South Carolina Search & Rescue Dog Association

09/03/2024

A nice long weekend of K9 SAR training at a team workshop with a great instructor. No eye candy photos of dogs -- only the views we enjoyed at dawn.

We are blessed.

08/03/2024

Over the past two years our team has intensified our interest in scent movement. Often upon entering a training search area a handler will set off a smoke bomb and allow the colored smoke to drift through the area. Many of our subjects will move into position, sit down, take their packs off, and promptly set off a bomb and watch the smoke. At the close of many training exercises after a K9 team has found the subject we will sit down, the happy proud dog with his or her toy, and the rest of us will watch the color, again, of another smoke bomb, and marvel over how the wind and scent conditions -- some extremely subtle -- have changed over the course of two to three hours, or more, depending on how long the subject has established a scent pool.

Sometimes, these checks offer us explanations for K9 behavior. We begin to understand why a dog suddenly gained interest or offered a change of behavior a quarter of a mile away, or suddenly shifted down hill or up ridge or into a draw before veering into a find of a subject. We can watch -- as we did recently -- a haze of smoke move and settle in a certain area and understand why a dog turned suddenly towards a subject.

But truth to tell -- the movement of scent can still be a great mystery, one that we will work a lifetime to understand. At a recent certification test earlier this year in the Spring, the team member who placed the subject up a narrow draw that cut into a ridge set off a smoke bomb early in the morning deep in the shade, where the sun had not touched a portion of the ridge -- and watched unhappily as the scent moved upward and behind the subject -- something that typically would not happen.

Much later, in broad daylight and in sunny conditions, an area search dog caught the subject's scent from **well below** while trotting down a trail, crossed a stream, entered the very narrow draw, and moved upward to the subject. Clearly the scent had reversed directions and flooded downhill.

Over time we have added knowledge that has added further complexity. For instance, if a subject arrives early one morning and takes up her position "mid-ridge" -- perhaps halfway down the ridge, and the sun is warming the ridge, will the scent rise, as it is warmed?

It depends. Is she on the east side of the ridge? Or is she on the west side? Because on the west side of a ridge in the morning, the scent will take much longer to warm than on the east side of a ridge. And on the west side of a ridge in the late afternoon it will take longer, typically, for the scent to begin moving downward -- unless there's water downhill or unless . . .

You get the picture.

[By the way, the dog caught the subject's scent from below, much later in the morning.]

No matter how much we train and prepare and work, the reality for all of us is that when we enter the outdoors and work a dog, we walk into a mystery. It is a place of awe and wonder and curiosity and humility.

Those are good characteristics for any effort in life.

07/28/2024

Teammates are slogging through dog training in another long hot summer. It's the Hard Yards of K9 SAR training that arrives every June and goes through August here in South Carolina.

Last week, I slogged through a pretty rough and dirty and unfun run. The humidity was a thick blanket and I was soaked through. There were at least 30 cobwebs that I broke through on the trails, and each downed cobweb stuck to my face and hair. The surface was slick because of recent rain. Anything green or clay covered was slippery, so I frequently had to run on the leaves beside the trail.

Because of the heavy cloud cover I misjudged the light. So I had to pick my way down the mountain in mostly dark conditions.

I grew concerned about my K9 companion as well -- he was hot and I waited for him to finish each water source before I moved on. I have had to watch him carefully this summer.

I finished the run a full six minutes later than usual.

Would it have been better for me to wait to take that run? Till it was cooler, less slippery, less humid, less cobwebby?

Should we try to do things in less-than-ideal conditions?

If we're going to run slower . . . if our dogs are not going to be able to catch scent as well . . . if we have to narrow our search patterns to find a training subject . . . if we're going to *struggle* on our trainings . . .

Would it be better to wait to train for better conditions?

There's nothing like a fine, crisp, breezy day with temps in the 60s for training dogs!

But the hard yards of K9 SAR training in the summer yield wonderful fruit.

-- They help handlers read smaller signals from their dogs. In the summer, the slightest head pop *might* be the only sign you get of interest or scent engagement in an area. They might be the only cue you receive to move into a tighter pattern or focus into a smaller section.

-- The dogs learn even in the summer. They learn to take what scent they can find -- which is often more limited than in other seasons -- and move into it. They become more conditioned to working in hot or humid conditions (though care should be taken to train them in stage, near water sources, with plenty of breaks and other wise heat management).

-- Every single experience or context you provide your K9 partner adds to their database of training instinct memories. Every rep -- even if it's a "failed" rep -- adds to their ability for the future.

-- Both handler and dog will become stronger. Summer training requires so much from both and going through it makes us better conditioned, more patient, more stubborn, more willing to experience discomfort. Those characteristics are typically helpful with K9 SAR in any season.

-- We train for the *next* rep. We train for the *next* training. We train for the *next* callout. It's a process, more than an end point or an outcome.

