Four of us decided to celebrate the new year with a weekend of training. Katie Danzig, Karen Pardini, and Sarah Sherburne spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday, January 2nd and 3rd, with me at the Family Foundation School, along with all of our dogs: Abby and Raven, Ripley, Scout, Katya and Suki. Oh, and don’t forget Lily, our beagle. She’s not part of the team but she keeps the other, bigger dogs in line. We also watched Buddy Meyer’s dog, Max, for the weekend. Altogether that’s eight dogs, four handlers and one husband, mine–Sid Parham.
Truth be told, much of the weekend went to dog walking and dog obedience. With three German shepherds, two Dobermans, and Mallanios there were lots of little ranking issues to deal with; but nothing a five-minute down stay couldn’t handle.
Karen rewards Suki after she makes a building find
Abby and Raven squabbled just like the two sisters they are. They also have a wonderful time playing with each other. But there were a few times when their exuberance got out of hand so we cooled things down with a few time-outs. I don’t think there was a single second of actual canine aggression. But SAR dog handlers need to respect the sensibilities of the average person. Civilians are put off by dogs growling at each other–even when it’s perfectly normal doggy communication.
Lily’s little and it’s a good thing. If she weighs much of the shepherds she’d be the alpha bitch. As it was we caught her trying to dominate the Mallanios, Max. I can’t figure out any G-Rated way to explain what she was doing to him.
The new year brought our first serious winter weather. Snow on the ground. Snow falling. Bitterly cold temperatures with a significant wind chill. Large area search problems were out of the question. So we decided to focus on snow burial, HRD, and a little navigation.
Matt dressed for the weather
Two students from the Family Foundation School, Jens and Matt, prepared the sites for the snow burial problems and acted as subjects. They had a ball playing in the snow. Our two youngest dogs Abby and Raven, had no difficulty finding them.
Jens after a hard day in the snow
We spent the rest of the weekend indoors as much as possible using an unfinished building to train in human remains detection.
Katie and Karen took lots of pictures. Here’s a great sequence of Abby doing her first Snow burial.
Wednesday, August 26th 2009 we responded to Knight’s Eddy, NY to help locate drowning victim HIN HON SIU, age 36, of Jamaica, New York. He had drowned on Sunday, August 23rd. He had been rafting with three friends near the Staircase Rapids when his raft overturned and he did not resurface. Rain has swollen the river on the 23rd making the rapids more dangerous than usual and hampering rescue efforts for the next two days. U.S. Parks Department Officers called me late Tuesday morning and we made arrangements for the next day.
Wednesday was the first day that the river was calm enough to search effectively with divers. The dogs were tasked to search just below the point last seen. If they could pinpoint an area, they could reduce the amount of river bottom that divers needed to search. Three teams from Eagle Valley were deployed: Findling and Stryder, Pardini and Suki, Warren and Quax. A fourth team was deployed from Ramapo Search and Rescue Dogs. All four teams completed their assignments and reported the dogs were alerting in a single area just below the point last seen (PLS). Divers were sent to search that area.
Meanwhile, I put together a second round of assignments. The trickiest part of searching the river is getting the dogs and boats to the places that need to be searched. I enlisted the help of a Pennsylvania Environmental Conservation Officer whose name I can’t remember who has lived his entire life in the area and knew every road, trail and boat landing.
Local Guide and EVDOGS Handler Liz Dalton
Amir Findling came prepared with a complete set of maps for the river from the point where the boat capsized down to Port Jervis. We both thought it likely that the body had already resurfaced and traveled beyond where the main search effort was focused. After sinking to the bottom for a period of time, drowning victims resurface. When they resurface depends upon several factors including the water temperature. The warmer the water, the sooner the victim surfaces. We were looking at a three day interval in August. If the body hadn’t become stuck, wedged in between rocks or debris, it very likely had already surfaced.
We planned to search at least 6 miles from the point last seen. This was both our experience with fast moving water, and was also indicated in Bob Koester’s Lost Person Behavior. 95% of drowning victims on rivers were located within 8 miles of the pls. If I had had more dogs, I would have extended the search area out the full 8 miles. We had three other dogs teams that hadn’t been deployed yet, me and Ripley, Katie Danzig and Scout, and Dick Szczesh and K-9 Buddy from Amigo Search and Rescue Dogs. The three teams that had been out in the morning were also ready for a second assignment. The plan was to search high probability areas–places where a floating body might get stuck on shore or in strainers along the river bank.
Amir came prepared with arial photos of the river
Just as we were getting ready to deploy the second round, a kayaking found him washed up on shore. He was found where we planned to deploy one of our teams–5.6 mile from the PLS, near an access point my guide had identified. I was glad the victim had been found. Diving is always dangerous. Having recently completed a course in lost person behavior, I was also gratified that we’d come up with a good plan.
Delaware River from PLS to where subject was found
What about the dogs who alerted earlier near the point last seen? Divers recovered a shoe positively identified as belonging to the victim exactly where the Ramapo dog indicated. Most likely the dogs were alerting on the shoe and possibly other items belonging to the subject. It is also likely they were alerting on the residual scent left by victim who had been in that spot for at least a day, probably two. Its likely he was under the water Monday and most of Tuesday. Once he had surfaced the journey downstream would not have taken long. His final location was out in the open, clearly visible to any river traffic. I had been on the shore since early that morning. There was no recreational traffic early in the morning. The first rafters started passing our location at Knights Eddy just an hour or so before he was located. The victim was probably seen by the very first kyacker that went past him that day.
