Cheza’s Journey from Rescue to SAR, Trick Dog

This article originally appeared in the award-winning AKC Family Dog magazine. Subscribe now!

While driving on a back road, Laura Jackson suddenly decided to take a shortcut home. She turned onto a Texas highway and saw a car on the side of the road. Sitting beside it was a woman holding a cardboard box.

Two puppies popped their heads out of the box, and Jackson hit the brakes.

“I quickly got out of my car to ask if I could have the pups—and the mother dog. The woman said the momma had been hit by a car, common for loose dogs in the country,” Jackson says. “She explained she’d given away the other pups. Free dogs have no value, so I was grateful to rescue the remaining two.”

The pups came home with Jackson, who runs a “one-woman rescue group” and has saved many dogs. The twosome—a brother and sister—appeared to be cattle dog mixes.

“They were loaded with fleas and parasites. Fleas and worms cause anemia, so the pups were docile at first,” Jackson says. “They began to perk up that night, and both seemed very grateful for a good meal and soft bed.”

The pups were attentive and intelligent. Following medical care and lots of TLC, Jackson drafted a plea for good homes and posted the pups on Craigslist with their photos.

One person who took notice was Heidi Armstrong. Her friend emailed her the posting because Heidi and her husband, Dan, lost their beloved dog, Bella, earlier that year.

“Before Bella took her last breath, I asked her to send us a very special puppy. As always, Bella delivered,” Armstrong says. “When I saw the female pup’s photo in the ad, I saw a deeply present, wise, clever, joyful, and intelligent puppy I somehow already knew.”

The Armstrongs met the girl pup at Jackson’s place on June 24, 2020. “She fetched cheerfully and with more coordination than I’d expect in a puppy that young. She explored and took in the world with confidence and curiosity,” Armstrong says.

They brought her home two days later, without a name. That came two weeks later after a visit to a neighbor.

“I noticed him calling her Cheza (‘ch’ like in church, with a short ‘e’). Thinking it sounded beautiful, I asked him what it meant. ‘Play in Swahili,’ he said. Her name suits her perfectly.”

From the start, Cheza lived up to what Armstrong felt when she first saw her picture.

“Cheza skipped the puppy chaos phase. She was trustworthy from the beginning and, unbelievably, never had an accident in the house. … Cheza made it unmistakably clear that she was extraordinary.”

Cheza Chooses

Armstrong’s former dog, Bella, was a decorated therapy dog and excelled in the sports of agility and rally. While Cheza was athletic and quick to learn, Armstrong did not want to push her toward any specific sport or activity. She watched the dog closely to see what interested her.

“When we rescued Cheza, I was very intentional not to burden her with expectations of what I wanted to do with her,” Armstrong says. “I did not label her or think about her as a search and rescue prospect or a future agility star or an award-winning trick dog.”

Her house became part playground, part jungle gym for the young dog. Features included a balance ball, milk jugs, platforms, and various surfaces. “I rewarded effort and curiosity, and she started creating her own challenges—and occasionally redecorating my living room.”

Tricks became a natural extension of Cheza’s athletic stunts. A favorite is the foot stall, in which Armstrong lies on her back with her legs extended while Cheza balances on top of her feet.

Soon, Cheza had a repertoire of dozens of tricks, including some the young dog created herself.

“She taught herself to interlock two of her ring toys and parade around with them to get my attention. When I didn’t respond quickly enough one day, she came back with three ring toys linked together.”

Most trick dogs work for treats, but Cheza again proved how different she was by often turning up her nose at cookies.

“To this day, praise is her favorite reward. She’ll turn down food or toys, but she will absolutely work for a genuine reaction of surprise or delight. She especially loves an audience of clapping friends.”

Getting to Work

Armstrong had long had an interest in search and rescue (SAR) work. The Austin, Texas, resident is a retired professional mountain bike racer and lifelong endurance athlete. Her love of the outdoors gave her an appreciation for the volunteers who help those who are injured or lost in wilderness areas.

She believed Cheza’s intelligence, trainability, and athleticism could make for an outstanding SAR dog, even though she was a medium-sized rescue and not a traditional working breed popular for SAR work.

“Cheza didn’t get the memo that she’s not a shepherd or a Lab,” Armstrong says. “She simply does the job.”

