Raven at the 2009 Spring Comfed
Just got back from the Spring training event for the New York State Federation of Search and Rescue Teams in Rochester hosted by Massasagua Search and Rescue. Thirty people attended, most were dog handlers. I have been going to events like this for almost six years now and I finally feel like I know the drill. I thought I would pass along some of what I have learned for newer handlers.
- If you are in training, you need to be psychologically prepared for the fact that you and your dog will probably make mistakes in front of everyone. It’s OK. Everyone will understand. They were there once. Your young dog or puppy is probably going to misbehave. Why not? The seminar environment is like a training on steroids. At the typical team training, your dog already knows all the other dogs and handlers. Here at the seminar there is lots of new dogs to meet, new smells to investigate. You are also more distracted than when on your home turf. Same with your dog.
- Try to get there early. That way you can let your dog acclimate to the new environment. That will make it easier for her to focus when it counts.
- Do whatever it takes, every day, to find time to let your dog be a dog. Usually that will be at the start or the end of a very long day. You might not feel like doing it but don’t blow it off. At most seminars my dogs spend more time in the creates than usual.
- Watch as many other dogs and their handlers as you can. The best way to learn is to observe other K9 teams working and to hear what the instructor says to them. I have been to seminars where our trucks and crates were parked far from the training site and we had to keep our dogs with us, on lead, all day. I much prefer being able to crate my dog when she is not working. That way, I can watch other dogs.
- Have someone else watch and listen when its your turn. You will feel a lot of pressure working with a new instructor being watched by other people, many of them strangers. When you are pressured like that, it becomes difficult to listen and remember. If you have a SAR buddy with you, ask her to pay attention to the instructor’s comments.
- Do not run home and change everything about your training based on a weekend seminar. Soak up information, but be skeptical too. There’s more than one way to train a SAR dog. Consistency matters. If your way isn’t working, by all means, try something different. But if you are making progress–however slowly–then think twice before you try the latest and the greatest. Changing methods mid-stream is very hard on a dog, especially a young dog.
- Avoid gossip. Never say anything bad about anyone else at a seminar even if its true. Search and Rescue is a very small community. Whatever you say will get out.
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Training to be a SAR K9 team is a group effort. You can’t learn it from a book or from watching a DVD. You need mentoring from experienced handlers and from professional trainers. You also need your friends, to be subjects, to lay trails, to set up human remains problems. It can’t be done alone.
K-9 Slidel after a great trail
So what do you do if you are the only K9 handler on your SAR team? In New York State anyway, one answer could be–Join the Federation.
April 18 and 19, 2009 The New York State Federation of Search and Rescue Teams held its first workshop for Trailing Dog Handlers and their evaluators (an evaluator is a dog handler from another discipline that partners with a trailing dog team to set up trails, observe and critique, provide moral support and perform a series of tests which prepare the trailing dog team for the certification tests that you need to be operational)
Kyle Warren and Lew Decker–the two operational trailing dog handlers in the federation– provided instruction to two groups of trainees. Pat Thompson from Amigo Search and Rescue is currently the Federation’s only trailing dog tester. She spent both Saturday and Sunday with Lew Decker’s group, as did I. We planned trails, set out subjects, were subjects ourselves and had a great time watching good dogs work.
There were 7 trailing dog teams in training from across the state, in various stages of training. Liz Dalton and her lovely little red bone, Slidel from our team, were among the most advanced of the trainees. Liz had a lot of good advice for novice handler Fred Haley and his promising young golden retriever, Compass, as they ran their first, ever blind trail.
Several area search dog handlers also attended. NYSFEDSAR’s goal is to develop at least one qualified trailing dog evaluator for have at least one for each SAR team with a trailing dog. On Eagle Valley, both Karen Pardini and I support Kyle and Maya. While I attended the weekend as the K-9 coordinator for NYSFEDSAR, Karen attended as Kyle’s training partner. (In gratitude, Kyle set her out as a subject on Saturday and left her in the woods for 3.5 hours before running her trail. But that’s another story ) Not to worry, we managed to squeeze out some time at the end of the day to work our own dogs. Suki and Ripley both did a few simple human remains problems.
On Saturday evening, Kyle gave a wonderful introduction for handlers and evaluators alike. All were great examples of what scent can do. You can read some of the content from that presentation on Kyle’s blog.
It was the behind the scenes work that really made the weekend work. Lower Adirondack Search and Rescue (LASAR) hosted the event. Karen Major and Karen Jagoda, captain and training officer respectively, did a wonderful job getting us a place to meet, and feeding us. They also corraled several LASAR members to serve as subjects. K-9 SAR training lives or dies on the quality and quantity of its training subjects.
Bottom line–K-9 Search and Rescue training is a group effort. Don’t know where to start? Check out the National Search Dog Alliance.
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.
A few months ago Roger Fox, the chairman of The New York State Federation of Search and Rescue Teams the was contacted by Field and Stream. The magazine was looking for someone to represent K-9 search and rescue. The someone had to be male and between 25 and 40 who looked like their image of wilderness search and rescue. Kyle was reluctant so team member, Jana Martin, took matters into her own hands, and submitted a few pics. And that was that.
- February 2009 issue Kyle, Maya and Quax
Not only the cover but Quax, (father of Raven and Abby) is on the table of contents and Eagle Valley Search Dogs gets a mention on page 8 along with a great picture of Kyle playing ball with Quax and Maya.
- Quax on the Table of Contents page
With Kyle and Quax at the Sullivan County Chief's Academy
When someone you know is missing, you will most likely call 911. They will typically call the local fire department or local law enforcement. But neither is specifically trained to deal with the lost person incident. Nor should they be: compared to fires and crime, a lost person incident is blessedly uncommon. Volunteer organizations like ours fill the gap.
Our team is committed to working with the fire and law enforcement community, but the connections aren’t automatic. They take time and effort to develop. One way we do that is by holding demonstrations and seminars. Last April, Kyle and I presented at the Sullivan County 2008 Chief’s Academy, part of the Sullivan County Fire Department.
Our presentation emphasized that a delay in deploying K-9s decreases your chances of finding the victim alive. We stressed the point using statistics developed by Bob Koester (a globally recognized authority on lost person behavior): According to him, the chances of survival for a lost Alzheimer’s patient are virtually 100% when trained search and rescue organizations are contacted within the first 12 hours. Those odds decline to just 50% when SAR teams aren’t contacted until the 3rd day. As Jack Halchack, Sullivan County’s Deputy Fire Coordinator said, “It is sad but true that the statistics that you presented were what I have experienced in the field. With your team’s help, I hope we can put a bump in those numbers by calling in the ‘dogs’ right away.”
As a result of our presentation we were added to the 911 resource list for Sullivan County — and were deployed on two searches in the months following.
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