by Dr. Iain
Corness
Tom Coghlan’s dogs have taken him from England to
Australia, Mozambique and Japan, in fact to 10 countries all over the
world. Tom Coghlan is not blind, however, Tom Coghlan is a Search &
Rescue dog trainer.
Tom was “Born in England of Irish parents,” who
wanted a new life away from the troubles of Ireland, so they migrated to
the troubles of Manchester. He described himself as a poor student, only
interested in football - but when he was nine years old, a significant
event happened which was to change his life forever. He was involved in a
horrific car accident that claimed the life of his mother and was to make
his father a semi-invalid, in and out of hospital for many years. Tom? He
saw the accident coming and jumped out of the car. “Now I look upon life
as a bonus. It gave me a different attitude to life at a very early
age.”
He was basically raised by his elder brother (10 years
older) and through his own devices. It should then come as no shock to
find that young Tom finished school when he was 14 years old, going to
work on a building site. He needed to earn money! At that stage he had no
real career path, though he was offered trials with the Sheffield
Wednesday football club, but his father said, “Get yourself a proper
job,” and that was the end of that.
After three years on the building sites he began to
think again about a career and being a policeman became an option. His
grandfather had been one and he remembered listening to his stories of
life in the Police Force. There was only one problem - Tom was tall
enough, but he had not reached the appropriate educational standards, so
he went back to school and after this, applied for the Manchester Police
and was accepted.
For the first 3 months as a probationer it was a
completely different world, but he adapted. In fact he adapted so well
that he was to spend the next twenty seven and a half years in the Police
Force. It was obviously the correct career choice!
After two years as a probationer he was seconded to the
Vice Squad to work under cover in plain clothes, but two years was as much
as he could take. “I stayed in it until I felt that it was unhealthy.
Dealing with that side of life for two years was enough for me.”
By this stage he was already pursuing a real career
path - and that was to involve dogs. He had always had a great love for
animals, and dogs in particular, and when a vacancy came up in the Dog
Section he went for it, against his immediate superior’s advice, and got
the job.
Despite the misgivings of the superior, Tom Coghlan
spent the next twenty three and a half years in the Dog Section and loved
it. He trained hundreds of dogs, beginning with basic drug detection
pooches, to bomb detection, to finding buried people, both alive and dead.
I asked Tom just how successful were the dogs and he was very positive
about the role of the dog with respect to bomb detection. “We found six
devices scattered around the Manchester area, and we had to put 100%
confidence in the dogs that we trained, but you could never be complacent.
We had no protection either, and we lost no dogs.” Tom also put aside
the popular idea that drug detection dogs are made into ‘junkies’ so
that they seek out their next ‘fix’ into the totally fanciful basket.
“The dog is looking for the odour and nothing else,” he said. It was
also obvious talking to Tom that he was certainly a 100% ‘dog man’.
I asked why someone as dedicated as he was to the
police dog section would ever leave and was shocked to find that he was
invalided out of the force following a severe injury to his shoulder
sustained on a drug raid, when he was attacked. “I was medically
discharged. I had to try and think what I could do. All I knew was dog
training.”
The simple answer to his problem was to continue dog
training, but as a civilian. But first he had to convince the British Home
Office that he was a suitable person to do this. The twenty three and a
half years with the Police Force Dog Section were a good start and he
began training civilian dogs in search and rescue. This was also a
successful programme and he became the first civilian to use drug
detection dogs in a high school in the UK.
His search and rescue trained dogs were to take him to
South America and Turkey where they were successful in locating two buried
children, but still alive, plus another nine buried after floods,
earthquakes and other natural disasters in other countries.
His dogs also brought him to the notice of the Japan
Rescue Association who invited him to address search and rescue
organizations in Japan. It was on one of these seminars that he met up
with the Bangkok Fire and Rescue Association who invited him to Thailand
for two weeks in 1998. He fell in love with this country and gave himself
the goal of setting up a search and rescue dog team in the Kingdom.
He is now here full-time and working on his goal. “I
can use my experience to help Thai people with search and rescue.” He
firmly believes that life affords everyone many opportunities, but many
people do not take them. I asked if that applied to him too and he
laughed, saying, “I might have been another David Beckham. Who knows?”
However, he is happy with his lot in life and to be here, but you can
be assured that wherever Tom Coghlan is, there will be a dog with him too.
Welcome to the kennels of Pattaya, Tom!
