From the category archives:

Sarah Sherburne

New Year’s Training

by Rita Argiros

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

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

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

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.

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Delaware River Recovery Effort

by Rita Argiros

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

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

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

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.

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What happens when they wander: Demonstrating a building search for risk and safety managers

by Rita Argiros

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.

suki-is-all-ears

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.

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Bring on the rain… 11 hour old trail 1.1 miles long in High Falls, NY

by kwarren

(From Kyle’s archives) Tonight, we ran a trail that was set up at 7:30 am by Rita and Sarah. Rita was my spotter and Sarah was the subject. We had a typical Eagle Valley Search Dogs training day ….. all day long. During the time that the trail was aging, more than 2 inches of rain had fallen and we were having wind gusts up to 19mph in the afternoon and evening. We had worked many dog teams on area search problems all around the first 300 yards of the trail for contamination.

It was 8:00 pm, Rita and I were looking outside into the darkening sky, where the rain continues to fall with force. She asked me,”well, what do you think?” I replied,”I have no idea if there is still scent out there but let’s find out.” So we were all game for the challenge!

Maya’s scent article was a Pepsi bottle. She took it with great focus and as far as Maya was concerned it could have been a beautiful spring morning. She was on the move and on the trail! She trailed her heart out… it felt like the never-ending trail as the rain beat down on us all. But it didn’t beat our spirit… we couldn’t believe that the dog was on the trail and raring to go.

Hiking in the rain
Image by razzumitos via Flickr
The trail had started in Karen’s back yard, went down into the woods towards the Coxing Kill Creek, crossing the creek, up the opposite hillside a few hundred feet, back across the creek, traversing up the mountainside, popping out onto Clove Valley Rd. and continuing down that for a good 1/3 mile then back into the woods to end the trail with Sarah about 100 feet off the road. 58 minutes later, Maya and I had traveled 1.88 miles in the dark, the wind and the rain to locate our subject and never drifted more than 100 yards off trail. My mind was filled with a few words: amazed, proud, and thrilled!
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Team Looks for Runaway Teens

by Rita Argiros

Hancock, NY January 17, 2009 Two students ran from The Family Foundation School at 10AM on what turned out to be the second coldest day of the year. The high for the day was predicted to be no more than 17 degrees and the thermometer on my front porch hadn’t cracked zero when I got the call at 10:05.  By the time we got them that afternoon. One would need hospitalization for frostbite.

Rita and Ripley

Rita and Ripley

At FFS we have a protocol that rank’s search responses for three levels of urgency.  This received the most urgent classification. Even so, I didn’t plunge into the woods.  The protocol is to let a little bit of distance get between the tracker and the students and to try to apprehend them through attraction or containment. Most of the time, left to their own devices, the 40 or so students who run from the school each year move north west from the school and follow state route 97 into town.  If we follow them too closely, we risk forcing them away from the road and into the woods.  That was the last thing I wanted to do on a day like this.

My backer this time was my son, Alex Carroll.  A former U.S. soldier he has always loved the outdoors. He is a regular part of the school’s emergency response team and I sometimes think the only reason he doesn’t join a SAR team is because his mom is into it. I lent him my extra set of Kathoolas and we were off.

For the first 15 minutes or so, I was hopeful.  The boys’ tracks were heading for the highway.

I had my Garmin Astro, a pair of GPS’s for Ripley and me that lets me keep track of her.  Watching the GPS, I knew that something was wrong. Ripley turned due south, away from the road and into the woods.

Garmin Astro

On that course in this weather the students were in real danger.  We radioed in, suggesting that base contact the closest members of Eagle Valley, especially Kyle and Maya. I knew that Ripley could not keep up her current pace long enough to get the job done

Sometimes runaways stop at Tomar Hunting club and try to break in. These two went right past.  We followed.  About 1/2 mile past the club and the last vehicle access for several miles.  I decided it was time to stop.  Neither of the boys was appropriately dressed. One was severely under dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a medium weight jacket.  We needed to keep this search going.

Three other FFS employees took over: my sister, Ann Janauer, her husband, Gerald and her daughter, Kate.

My truck and the replacement team arrived at the hunting club at the same time.   Ripley dove into the truck, glad for the rest, and we briefed our replacements. I also lent them some gear.  The NY State Police showed up and made what was to become the most common comment of the day. “Who runs away on the coldest day of the year?”  (See story on my blog)

I drove back to  the school.  While Alex got some food and water, I checked in with Kyle. His ETA was 3:30.  Karen was unavailable.  Sarah made it over from Fishs Eddy. We picked her up and went out again, keeping track of my sister’s team via radio, we delivered lunch and water to one of the guys on containment, and patrolled Lordville road.

The tracking team reported that the students altered course from due south to south west. Our best guess, based upon our knowledge of the terrain features was that the students were headed for Lordville.   A short while after we got there, the tracking team popped out of the woods and onto the road.

Runaway route. Distance approx 9.5 miles

Runaway route. Distance approx 9.5 miles

Time for Ripley’s second act, this time working on-lead on a hard surface.

None of the people involved in this search are trained man-trackers.  The roads in Lordville were fairly clean and dry. I doubt we could have visually tracked the boys.  We needed Ripley’s help to point us in the right direction.  She took us to Warren road.  It wasn’t as well plowed and there was just enough snow slime on the road that we probably could have tracked them visually.  Instead we used what we were seeing to confirm Ripley’s work.  I noticed the same boot print I had seen in the morning and we noticed a sneaker print that was very clear.  Boots was walking on the left and Sneaker on the right.  Sarah and Alex followed the tracks.  I followed Ripley.  About a mile down the road, the trail went toward the river.

Our support vehicle had taken the other team back to base and at that moment we were out of radio contact with everyone.  I decided to leave Sarah on Warren road to wait for the truck and report. Alex, Ripley and I pushed on. It was a short distance to the railroad tracks that led into Hancock.  We had to go down a very steep bank and I must have looked foolish holding on to the trailing lead in one hand, trying to do a controlled crash into trees and branches that I could use to keep myself from falling. [click to continue…]

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