Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs help find those lost in wilderness
Even in this day of cell phones and GPS units, Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs, Inc. gets between 15 and 20 calls a year to help find lost people. The non-profit organization trains dogs and their handlers to find people in all sorts of weather and terrain. From avalanches to forests to water areas where dogs can help divers narrow the search area, dogs are an important tool for law enforcement in locating people.
“Dogs aren’t perfect, but they can do the work of ten to 20 ground pounders,” says Jan Holley, a dog handler for Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs, Inc. “[We] have to use their attributes to train them.”
Among the skills a dog can be trained in:
“Dogs have an incredible sense of smell,” says Jan. “They smell like we see.”
Ideal dogs have the stamina to run eight to ten hours a day, love people, are non-aggressive with other dogs, and have strong hunt (looking for someone even when they can’t see them), prey (chases someone who runs) and play drives.
It takes between 600 and 1000 hours to get a dog search ready. There are between 20 and 25 teams along the Wasatch Front in varying stages of training.
This article was originally published at examiner.com. Links updated March 2017.
“Dogs aren’t perfect, but they can do the work of ten to 20 ground pounders,” says Jan Holley, a dog handler for Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs, Inc. “[We] have to use their attributes to train them.”
Among the skills a dog can be trained in:
- Trailing and tracking – involves searching for a particular scent
- Area – involves searching for anyone in the surroundings
- Water searches – used for drowning victims to narrow the search parameters for divers
- Human Remains Detection (HRD)
“Dogs have an incredible sense of smell,” says Jan. “They smell like we see.”
Ideal dogs have the stamina to run eight to ten hours a day, love people, are non-aggressive with other dogs, and have strong hunt (looking for someone even when they can’t see them), prey (chases someone who runs) and play drives.
It takes between 600 and 1000 hours to get a dog search ready. There are between 20 and 25 teams along the Wasatch Front in varying stages of training.
This article was originally published at examiner.com. Links updated March 2017.