And every single handler gets reminded of this time and time again.

We don't reach perfection.

We get better.

That's what we pursue in training, no matter the season.

04/11/2024

Some of our readers might be interested in some of the behind-the-scenes photos and comments from Team Dock's training and North American Police Work Dog Association certification in West Virginia under Roy Lopez, NAPWDA master trainer. Mr. Lopez is a retired canine handler with the U.S. Border Patrol and former Navy Seal. He was the Border Patrol's first certified trailing canine handler, a founding member of the agency's Search, Trauma and Rescue K9 program, and a graduate of the agency's SAR Canine Instructor school.

Three dogs were training and certifying at a military base called Camp Dawson in an area that included an abandoned industrial site and that also had about 100 acres around it.

Dock and Marion stayed at a hotel across the street from a children's hospital. On Day One they woke up to 30 degrees and a light snow on the ground.

The other area search dog was a yellow lab and her area search problem was a 70 acre unknown with Marion as the subject. The dog did great and you could really see how much she loves the game. Other than that problem the three ran building and rubble for the cadaver dog that was testing, K9 Belle -- a nine-year-old Belgian Malinois and a real sweetheart. They also buried cadaver for the next day or possibly even the day after. All three dogs also completed the obedience phase that day.

After some extended ball time with K9 Dock, Team Dock headed back to the hotel.

Day Two was a bit warmer at a balmy 42 degrees. K9 Dock passed his area search test on Day Two and Marion completed the navigation test. The area search test was an approximately 50 acre area with strong winds coming from the southwest. The subject ended up being in the Northwest corner so Team Dock had to go all the way to the edge of the area for K9 Dock to catch scent as it was mainly blowing away from the search area.

Once he hit the scent he moved in and gave a great alert refind.

K9 Bel worked buried, vehicle, and wilderness areas, and Dock and Marion did some training on a 30' long leash which is an important strategy to use when K9 safety is a priority, such as at the edge of a road or cliff.

Day Three was a "play day." A huge thank you to cadaver K9 handler Beth France, who organized the workshop/certification and took care of so many logistics details including scheduling our training area and very kindly included Team Dock.

04/02/2024

At a recent SAR event for our team one of our teammates showed off the start of a full sleeve tattoo honoring his wonderful trailing dog, Labrador Re*****on. Ultimately the tattoo will be a trail leading up to a waterfall with Re*****on gazing downward.

We miss Re*****on. I mentioned that while I was walking the woods recently I was remembering the last time Re*****on worked me as a subject. It was a long trail ending atop a ridge on a warm summer day.

We love you K9 Re*****on and will always remember you!

03/27/2024

Our team has so much to be thankful for. We are very thankful for this national certification with North American Police Work Dog Association, for the tremendous field expertise of Roy Lopez, Team Dock's Master Trainer/Tester for the certification, and for GSA Business Report mentioning our news.

We are also thankful for Marion Tisdale's hard work, and for a three-year-old clever and industrious border collie named Dock.

From the article: “We are so proud of Marion’s achievements over the years,” said Mitch Henderson, President of SCSARDA. “Area search is one of three K9 search disciplines that we pursue as a team and involves searching wilderness areas in systematic sweeps while the K9 is off-leash. Marion is a very accomplished handler in area search, achieving NAPWDA certification with two very different K9s, and he is a tremendous asset to the team. Whether they are pursuing trailing, human remains detection, or area search with their K9s, we encourage all of our K9 teams to pursue national certification with NAPWDA.”

“NAPWDA’s experienced Master Trainers offer our K9 teams an experienced, objective assessment and guidance. We are very grateful to Roy Lopez, a retired canine handler with the U.S. Border Patrol and former Navy Seal, for his expertise during Marion’s NAPWDA certification. Mr. Lopez was the Border Patrol’s first certified trailing canine handler, a founding member of the agency’s Search, Trauma and Rescue K9 program, and a graduate of the agency’s SAR Canine Instructor school. To have somebody with his credibility and years in the field assess one of our K9 teams is a privilege.”

https://gsabusiness.com/k9-sar-team-with-south-carolina-search-rescue-dog-association-achieves-national-certification/

Listen to this article Upstate, South Carolina – Team Dock, a K9 SAR team with the South Carolina Search & Rescue Dog Association (SCSARDA), a non-profit, all-volunteer professional search and rescue team dedicated to finding missing people with highly trained search dogs, has attained a national ...

03/24/2024

Oh the treasures we find on K9 SAR trainings. On callouts we are not able to take photos -- we have to focus on our dogs, navigation, the search strategy, and staying safe -- and we have frequently seen sights, artifacts, and creatures of interest in the wilderness. At trainings our discoveries can sometimes be photographed and carried back to others!

At our most recent team training, we were training in the woods -- quite far back behind a homestead that began in the 1790s. We've been privileged to receive special permission to train at the site, where two houses still stand, well preserved.

