San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department to Host USAR Canine Training Event
Are you looking for training for your search dog in a real USAR environment? Look no further than the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department Search Dog Team's upcoming Urban Search and Rescue K9 training event and fundraiser, Dia de los Perros. The event is scheduled for on October 26th, 2019, at the historic George Air Force Base in Adelanto, California. The USAR training event will provide training opportunities for both live find search dogs and human remains detection K9s. Teams will rotate between 6 stations with multiple search problems each. Stations include a haunted hospital, ruined buildings, and burned-out neighborhoods, plus other unique search and rescue K9 training opportunities. The SBSD Search Dog Team website sums up the training locations perfectly: The Historic George Air Force Base is located on registries of abandoned places, and features multiple office buildings, base housing (both apartments and neighborhoods of houses), barracks, and supporting clinics and a hospital, all in a ruined environment closely approximating an actual disaster scenario. The two-story hospital plus basement is rumored to be haunted and is a treasure trove of hiding places for dog training. Housing structures are both (somewhat) intact or burned and completely ruined, allowing dogs to train in multiple types of scent conditions. The SBSD Search Dog Team provides subjects to hide and human remains source. They'll also coordinate the search problems and hope to provide additional educational stations. Only 30 teams are allowed to participate, although auditor spots are available. The event will run from 8 am to 5 pm with lunch included. Search Dog teams wishing to participate in the first annual Dia de los Perros Search and Rescue K9 training event should contact Julie Purcell via email at jkirkpurcell at sbsar dot org. Include the following information when emailing: Your Name Agency Affiliation Discipline (Live Find or HRD) Contact Email Contact Phone number Contact Mailing Address
Water Rescue Dogs and Water Search Dogs: What’s the Difference?
Search and Rescue Dogs perform incredible feats. Using their nose, they help their human handlers pinpoint the lost and missing, regardless of environment. Most people think of disaster search dogs or wilderness search dogs when thinking of search and rescue dogs, but search dogs also work in water, as do rescue dogs. Many think of "search and rescue" as a single thing, but SAR dogs can be trained for searching, for rescuing, or for both. When it comes to water and aquatic environments, there's a distinct difference between searching and rescuing. In a nutshell, water search dogs sweep lakes, ponds, rivers, and the surrounding terrain for human scent. Most water search dogs serve as human remain detection K9s but some also work the scent of live humans in the water, like divers or free swimmers. In contrast, water rescue dogs help people who are in trouble in the water, like struggling swimmers or boaters who became trapped in a storm. They swim out to those people and via varying means, bring them back to their handler. The handler is usually part of a rescue team. Depending on the environment, the human team members often remain in a helicopter or sturdy boat while the dog performs the rescue. Search Dogs Find Human Scent Water Search Dogs are also known as Water Recovery Dogs or Water Recovery K9s. These specialized search and rescue dogs alert to human scent in the water. Typically, they're trained to alert to the scent of human remains. Water Search Dogs help police find victims of drowning or to locate other bodies in the water. After hurricanes or massive floods, Water Rescue Dogs assist rescue teams with locating those missing as a result of the disaster so their family can get closure. Water Search Dogs often start out as Human Remains Detection Dogs and then they add water to their environmental skill set. Human scent is human scent, but the dog has to learn that it can be under water. Most of these search and rescue dogs work from a boat. Sometimes, for smaller bodies of water, they'll search along the shoreline or under bridges. The same breeds that excel with land-based search and rescue often perform water searches, too. Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, German Shepherd Dogs, and various herding breeds, like Border Collies, regularly cross train for water searches or recovery work. Rescue Dogs Help People in Distress In contrast to Water Search Dogs, Water Rescue
September 11th, 2013: The Lingering Effects
It's been twelve years since America changed forever. While we as a society have embraced and grown with many of those changes, some of the painful effects of 9/11 continue to linger for many.