When were Wilma and Murphy first asked to assist in rescue work?

When Wilma Melville retired from her job as a gym teacher, she decided that it was high time to work on her dream to own a highly trained canine. Together with her black Labrador, Murphy, the two of them underwent training and learned to work together as a canine search team. That training proved to be invaluable when in April 1995, a bomb was detonated in the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and Wilma and Murphy were called upon to assist in search and rescue efforts.

At that time, there were only 15 certified search dog and handler teams in the whole of the United States. That one event resulted in 168 casualties, and it became clear to Wilma that more work had to be done to strengthen America’s disaster response. She set up the non-profit Search Dog Foundation, and later, America’s first and only National Training Center for disaster search dogs.

Dogs recruited by the National Training Center are rescued from animal shelters around the country. They are often considered hard to adopt because of their high energy and laser-like focus on a task, but these qualities make them perfect for search and rescue missions where the dogs are essentially playing difficult and extensive games of hide and seek. After a period of training, the dogs are then paired with the right handlers, with whom they will continue to live, train and work.

Today, Wilma’s National Training Center has helped to train 71 search teams in the United States for deployment across the nation, and this number is set to grow.

Questions:

1. What is the topic of the passage?

2. When were Wilma and Murphy first asked to assist in rescue work?

3. Which of the following is not mentioned in the passage?

4. Where did the dogs in the National Training Center come from?