San Marino Dog Names

A well-known individual from San Marino is Aldo Junior Simoncini, a football player who plays for the San Marino National Team as their goalkeeper. Aldo suffered serious injuries in a car crash but worked hard to return to the sport. Our spotlight dog, Aldo, is a determined hard worker, too. He is a Highland Pit Bull Mix who was the first of his breed to be named a Federal Emergency Management Agency Human Remains Detection Canine, after completing training and the exams needed to become certified.

 Months earlier, Aldo was found on the streets of Redlands, where options were limited. Picked up as a stray in June of 2015 by the Redlands Animal Shelter, the puppy, at the time known as “Lightening”, arrived at the shelter with a lot of energy and in need of training. Fortunately, volunteers with Redlands Friends of Shelter Animals began networking efforts to try and find him a forever home. Volunteers, including Nancy Mitchell and Susan Peterson, kept working with him while the search continued. They noticed that Aldo would be very focused when they threw a ball, according to Peterson. The volunteers decided to contact Sheila McKee at Mountain View K9 Training Inc. to see if she would check out the pup. Fortunately, she did and immediately noticed how attentive he was to a toy, the main thing they look for with a working dog.

Mountain View provides training for family pets as well as search-and-rescue and detection dogs. McKee and her assistant trainer, Jennifer Mackamul, agreed they wanted to work with Aldo. According to McKee, “we were looking at his whole personality, because any kind of working dog or search dog is going to be required to travel in a play, bus or military vehicle”.  At a minimum, the women thought, “he would have good training skills” that would help him find a home.  The dog kept progressing; according to McKee, everything they did and asked him to do, "he would do it happily”. Soon, Aldo had found his place with McKee.

To obtain FEMA certification, Aldo had to meet numerous criteria, including having an advanced level of agility, obedience and directional control. Aldo passed his tests with ease and is now an on-call working dog, with the main task of finding the remains of people that died in a disaster in order to help give families closure. At home, Aldo is your typical family dog. According to McKee, “he’s a joy to have around”.