{"id":814,"date":"2026-10-30T19:59:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=814"},"modified":"2026-10-30T19:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:59:01","slug":"parks-canada-ends-banff-avalanche-dog-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=814","title":{"rendered":"CANADA JUST FIRED ITS LAST AVALANCHE DOG JOB IN BANFF! | 55 years of noses in the snow, axed in a budget cut, and thousands of people are howling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BAD MOVE, OTTAWA! Parks Canada is ending its search-and-rescue dog programme in Banff National Park, cutting the sole dog handler role as part of public service cuts, and the backlash is fierce, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cwdd8q8e9e9yo\">BBC<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n<p>For <strong>55 years<\/strong>, rescue dogs worked the Canadian Rockies, sniffing out skiers and hikers buried by avalanches and finding kids who wandered away from campsites. Banff welcomes more than <strong>four million<\/strong> visitors a year.<\/p>\n<p>The last dog on the job, a German Shepherd named <strong>Leroy<\/strong>, retired in August. In seven years he helped track <strong>156<\/strong> people, found <strong>57<\/strong> who were lost, and helped solve two murders. A new dog was trained and ready before Parks Canada gave notice last week that the programme was going, part of C$145m in budget cuts, local paper the Rocky Mountain Outlook reported.<\/p>\n<p>Parks Canada calls it a &#8220;difficult decision&#8221; and says &#8220;search and rescue operations will continue to be delivered&#8221; through other means. More than <strong>5,000<\/strong> people have signed a petition to bring it back, started by local Conservative MP William Stevenson: &#8220;How could they possibly make such a bad choice in where to cut?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Retired handler Scott Ward, 73, who spent 17 years in the role, put it best, quoting the old warden who trained him: &#8220;You can make an armpit smell like a lilac bush and you can put a man on the moon, but nothing can replace the nose of the avalanche dog.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cwdd8q8e9e9yo\">BBC News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>55 years of noses in the snow, axed in a budget cut, and thousands of people are howling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-avalanche-dogs-banff-1030.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}