An Introduction to K-9 SAR

            Canine Search and Rescue is more a way of life than anything else.  It requires a strange blend of passion and commitment.  You have to be willing to get out of bed at a moments notice and trudge off into the cold-- exhausted, carrying a heavy pack, and often searching in an area where the missing person is not to be found.  You also have to be willing to train endlessly. A mission ready SAR dog takes countless hours to train, and is ALWAYS practicing to stay sharp.  Good handlers train several times a week for the life of their dog.  You have to be willing to purchase and maintain excellent outdoor gear, and have a career that is forgiving if you disappear for days at a time.  You also have to be prepared to deal with sadness and grief.  Many searches never end, and too many end in tragedy.  Disaster searches may mean finding many more dead than alive.

If you seriously would like to get involved, and are prepared to make the necessary commitments, you should start by getting involved with non-canine SAR.  You will need to take a state certification course from your county's Emergency Service Office.  You will need to complete basic First Aid and CPR.   You will need to learn excellent navigational skills.  It is very easy to follow your dog all day into the woods and then find yourself lost and part of the problem.  You need to be able to take care of yourself. You will have to learn survival skills, helicopter skills, radio skills, etc.

While you are getting basic SAR skills, you should begin working on your dog's basic skills as well.  Initially this will mean obedience and socialization.  The SAR dog must always be a good ambassador.  He must heel nicely at your side.  He must sit, down and stay reliably in any situation.  He must always come when called, even amidst distractions.  Enroll in a good basic obedience class and master all of the skills.  Then develop those skills in more and more challenging environments.

Socialize your dog.  The SAR dog must be steady regardless of surrounding sights and sounds.  Take them to every imaginable place and keeping them safely on leash get them comfortable around loud noises and bright lights.  Get them used to being around other dogs and never being aggressive.  Get them used to walking on strange surfaces and in small spaces. Get them used to ignoring other animals when they are working.  A SAR dog that chases animals in the woods is not very useful for Wilderness SAR!

Once you have done the above, you are ready to start thinking about actually training your dog to search.  At this point, I would suggest that you find someone to train with.  Feel free to get in touch with Pacific Canine Corps and we can suggest someone in your area to train with.  You do not want to teach bad habits, and you are going to need experienced people to hide for you.

Initial search training is fairly simple.  You go to an area where your dog can safely be off leash and you have someone else hold your dog while you run away and duck behind an object.  The person then lets go and your dog comes running.  When they find you, make a huge deal out of it and reward them greatly with food, toys, play, whatever really rewards them.  You do this many times over the course of many days until your dog understands the game.   Once they get it, you begin to GRADUALLY make the game more difficult.  You let them see you duck behind the object, but then you move and they are forced to use their sense of smell to find you. 

Once your dog is reliably finding you, you go back to the beginning and repeat the entire process with someone else hiding and you holding the leash.  Once they are consistently finding the other person, pat yourself on the back because you have a SAR dog!  Everything from here on out is polishing, but there is a lot to polish!

You have to teach your dog a refind: they have to know how to tell you when they have really found someone and then show you where they are.  You have to teach them to scent discriminate-- to check an article for a particular scent and then only search for that scent.  You have to teach them to clear an area-- to find every single person in a particular area.  You have to teach them to show you any evidence or scented articles they find when searching.  You have to teach them how to find people under water or under snow.  You have to teach them that it is not ok to false alert-- to act like they are searching when they are really just meandering.  You have to learn to read their alerts-- the subtle signs that will tell you what they smell.  You will have to develop their scenting ability by setting up different problems so they learn how to read scent in different wind types.

Most people will find that K9 SAR is not for them.  It is less glamour and more sweat.  It is often frustrating and sometimes saddening.  It is hard and expensive and often thankless, and only a very few handler & dog teams will ever be really good.  But if you are moved to SAR, you will find nothing more rewarding than the late night page and the trip out into the unknown to work with your beloved canine to find someone and save them.  Everything else will be forgotten the first time you look into someone's eyes that would otherwise not be going home.

If you genuinely would like to pursue SAR, please do not hesitate to get in touch.  We would be more than happy to discuss SAR with you, to help evaluate your dog, to get together and train, or to suggest someone with whom you could train.  We can be reached via email or by telephone at (503) 787-3144.