a super dog, I thought, why am I here where there's no role for me to play."
He said he felt he could put his experience and Cooper to good use. "Hopefully we can do some good."
The searches can be "grim", Mr O'Keeffe said on finding dead bodies. However, finding the bodies can give their loved ones peace.
He added that he lost two colleagues while working in Iraq that they were never able to recover. Mr O'Keeffe spoke to the families as he was the last person to see them alive. "It was a massive emotional rollercoaster."
As well as helping with search and rescue, Mr O'Keeffe will be collecting medicines to bring them to Kyiv. His trip will see him take a ferry to France and drive to Hungary where he will spend two days before getting to Ukraine on Friday.
Mr O'Keeffe has set up a GoFundMe to support his efforts in Ukraine which has so far raised more than €10,000. He said the money will be used when he is on the ground in Ukraine and he funded the preparation for the trip himself.
Anyone who wants to donate can go to the GoFundMe page.
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