Ninja and her human: how a dog handler from the Kyiv region searches for people under the rubble with her dog

Olga Bibikova has been training dogs to search for missing people for over ten years. It was once a hobby in her free time from her job as a marketer, and later it grew into a profession. Now Olga and her dog Ninjya work for the State Emergency Service – searching for people under the rubble after Russian strikes and training with volunteers who search for missing people in the forests.

Read about how dogs rescue missing people and what it takes to learn this skill in the article. LIGA.net.

Searching for people under the rubble

Olha Bibikova and her dog Ninja work for the State Emergency Service. Olha is a dog handler at the Main Mobile Rescue Center for Rapid Response. Ninja is a service dog. Together, they search for people under the rubble after airstrikes in Kyiv and also go on search missions abroad.

Olga and Ninja's work looks like this: when a strike or other emergency occurs – a domestic gas explosion, a building collapse – the dog handler and dog go to the scene together. Once there, the first thing the State Emergency Service leadership does is assess the scale of the event and assign tasks to the rescuers – including those with dogs.

Olha determines exactly where to send Ninjyu directly at the location. If the debris is extensive, the dog handler and her dog gradually "comb through" the area: they enter the "impact" zone, go deeper into it, return, and move on – step by step.

If the area is small, the dog works through it completely on its own until it finishes or until the dog handler tells it to come out. Before being released, all unnecessary items are removed from Ninja – no collar, no harness, nothing is left to restrict movement. Then a short command is given: "Search." Ninja has known it since childhood. So, it instantly takes off and begins to examine the area. First, the dog sniffs the ground – everything that lies at ground level or near the base of the rubble. Then it raises its head and "picks up" the scent from above.

"I just let her off the leash and trust her instincts," Olga explains.

When Ninja finds a person, she indicates it by barking. They work for as long as the State Emergency Service's rescue operation lasts. This can be several hours or several days – it all depends on the scale of the destruction. Sometimes one unit stays on site, and sometimes dog handlers and dogs are rotated. Sometimes only Ninja works, and sometimes several dogs work at once.

Since the full-scale invasion, Ninja has participated in over ten searches for people under the rubble. Not only in residential buildings, but also at large industrial enterprises hit by Russian drones and missiles.

"The rubble was enormous, the metal was melting in real time," Olga says, describing one such incident. "Ninja would come back from a job like that completely filthy, smelling of soot. She'd crawl anywhere, searching through the smoke and water, completely focused on her work."

If there are sharp fragments or metal underfoot, Ninja is fitted with special shoes. And when working at heights, where there is a risk of falling or structural collapse, the dog is not let off the leash – because Ninja is very fast, there is a risk that she will run above the fifth floor and could fall.

During the full-scale invasion, Ninja had one trip abroad – to Turkey, after the massive earthquake in 2023. There, she worked with a Ukrainian rescue team, surveying the rubble of buildings. Since Olga and Ninja arrived at the scene a few days after the earthquake, there was no chance of finding living people under the rubble. So the dog worked for nine days and returned home. For this work, Ninja received an award, with which the rescuers honored her contribution to the search for people among the ruins.

Despite her intensive work, Ninja does not live at the State Emergency Service base. She is a domestic dog who comes to work every day, just like people come to their jobs. Outside of work, she sleeps at home, walks in the fields, runs, and lives a normal dog's life.

How dogs are taught to search for people

Nindzha is now six years old, and she has been working with Olga for four years. Olga trained Nindzha herself, using the "training from the end" principle. This means that the dog first learns the last element of the future behavior, in this case – to cast a voteNinja was taught to bark for a reward, and only when this skill became automatic did Olga add the next step – a person's whereaboutsAt first, it was a simple hide-and-seek: someone would stand nearby or hide in a way that the Ninja could quickly find them. When she found them, she would always give a vocal signal, which was already well-established. This way, the dog gradually understood that finding a person meant vocalizing.

Olga taught Ninja to work without prompts, to rely on instincts, and to fully "turn on her nose." Now Ninja can search multi-level debris. Olga deliberately doesn't overload the dog: she conducts search training once a week. This is enough for Ninja to maintain interest and work with enthusiasm, rather than burning out from excessive repetitions.

Olha and Ninja first went to search under the rubble before the full-scale war. It was a gas explosion in a residential building in Pozniaky: floors from the fourth to the ninth collapsed, while the lower ones remained intact. Ninja was still young and inexperienced, so Olha kept her on a leash to prevent the dog from getting injured.

Responding to emergencies is only part of Olga's work at the State Emergency Service. In addition, she trains service dogs, teaching them to search for people not only under rubble but also in the forest.

"We take a dog as a puppy, raise it, train it, then pass an assessment with it, and only after that is the dog enrolled in the service – this means that it only works on searching for missing people. It doesn't do any other work, such as demining or guarding," says Bibikova. "The breed or its absence doesn't matter – well, I haven't encountered any decorative breeds in service. Usually, dog handlers work with young dogs because puppies are easier to socialize and train."

For a puppy to become a promising service dog, it must meet several criteria. First of all, the dog must be motivated by either a toy or food, because it is motivation that allows it to be trained to search. Next, it is important that the dog is not afraid of heights, darkness, loud noises, or the operation of heavy machinery on rubble. Agility and activity are also important, because during a search, it is necessary to move over unstable structures and debris.

Bibikova says that the puppies are being trained. daily, because early socialization and constant training develop search skills. She has personally raised three service dogs.

How it all began

Olga Bibikova has never seriously formulated for herself what dogs really mean to her. But they definitely occupy a huge part of her life – and it has almost always been that way.

The first dog appeared in Olga's family when she was a child – it was an Alabai named Rick. Olga's parents took him from bad conditions – the dog was locked in an apartment and not cared for. In the end, he lived with the Bibikov family for 14 years.

