Spartans raise funds to train dog to detect landmines

As Kimberly McCasland, director of Children Against Mines Program, spoke, the audience at Seven Lakes High School grew quiet.

McCasland said she had heard recently from the uncle and grandmother of a Bosnian girl. They said the girl just wanted to do what girls do — put on a sun dress and twirl - but she was afraid she'd never be able to do it. She had just been fitted with a prosthesis because her leg was blown off by a landmine.

That landmine was much like the one McCasland held in her hand, except that hers was not charged with explosives.

McCasland was at Seven Lakes on March 26 as part of the Dog Days of Spring, a fundraising festival sponsored by the school's Interact Club, which raises awareness of international problems and issues and works toward solving them.

The club's sponsor, Jessica Postlethwaite, first heard McCasland speak during a teacher training session last June that also featured Utsi, a landmine-detecting dog, who is semiretired after clearing 1.5 million landmines in Africa in 5½ years. Between 70 million and 100 million landmines are planted in 72 countries, according to CHAMP, which is based in Arlington, Va.

After Postlethwaite saw Utsi demonstrate how to detect a landmine, she posed an idea to her Interact Club students: Why not sponsor a landmine-detecting dog? It would cost $20,000 to train, but the dog could save 10,000 lives. They loved the idea and started making signs, placing phone calls, collecting donations for a silent auction and baking cupcakes and cookies to sell after school. They started investing in a dog they would call Spartacus. The school's mascot is a Spartan.

They raised $8,000 in the months leading up to festival, and another $7,000 at the event, which featured "Laps For Lives" (a dog walk where pets and owners walked laps for the chance to win a grand prize), a silent auction, food and drinks and a fun zone for kids.

As of April 9, the club has raised $16,000, said Postlethwaite. If the group exceeds its fundraising goal, that money would be designated for CHAMP International, which pays for prosthetics for victims of landmines, she said.

It was a fun - and yet powerful - day for many, including Megan Seiler, 17, a senior at Seven Lakes.

"I just think that kids being involved in landmines is really sad," she said. "They walk to school, and they lose limbs. That's what I really like about what the Interact Club is doing. This is my way of getting involved."

Said Postlethwaite, "It's truly a service project that lives on and on and on. Because not only does the dog save lives, but you create a link with schools in the countries being helped. Your kids become so much more aware of what goes on in the world. The difference between the Interact Club and other charitable organizations is that we don't want to just raise money. We want to do something to help solve the problem.

"I was just really floored by what a dog can do to help the lives of people around the world who have nothing," Postlethwaite said. "Their countries have been devastated by war. And after the war, they can't make a living because they can't farm because the farmland has landmines. Some of the decisions they have to make on a day-to-day basis are horrifying."

McCasland said there are 600 types of landmines.

"It costs about $3 to purchase a landmine and just throw it in the ground anywhere," she said.

McCasland said that Spartacus will likely be a Belgian Malinois, like Utsi, or a German shepherd and, depending on when the funding is complete, will serve in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iraq or Angola. The students will meet Spartacus and be given a voice in determining the country, and then Spartacus will head for the K9 Global Training Academy in Somerset, near San Antonio, the only organization in the United States capable of training the dogs and one of only eight in the world.

"One dog replaces 20 to 30 manual de-miners, who can be working on their hands and knees with a long, pointed stick, painstakingly searching in the ground for something that doesn't belong there," McCasland said. "I illustrate it like this: It's a football field, and you need to clear the width and from goal post to goal post. On a good day, a manual de-miner gets to the 5-yard line. You can get to the 7 or 8 with a metal detector, but a modern landmine has plastics."

By honing in on the odor of the explosives, a trained dog can cover the entire field, she said.

To donate, go to www.champskids.org/get_involved/campaigns_usa/TX/TX_7Lakes/iframe/7Lakes_campaign.html