Becoming a SAR team requires training for both handler and dog. Armstrong completed extensive training on FEMA’s Incident Command System, wilderness first aid, rescue techniques, fitness standards, and work with law enforcement, followed by a written test.

“At the same time, Cheza and I built our partnership,” she says. “We worked on engagement, environmental exposure, obedience, and body awareness so we could function as a true team under pressure.”

Dog trainer and SAR handler Ken Bain has helped with Cheza’s progress since she was a puppy. “I taught Heidi how to do operant conditioning using a clicker shortly after she got Cheza. They both took to it quickly, which created a wonderful foundation for all of Cheza’s training,” Bain says.

“Later, when we imprinted Cheza on cadaver scent, she accelerated quickly because she knew how to learn, and she loved working. Therefore, she was a very quick start.”

Her size—standing just 17 inches tall—might make some doubt her strength, but Bain says smaller dogs can be an asset in the field.

“If the dog gets hurt, smaller is easier to extract. They are lighter on their feet in rubble piles. I run a 30-pound Border Collie, and when working the Kerrville floods, I had to pull my dog out of trouble on three occasions, and it was easily done with one hand lifting him by his harness,” Bain says. “A large dog would have been more difficult and stressful. So, I had zero hesitation to work with a Cheza-sized dog.”

Some dogs find the odor of human remains overwhelming, but Cheza was immediately attracted to it. It seemed Cheza had selected her calling—as a human remains–detection dog.

Training progressed to complex scent problems, both buried and elevated; large search areas; and distractions like sirens, helicopters, heavy equipment, and extreme weather.

Cheza and Armstrong were ready to start work. But they could never imagine what awaited them. They were deployed after the catastrophic July 4, 2025, flooding on the Guadalupe River in Texas. A 30-foot wall of water engulfed the Guadalupe River Valley in the Texas Hill Country, killing more than 130 people, including the 25 children of Camp Mystic.

“We were deployed into arguably the most challenging search and rescue conditions—Texas summer heat and humidity, piles of broken glass, shrapnel, three-story piles of brush, and all the lives buried in the path of a furious river. We were working in a war zone, and the scent picture was incredibly complex.

“To Cheza, the smell of human remains was everywhere—in the water, in the air, in the earth. To watch her think and screen out the ‘background noise’ to locate the strongest odor source leaves me in awe to this day.”

Cheza’s early work in her home gym gave her the foundation to face the many physical challenges. Armstrong and Cheza had to navigate over and through brush as well as work under helicopters and near large equipment.

“Human remains detection search and rescue work is demanding, often heartbreaking work, but it’s exactly where Cheza shines,” Armstrong says.

Top Trickster

Not long after their work finding flood victims ended, an opportunity arrived to tell the story through the tricks that started Cheza’s athletic career. 

The 2025 AKC Trick Dog Competition was open to all dogs that have earned the top-level Trick Dog title of Elite Performer. Owners submit videos of a trick routine that tells a story with a script and uses multiple props. 

“I knew I wanted our routine to honor our experience, including our work, the grief, and the resilience of thousands of Texans, but I felt completely overwhelmed and didn’t know where to begin,” Armstrong says. 

“I just starting writing, and my words naturally fell into a poem. That poem became my solace … (a) place to feel, process, and grieve. I worked on it every day for a couple of hours over the course of several weeks.”

The next steps were matching Cheza’s tricks to the poem and finding a location to film.

“The oldest theater in Austin donated their space to us as a gift for our search and rescue work,” Armstrong says. “I incorporated an elaborate tree that I built a staircase into. I hung a Texas flag off the tree and integrated a theme of water.”

The final product, “When the River Rose,” was one of more than 200 entries submitted for the contest, and only three would be selected as the best—one champion and two semifinalists. “When the River Rose” received a semifinalist honor when the results were announced.

“Our performance is a tribute to the people we searched for, the Texans who showed up, and the work that has stayed with me long after our deployment ended.”

Cheza and Armstrong also compete in agility and rally and enjoy long hikes for conditioning, but search and rescue is their job and it takes priority.

“Search and rescue is not a hobby. It’s rigorous for both the handler and the K-9. It’s also the most meaningful work I’ve done,” Armstrong says. “Cheza works because she loves it. You can watch the switch flip in her brain and her tail begin to wag the moment she hears her search command.”