11/09/2025
We will never forget. I was stationed at Luke AFB on this tragic day..
"Sunny the Doberman Pinscher: a Live-Find-Turned-Cadaver Dog
Shirley Hammond is a retired registered nurse who’s logged close to 30 years in SAR. As of 2006, she had spent nearly 40 years owning and training Doberman Pinschers. She and Doberman Pinscher Sunny deployed with California Task Force 3 out of Menlo Park to New York from Sept. 19 to 30.
“They had me come over to search an area where they had just finished cutting a whole bunch of metal — they were looking for one of their own. Their battalion chief had actually called for a cadaver dog,” recalls Hammond. “And when I got there, he said, ‘Is this a cadaver dog?’ and I said, ‘No, this is a live-find dog.’ He was not pleased.
“So then he said, ‘Well, since you’re here, why don’t you run your dog over this area and see what you can find?’ Sunny searched the area and he kept going back to this one spot where the rescue folks had been cutting the metal. I knew he was working scent but I thought that he was working the residual scent from the live workers.
“So I called Sunny to come and he started to me — and then he turned around and he went back over to this place and started pawing the ground. Then he turned and looked at me,” she says. “And this battalion chief said, ‘Well, what’s your dog doing?’ And I just said, ‘I think you need to investigate that spot. He’s not a cadaver dog but he’s telling us there’s something there.’ Then later that day, a couple of us were going to lunch … when one of the firefighters came up and put his hand on my shoulder. He said, ‘Sunny was right. We got our brother.’”
Sunny died of cancer in November 2003, says Hammond. “He had a good life span — 11 years — and he was a happy boy. He loved to pull your leg and do funny little things. And he enjoyed training. You’d be driving down the street and you’d see a rubble pile. And he’d start whining — ‘Oh, let’s go play, Mom. There might be somebody hiding there for me.’ He loved that game of finding somebody.”
