Our Very Own Search & Rescue Day!

10/11/2014

Last month Salo and I enjoyed a Search & Rescue Taster Day with Kathrin Tasker who is not only an Agility Queen (infamous in the South East for her successful agility classes Millbrook Agility Dogs) but who also owns two fully qualified Search & Rescue dogs. It was a super day blessed with perfect sunny autumn weather - pictured below Salo posing for a photo after finding Kathrin the Misper (missing person) who had been hiding in the woods on the log and Salo being trained to approach and touch a Misper, initially we used dummies (photo Debbie Palmer).

It was so much fun that I thought it would be good to organise my own, so a date was put in the diary for Janine with Stig and Impi (both TabanyaRuu Lappies) and Mary with Ilo and Tykky to join me with Salo and Sisko to do some training in my garden.

Although Janine had also done the taster day with Stig we thought it best to start again at the beginning for the benefit of the dogs who hadn't done it before, beginning with the 'pleased to meet you' exercise. This involved one dog at a time being called to each of us, given a treat and a stroke and then being recalled back to its handler for another treat - you can imagine how much a Lappy hates this exercise seeing as they dislike both treats and affection ;-)

Ilo not enjoying herself at all!

We then progressed to training the dogs to approach and touch a Misper lying on the ground.

In the absence of a dummy, we had to make do with Janine ha ha ha! This exercise is also called 'The horizontal face wash!'.

Then we let the dog watch the Misper run off and hide before releasing the dog to find them.

Here's Impi watching Mary the Misper

And then finally each dog had to find the Misper over a longer distance by following their nose, initially using ground scent and then air scenting. Each of the dogs did really well and clearly enjoyed themselves.

Off goes Stiggy in search of his Misper

We then broke for a spot of lunch and scrummy cake made by Janine followed by a lovely walk for all the dogs through our woods and a romp in the field. It was lovely to watch Stig and Salo running loose together, they are agility mates and meet every Monday evening at Merrist Wood. You can see them in the video below - Salo is in the distance in a silver jacket trying his luck at scenting deer .......

It was the perfect way to spend a Saturday in November :-)