Four-legged members of the Distinguished Firefighting Corps of Costa Rica and their human handlers will travel to Bolivia later this year to take part in a special training course. The Bolivian Police University and special law enforcement units will train rescue dogs from more than 20 different nations, including Costa Rica, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua and more.

The K-9 officers and their human partners will learn advanced search and rescue techniques for use during emergency response and management operations. The initiative by the Bolivian government is humanitarian, according to independent newspaper Sevilla Press from Spain. While the K-9 officers from Costa Rica serve the Distinguished Firefighting Corps, most of the other K-9 units attending the course are part of military special operations in their respective countries.

The training that our brave K-9 firefighters will receive in Bolivia is known as the Arcon Method. It was developed by Jaime Parejo, an expert in animal behavior from Sevilla, Spain. The method was registered as a work of scientific importance back in 1994, and since then it has been adopted in many countries that use specialized K-9 units. Mr. Parejo has received several academic, scientific, civil, and military awards due to his Arcon Method. He has been called upon to massive disaster recovery operations in many countries numerous times.

The Arcon Method focuses on training dogs and humans to work as rescue teams that can efficiently track survivors in disaster recovery situations, particularly those buried under ruble and debris, or who are in confined spaces that cannot be accessed by humans.