Search & Rescue Dogs

Hi everyone, I appreciate this might not be the right place to find out but I was hoping someone might be able to help.....

I am trying to find out more about training one of my dogs (working cocker) to be a k9 search and rescue dog.

I do agility with my lot and whilst at a show earlier in the year a friends collie got spooked in an unexpected thunder storm and took flight from their caravan. A long story cut short is that there was a people search and rescue dog on site and they did try (we all tried) for 5/6 hours to look for JJ but he was no where to be seen, Fortunately there was a kind moterist that followed JJ down a busy A road for 4 miles the following day before catching him and bringing him home.

As he was in the area and I just feel that if we had a k9 search and resue dog on site that day we may have got him back sooner.

If anyone can give me any more details about training for this It would be much appreciated.

Thanking you in advance

Amz (Wiltshire/Dorset borders)

Hi there,

So is it specifically training your dog to look for other dogs that you are looking at?

Lou

yes, is there such thing!?

Hi Amz,

I was one of the people who went out with my search dog at the show to look for JJ as the organisers called me to see if I could help. I tried to explain that our dogs were trained to search for people and as there were hundreds of people looking for the missing dog all over the woods and in the fields, it would be impossible for my dog to realise that she was actually looking for a dog. Despite this they wanted me to try and knowing how upset the owner was, I could not say "No". My dog Winnie had a fantastic time, finding people all over the place, she had never found so many missing persons and I was running backwards and forwards like a lunatic for hours trying to reward her for finding all these people, through deep mud, from field to field and hedge to hedge! I think if there had been no people in the woods and fields and JJ had been hiding amongst the crops, she would probably have given me an indication that something was there, but not having trained her to find missing dogs, I can only guess as she indicated once when there was an injured deer in a field.
Luckily Andrew got JJ back and all ended well. I am sure dogs could be trained to search for missing dogs. Lou may know whether such dogs exist and have been trained to do this.

Kathrin

I have been asked several time about the possibility of doing it and if it would be posiible.

i dont know of anyone who has and i think it would be near on impossible to train for as how do you go through a trinaing progress with dog smell? Trying to relate it to how we give a dog scent and teach them for human scent or indeed drugs, explosives etc i am not sure how you could do that with dog scent and there is always going to be so many scent pools around of dog smell i think it would be near impossible to do.

Having said that i like an experiment and may play around with Diesel who is not trained for human search and rescue and see what i come up with!

lou wrote:Having said that i like an experiment and may play around with Diesel who is not trained for human search and rescue and see what i come up with!

You know how, when naming children/dogs, you spend ages thinking of cool names and then end up with one which you believe to be unique? Then, inevitably, you find out someone surprisingly close to you has a child/dog already called that?

Following our Trailing training I have tested Woodley to see what he'd do if I lost Maisy. I use 'track Maisy' as a command. Maisy being our other cocker. I don't use any scent item but use the vocal command to 'find Maisy', 'track Maisy' and 'track'. I don't let Woodley see Maisy leave off with George but I know the start point, they walk off and then she is let off the lead to lay her own trail. I have worked an hour old trail knowing the start point and with no human article for George. He has been bang on over 1km+. I haven't tested with other dogs but I'm faily sure he tracks Summer/Bea sometimes rather than Netty when a trail has been laid whilst walking dogs.

Woodley can find Maisy really easily, so I'm sure this is a skill that could be learned by the dog perhaps using trailing training methods.

Jenny x

StuartL wrote:You know how, when naming children/dogs, you spend ages thinking of cool names and then end up with one which you believe to be unique? Then, inevitably, you find out someone surprisingly close to you has a child/dog already called that?

You have named a child Diesel?

roland and meg wrote:

StuartL wrote:You know how, when naming children/dogs, you spend ages thinking of cool names and then end up with one which you believe to be unique? Then, inevitably, you find out someone surprisingly close to you has a child/dog already called that?

You have named a child Diesel?

Close, double the number of legs

We have a new puppy en route

Is it Maisy he is following Jenny or is it George?

I would suggest it may be a combination of both.

that said i do agree that dogs will find there own pack with little problem. Mine all seem to.

Roland- Stop maing the interesting thread silly!
Stuart- Stop stealing my dogs name! There will onyl be one Diesel and thats mine! But whats the puppy?!