Cassia, born 11/19/12, is a German Shorthaired Pointer. Cassia is handled and owned by Jo Huxel.
Cassia and Jo moved from sunny Cape Town, South Africa to Seattle beginning of 2015. Cassia started her training to be a Search Dog as a 8 week old puppy with K9 SARA, South Africa and became fully operational as a Wilderness Search Dog after she passed her certification with under 2 years. On her very first deployment in South Africa Cassia was able to locate the missing person.
Cassia and Jo could gain some experience working on rubble in South Africa, but only started to train on rubble, wood piles and in buildings regularly in June 2015 when they started with NDSD.
When not searching Cassia goes bike-jöring and hiking and true to her breed she loves retrieving on land and in water.
Cassia and Jo passed their first FEMA CE in hot 106°F in California in September 2016.
They re-certified in April 2019 in very rainy Puyallup, WA.
Cassia is also certified for Wilderness/area searches with IPWDA.
To make sure Cassia’s disaster skills can always be utilized locally when needed Cassia certified with a second handler: Lauren. They passed their NSDA disaster LF certification in April 2019. They can now deploy in case Jo is not available.
