ANDREA LUGE

Trainer / France

Andrea is a qualified veterinarian, who went in the nineties from Bavaria to France to pursue her Volleyball and Beachvolleyball career and finally stayed in the Alsace,the region of three frontiers Germany/ Switzerland/ France. In 2004 she changed her Volleyball-jersey against the Red Cross jacket and started to work her Alsatian shepherd « Hope »for search and rescue purposes as an Airscent dog. He was qualified 5 times to seek missing people.

Since 2006 Andrea runs her own veterinarian office for horses, dogs and cats and spend her free time searching missing people for the Red Cross first, now for the order of Malta. In 2015 she finished her studies in acupuncture in France.

Since Mantrailing was considered as the most difficult discipline in search and rescue work, Andrea made her first steps 2016 with her second « Shen » and third dog « Guan ».

The challenge was to combine both disciplines airscenting and mantrailing. After some years, some courses, different schools and trainers, she crossed the path of Tobias Ackerman Gak9 instructor in 2019 during a trainings camp in Germany.

The Gak9 method was the perfect match in combining the philosophies of the two different disciplines.

Absolutely convinced by Jeff Shettler’s way of imprinting and working, Andrea focused on mantrailing only. Tobias Ackermann and Maria Vladimirova sent Andrea across the big ocean to perfectionate her skills with Jeff personally.

She passed the trainer’s course at Edisto island during Mars and April 2022 with the idea to introduce and spread Gak9’s ideas further across Europe and not at least in the German Search and rescue scene.

Right now « Fei » and Andrea are qualified in Germany for the Order of Malta as a mantrailing team and the other two German shepherds « Shao » and « Ji » are ready for the German Mantrailing exam to be confirmed for interventions.

Contact : [email protected] T: 0033 (0) 777 94 93 72