Search and Rescue Dogs Save Lives
Mar 3rd, 2008 by Teri
The training of a search and rescue dog must include obedience training as they must perform tasks that require strict controls on their behavior.
These dogs are there to do a job and handlers must be able to direct the dog to complete the tasks of heel, jog at the heal, sit and down at the heel.
They must also be trained to sit at a distance of 10 meters, and recall from a distance of 10 meters. Obedience training of search and rescue dogs is vitally important and these dogs grow up with the mission of saving lives.
Dogs as we know are well armed by nature to track scents with their receptor cells being 17 times larger that us, and each receptor has numerous cilia bonds to odor molecules. At the Auburn University Institute for Biological Detection Systems the director of research states that a dog’s ability to scene is 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than humans. This attribute makes a dog successful trackers of people, drugs and bombs. As soldiers are boots on the ground, dogs are nose to the ground and can track people under snow avalanches which are common in the Rockies. As police dogs they can find evidence and find missing people, the search and rescue dog follows the scent of the missing in parks, and snowy mountains.
Searching Dogs: A dog is trained to search by air scenting to locate a person’s whereabouts. This differs during tracking where the dog’s head is low and to the ground following a path of scent particles left by the missing person in their foot prints.
A change in wind direction can carry a scent to the dog by the wind itself or carry it away. The handler must be aware of wind direction to be leading to the scent of where the person was last seen or the direction they were heading towards. Usually a personal effect usually clothing if available is given to the dog which it knows is the subject of the search. Search and rescue dogs are highly trained to find their subject quickly despite what the effects of wind, rain, snow and humidity can do to a trace of odor. Trained search dogs are also trained to ignore the scent of everyone else at the scene except for that left by the missing person.
Search and rescue dogs are capable of finding bodies in the water and drowning victims. They search avalanches for buried victims and search for trapped victims in disaster areas left by tornadoes and hurricanes.
Certification of a Search and Rescue Dog:
All Search and rescue dogs are certified and have met the standards of SARDOC which is Search and Rescue Dogs of Colorado in that state. Most often these dogs have been trained for two years and undergo a difficult tests. One test is that a trailing dog must be able to follow a 24 hour old trail which is contaminated with other scents to throw it off track. In air testing there are three separate tests involved which consists of a 1 square mile test, a night search and a search for multiple victims at the same time.
Another important fact is that rescue dogs can rule out areas of land searches quickly and actually this hastens the victim being found sooner. Many victims owe their lives to trained search dogs including the elderly. In Washington
Searchers had spent nearly 19 hours looking for the woman so they called Marcia and her dog Coyote. The woman was found 10 minutes after Coyote was given an article of her clothing. She was lying down in bushes a quarter mile from the residence and was still alive. Written by: Teri Salvador
Tags: Search and rescue dogs save lives, search and rescue dogs, rescue dogs, Trained search dogs, trailing dogs, SARDOC, Certification of a search and rescue dog, Searching dogs, obedience training.
