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SAR Dog FAQ Search and Rescue Dogs are used throughout the world to help find missing persons in a variety of man made and natural disasters. They are also used to help police find the location of Human Remains on a possible crime scene. There are hundreds of teams throughout the United States that train for almost all areas of Search and Rescue; Wilderness, Disaster, Avalanche, Human Remains and Cadaver. Their are subsets within almost all of these categories also. Example: Water is an advanced form of Cadaver training. Tracking is the dog following the exact path taken by the missing person, foot step by footstep. Trailing is the dog following the general direction of the missing person, they may or may not be on track depending what the scent is doing. Scent can be affected by wind, water, temperature, and humidity to name a few. Air Scent is the dog following the scent being blown on the wind away from the victim. Skin cells fall off the human body at a rate of about 40,000 per minute. Once the cells leave the body some fall to the ground, while others float in the air on the wind currents. Either way, once off the body small micro organisms feed on the dead skin cells forming a gas vapor, we call human scent. Area Search is done by air scent teams to quickly find anyone in a given area. If a dog is trained in scent discrimination they can find a single person out of many in the same area.
Disaster Search is done following man made or natural disasters. The dogs can search tornado debris and complete or partially collapsed buildings. Cadaver Search is the search for recently deceased victims in many different scenarios. This could include drowning, crime scene, disaster after live victims have been found etc. Human Remains Detection (HRD) is a special category of cadaver search, and requires a higher level of training from the dog and handler. HRD detection is mainly for the location of old bones at a possible crime scene. Avalanche is a type of disaster dog that is specifically trained to locate persons under several feet of snow and debris. Scent Discrimination is done by air scent, tracking and trailing dogs using a scent article. They are trained to look for only that persons scent. ALERT can either be natural untrained or trained. The natural/untrained alert is considered to be very accurate, few handlers in training are experienced enough to recognize it. But once the handler learns their dogs behavior it is a solid alert. The trained alert is an easily added step to the training regime. The dog returns to the handler and does a jump, down or bark alert to name a few. There is pros and cons to using both these types of alerts. Do what works for you and your dog.
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Blessed are those that give of themselves! Copyright © 2008 Pathfinder Search and Rescue Inc. All rights reserved.
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