Scout the Bluetick with Suki the Doberman, taking it easy after training
Well it’s finally here: test day for Scout is at the end of April. Did I ever think this day would come? Of course I did. It’s just taken three years, with a lot of bumps in the road along the way.
A learning curve (as Rita likes to call it) has happened, and it’s all falling into place. Scout is on point and very happy to do what he does. I do believe he even has a smile on his face while he’s searching.
He is an absolutely loyal and forgiving dog who has been by my side from the beginning of this journey — and what a journey it has been for both of us.
What ever happens on test day — which hopefully means we pass — I will be forever grateful to this wonderful animal; this dog who came into my life for a reason. This dog who is so loyal and loving. Floppy ears and all.
Among people with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, wandering away from the facility or home is a frequent occurrence. According to Robert J. Koester, there are about 31,000 incidents each year where resources are deployed, but this figure represents only a fraction of all cases. Many are resolved by caregivers without outside support. And that is the problem. Because people wander frequently, family members and caregivers often postpone calling for assistance — sometimes with tragic results.
Data from Bob Koester’s long-term study of searches in the state of Virginia clearly show that early involvement of Search and Rescue personnel is crucial to a good outcome. The single biggest difference between those who are found alive and those who are found dead is the length of time until a search and rescue provider was called. The mean elapsed time from “last seen” to contact with a SAR agency for all survivors is 12 hours. The mean elapsed time for those found dead is 50 hours.
These data were presented to the administrative team responsible for emergency planning at Catskill Regional Medical Center (CRMC) by Eagle Valley Search Dogs (EVSD) president, Rita Argiros on April 6, 2009. Sarah Sherburne, Karen Pardini and K-9 Suki filled out the EVSD’s team. Among those attending were Richard Martinkovick who is in charge of Emergency Management for Sullivan County and Jared Sharpiro from the NYS Department of Health. The meeting was organized by Rolland Bojo, CRMC Emergency Manager and his assistant Maggie Cronin. Other administrators from CRMC who attended were all involved in risk management, nursing and emergency services were Leslie Gartland, Eileen Trickey, Ann Korlink, Barbara Gentile and Kelly Ketcham.
K-9 Suki
The initial plan for the day called for an outside demonstration. Rain got in the way and we moved the demonstration indoors. Our dogs also search buildings. Karen Pardini and K-9 Suki did a phenomenal demonstration. CRMC employee, Maggie Cronin hid in an office on a corridor of about a dozen empty rooms. Working independently, Suki systematically cleared each room and located the subject without difficulty, returning to Karen to give her trained indication in spite of Maggie holding, petting and praising her.
About a dozen hospital staff, state and county administrators observed the demonstration and were impressed by Suki’s ability to change gears. When Suki first arrived at the hospital, Maggie Cronin took her on a tour of the oncology ward where she behaved like a great therapy dog. Then, during Argiros’ presentation, Suki sat soaking up affection from willing admirers. Then, as soon as Karen put her to work, her demeanor changed radically and she paid no attention at all to the people who had been petting her moments ago. She just did her job.
CRMC’s emergency response plan for an elopement includes calling EVSD immediately. “We would rather be en-route and hear that the subject has been found than be called too late.” Argiros said. Key members of EVSD are all within an hour’s drive of CRMC and we left with floorplans to all the buildings and outlying areas. These will be built into a preplan that EVSD officers will keep ready—just in case.
Our training on Saturday was an great example of one of Kyle Warren’s favorite expressions: The 7 P’s, Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. We had ample communication before training and Kyle put together a solid plan that he emailed me Friday morning. Friday night, Sarah, Liz and I laid trails for the morning. Kyle and I mapped out areas for each of the dogs to work, sent coordinates to most everyone’s GPS and printed maps. On Saturday we were ready to rock and roll.
Training milestones: Buddy and Max worked their first larger area problem, moving out of the puppy class and into serious preparation for certification. Scout and Katie are ready to start working larger HRD problems. Until now Katie has been focused on motivation, indication and control.
As good as it was, next training will be better. One of our subjects (a student from The Family Foundation School) waited too long to tell us that she was not adequately dressed. She was uncomfortably cold when it was her turn to hide for K-9 Ripley. Fortunately my search area was long and skinny, the wind was favorable and we solved the problem quickly.
Snow was bad enough that those team members who could spent the night here. That was a lucky development. Saturday night Amir Findling told me part of the story of his trip to Australia several years ago where he was part of a team that found a man missing almost 40 days in the Australian outback. Can’t wait to get the complete story.
Sunday morning Karen, Katie, Sarah, K-9 Suki, K-9 Scout, and K-9 Abby helped me and my two dogs at the school. Twice a year I hold try-outs for the dog training program. I had planned to do it by myself. Working together saved time. I got great feedback and I got to see my teammates in another capacity. Karen is an experienced dance instructor and she was immediately able to take control of the group. I love my team. About 20 students tried out. This looks like a promising bunch. There were no real clunkers. Let’s see which ones we freeze next winter.
Word is starting to spread about Eagle Valley Search dogs and we are growing. Our guest from last training submitted an application and we had three more guests this time.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3db3c05f-69b6-4d20-858a-b786dae74c48)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=13d7af99-443f-42af-aea1-98d5d5261067)