When Olga turned 21, she finally bought her first personal dog – the one she had long dreamed of – a Doberman named Zorya. For Olga, it was not just a pet: she wanted to immerse herself in sports training with the dog, participate in competitions, develop herself and the dog. But it quickly turned out that Zorya had a disease of the central and peripheral nervous system, so active training and a sports life were practically impossible.

"I've dreamed of a Doberman since I was a child," says Bibikova. "And from an early age, I knew I would train with her and do what I'm doing now. It's something innate in me."

When Zorya was five, another dog appeared in Olga's life – Deika, a French Pointer. It was with her that she first seriously began to engage in cynological sports: she taught obedience, did search and orientation exercises, and prepared for working dog training and tracking competitions.

Olga seemed to have discovered a new world – before this, she had never trained with dogs at such a level, and at first, she couldn't even imagine how many nuances and rules there were in each sport. This was 11 years ago, and it was then that Olga realized that cynology was more than just a hobby for her. This is how the journey began that led her to Ninja, Deika's daughter, with whom she now works in the State Emergency Service.

Volunteer searches in the forests

Ten years ago, Olga worked as a marketer with a regular office schedule. By chance, she read on a forum about a community of volunteers who search for people who have gone missing in the forests – mushroom pickers, tourists, or simply those who left home and did not return. At the same time, they were training dogs for searches.

It was a community of like-minded people who trained dogs and wanted to help search for missing people. "It was then that I took in a stray dog named Klyukva and decided to give it a try – I started going on searches with her," says Olga.

At first, there were three dogs in training, then four, later five, and then the number changed. The team was named "Sarkan" – SAR from Search and Rescue and "kan" from canine, meaning "dog".

They taught the dogs to smell humans, recognize tracks, and navigate complex terrain. The training included both physical exercises and exercises for concentration and obedience: the dogs searched for hidden objects and practiced the "search" command in various conditions. The volunteers learned everything practically "on the fly." At that time, there were very few professional courses in search and rescue dog training, so they read specialized books, watched videos of international training sessions, consulted with experienced dog handlers, and exchanged knowledge among themselves.

Volunteers use a so-called "shuttle" search: the dog runs in a zigzag pattern through the area it is searching, moving away from its owner, and checks the entire territory. If it smells a person in the forest with its nose, it indicates their location by barking. This means the target has been found.

"Dogs search for a person not by their tracks, but by the scent of their belongings, or simply by the person's scent in natural conditions," explains the dog handler. "We don't work in places with many people, like parks. We search in forests, in fields – essentially where there are usually no random passersby. If another person, not the one being searched for, is accidentally encountered, the dog will bark – the owner will call it back, and the search will continue."

Typically, a search operation with volunteers begins when relatives of a missing person contact them. They explain when and where the person was last seen, and under what circumstances – whether they left home, went into the forest, mushroom picking, to work, or simply didn't return in the evening. Volunteers assess whether the situation is suitable for a search with a dog: they check if there is nature nearby (forest, field, suburb), and if it's not a city area with a large number of people. If it's suitable, they take on the case.

First, the number of people who can go out is coordinated, the minimum search area is divided into squares, and tasks are divided between dogs and volunteers. If there is information that the person may have gone in a certain direction (forest, field, cottages), this area becomes a priority.

"There aren't many successes," Olga says. "We search in the forests of the Kyiv region. In the cases we've been involved in, we've found people alive in probably 10% of them, and the chances drop significantly if a lot of time has passed since the disappearance or if the weather was bad."

The search team uses navigation apps that allow them to divide the forest into squares. Upon arrival, they first survey the area: they determine the terrain, forest density, type, and size of the plot. They compare this with the number of people who have arrived. Based on this, they decide how many squares each team member will take on. They work in pairs or threes, sometimes fives or sixes, during the search. Each person searches their own square.

The core of the team consists of about ten permanent male and female members, but local residents and other volunteers often join for each trip. Locals help with navigation in the forest: they suggest where people usually walk, pick mushrooms, and also point out dangerous or impassable areas. In communities where locals are active, up to fifty people may come to the search.

The search can last from a few hours to several days, depending on the size of the area, the number of volunteers, the conditions, and whether there is reason to believe that the missing person is still alive. For example, if open fields or areas with good visibility need to be searched, it may take less time, while a complex forest with dense thickets, ravines, or swampy areas significantly complicates and prolongs the search.

Dogs don't work continuously all day, and this also varies individually: some can actively search for hours, while others need to rest after 30 minutes of work. "Sarkan" has dogs of various breeds. There are Belgian Shepherds, a German Shepherd, a Border Collie, Labradors, Brittanys, as well as mixed-breed dogs and one retriever who is currently on maternity leave. Over the past few years, the team has found several dozen missing people. Currently, Olga and Ninjya join searches less often due to their busy schedules at the State Emergency Service, but the dog handler continues to coordinate "Sarkan".

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Currently, Olga lives with her parents and five dogs in a house near Kyiv. Besides Ninja, there's her mother Deika, two dogs belonging to Olga's parents – a cocker spaniel and a golden retriever, and a dog with a damaged back that volunteers evacuated from Sloviansk in 2022. Previously, the family lived on Beresteiskyi Avenue in the capital. The windows overlooked the highway: it was noisy, with many people. The dogs got used to it, but they are still better off in nature – this was one of the reasons for moving out of the city.

In her free time, Olga and Ninja love to walk in the forest: Ninja runs around for two or three hours until he wants to sleep, and Olga picks mushrooms. The dog handler continues to train Ninja and dreams of going to the world championship for search and rescue dogs to improve her qualifications. And maybe, she'll get another puppy and train it to help people too.