After 13 years serving as an avalanche-rescue dog in Telluride, Lady Bee passed away peacefully at home among family. She belonged to longtime local ski patrollers Kim and Gary Richard and their children, Bell and Matheau. Bee was 14.

Lady Bee of Hemlock Hollow was born one of ten Labrador puppies in Ridgway. She was named after Bee Reichel, longtime local and friend of the Telluride Ski Patrol, and for the street where Lady Bee lived in town.

Kim and Gary have always raised lab puppies as avalanche rescue dogs, choosing female, yellow runts of the litter from smaller, not heavily bred parents.

“A smaller dog enables easier transport and less impact from a vigorous lifestyle of avalanche training and work,” Kim said. “Labs are ideal as they are tirelessly obedient, a known working breed, and they retrieve which translates well into rescue work. They also have an excellent social temperament as they’re exposed to and are ambassadors for a general skiing public.”

Gary raised and trained Telluride’s first avalanche rescue dog – Lady Jane – from 1986-2000. Together Gary and Kim raised and trained Ellie Wonderlick from 2000-2009.

From the beginning Lady Bee was loyal, devoted and always looking to please.

“Bee had all of us as a family to negotiate with, learn from, and perform for,” Kim recounted. “We only had a few months to get her obedience training sound before exposing her to 70-plus patrollers and the vast complexities of a ski area.”

Avalanche rescue dogs ride on lifts, snowmobiles and in helicopters. They are exposed to loud explosives as they train to find a person buried in the snow. Lady Bee completed her first full season working in Telluride before she was a year old.

“Bee was strong, lithe and extremely proficient at every task,” said Kim. “Running, obedience, searching, excellent in a crowd of children or adults or even dogs. She was an incredible example of her profession.”

Bee was best pals with fellow avalanche rescue dog Mona, a black lab two years younger.

“Bee was the friend Mona looked up to,” said Mona’s owner and ski patroller Erik Larsen. “Her mentor when Mona came onto the mountain, who Mona learned the ropes from for how to be an avalanche dog.”

He said that together these two labs brought the Telluride Avalanche Dog program to a new level of professionalism.

“Bee was quiet and led by example,” he added. “She punched the clock every day without complaint, was always on point during rescue drills, always professional.”

In addition to the handful of in-area avalanches that occur every ski season, Bee engaged in several backcountry deployments during her lifetime. Her first deployment was at the age of two for an enormous wet slide in Paradise Bowl near OPUS Hut where rescuers located a 34-year- old male victim from Crested Butte who was wearing a beacon but was found dead on the scene.

Bee’s next deployment was for a slide at Sharkstooth Peak in the La Plata Mountains where a snowmobiler was missing and presumed dead. Bee indicated with a positive alert, the search party dug through the area looking for a body before being evacuated due to darkness and avalanche danger. The body was found the following spring near the spot where Bee alerted.

Bee also assisted with an avalanche in Break Creek several years ago where one rider was caught and one backcountry skier was caught, buried and killed.

In 2018 Bee and Mona volunteered in a summer search for local Tim Cannon who disappeared in the Mount Sneffels wilderness. Cannon’s body was eventually located by helicopter.

Bee’s final and perhaps most significant find was of friend and lifetime local Scott Spencer in 2019. Bee and Gary were flown to base camp above the Matterhorn Nordic Trailhead northeast of Lizard Head Pass where Bee alerted on a scent within a few minutes of searching and successfully located Spencer’s body.

This past Halloween, Kim and Gary introduced a fourth avalanche rescue puppy named SWE (Snow Water Equivalent) into their home to have the opportunity to be mentored by Lady Bee.

“Bee ignored SWE to start, thinking surely this puppy was a passing guest, only to realize SWE was here to stay,” Kim said.

After 13 seasons working in Telluride, Bee was still mentally keen, but physically, she was unable to give any more to her work. So she spent this final season basking in her lifetime achievements, among her family and extended patrol family, living out her days peacefully at home.

While she didn’t suffer, Lady Bee did battle kidney complications that kept her from her otherwise spry and peppy nature. Her time ran out on April 1.

“We miss everything about her and the routines we created in the presence of one another,” Kim said. “SWE wouldn’t eat from Bee’s bowl and just sat, waiting. She roamed the house upon returning from work, looking. But she’ll do what Bee would want and be the best avalanche dog she can because SWE was in the company of greatness for five precious months.”

The training never ceases, Kim said, and the ideal avalanche rescue dog always wants to “search, find, and be joyful.”