After K9 Faramir found a subject near a nice creek bed we sat around in the woods next to the creek and threw the ball for him and rested. It was a beautiful little area -- two small slopes and the stream bed. And if you threw the ball downward, Faramir got to both race after the ball AND soak in the stream. Win win for him!

As we finished the play time, and got up to head back through the woods to the main site where our vehicles were parked we noticed a hole in the ground and took a closer look.

It was a filled in old well. For some reason it was a magical find. There was nothing around to indicate its existence -- it was just "there." I loved the look of the brick and thought people might enjoy seeing it.

We have noticed as we roamed those woods a few possible home sites with daffodils and some remnants of foundations. Perhaps this well served some of those sites.

03/24/2024

This year, SCSARDA teammates have been active in some outside training and education activities. Several weeks ago, K9 Dock and teammates Marion and Brandon traveled to a joint training with an emergency management agency that engages in a wide variety of callouts, from high water and swift water rescue to traditional wilderness SAR. The event was held deep in a national forest.

Much of our navigation in the Upstate deals with peaks, valleys, ridges, and draws -- and that has both benefits and drawbacks. But in the joint exercise location, the area was much flatter and without the obvious points that we have in mountainous areas. It was a great opportunity to work on wilderness navigation in a flat landscape without many obvious landmarks.

K9 Dock's exercises conducted on Saturday were a triumph -- it's getting harder and harder to trick Dock.

Photos are of the walk back to base after Dock found a subject, Dock chillaxin in his crate, and a fire back at the cabin Saturday night.

02/05/2024

Team SCSARDA experienced our first night training of the year yesterday. Night trainings are important because successful K9 call-outs often occur at night. The scent is generally livelier, the dogs are eager, time waits for no man when a person is missing, and we are able to avoid, in the summer, the sometimes dangerous heat for our dogs. So it's important that our dogs and their handlers get used to the exciting conditions at night and learn to focus on the search.

It was a good training. The things that always leap out on night training for me are:

🌕 The herds of deer, grazing in the late evening -- they stand like statues sometimes and watch us walk by.

🌕 Placing a subject -- this time down in a draw in the dark woods. Glancing up as I prepared to leave I saw the beautiful stars and moon above me -- the night was clear and the sky was gleaming with sentinels.

🌕 Walking out into the field with my flashlight off and staring into the woods -- and eventually seeing just the twinkling lights of returning searchers as they flitted through the woods, on the return from a search, and watching them enter the field. There's nothing more warming then seeing those lights glowing deep in the woods.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
-- from The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien

Morten Lauridsen's music inexorably extends its reach into your soul, and leaves you a better person for it. Enjoy this performance by Vox Humana, www.voxhum...

01/20/2024

Team SCSARDA sure does know how to pick the training days.

😑

01/07/2024

🚩SCSARDA 2024 Membership Schedule & Process🚩

Do you know somebody who lives in Upstate South Carolina who loves the outdoors, dogs, and serving others through searches for missing persons? If so I hope you'll share this post with them.

Our training schedule for the year includes 24 team trainings, plus four information sessions for prospects interested in learning more about membership on team SCSARDA. Attending an information session is the first step in joining the team.

📅 Mark your calendars for one of these provisional dates for our information class (contingent on schedule/attendance/callout status), led by one of our team officers. ***To be added to the attendance list for further information and location/time of the class, please email your contact information and interest to [email protected].***

February 19
May 20
August 5
October 7

The class lasts about 1.5 to two hours.

We value members without dogs as well -- those who are not committed to working a dog in SAR are incredibly useful team members and help with flanking, navigating, and many other activities that we all share on the team.

Membership on the team is a significant commitment of time and energy. If you are overloaded on other volunteer/service commitments or have a very intense, time-intensive job, K9 SAR may not be right for you at this time. But if you are interested in pursuing K9 SAR volunteer service as one of your primary off-work activities, and live in or near the Upstate of South Carolina we welcome your interest.

The membership process allows prospective members to discern if the team is the right place for them to serve, and also allows the team to get to know a prospective member. (If you have a dog you are interested in training, we ask that you not bring your dog to team trainings until the membership process is completed and the dog has been evaluated as a K9 SAR candidate.) The process involves:

📍 Initial Exploration -- includes the initial info class and an invitation to one of the four team trainings that allow visitors to see what team trainings are like and determine if they want to continue further in the process.

📍 Further Investigation -- includes taking some online SAR classes, an FBI background check, and if you have decided you are still interested in pursuing membership, a submitted application -- after completion of this phase you are invited to attend ALL of the team's trainings.

📍 Deepening Engagement -- includes attending a multi-day SAR course, achieving CPR and first aid certifications, and more learning. During this phase as you attend team trainings, we also are glad to plan private individual trainings led by teammates to help with training for your dog.

01/06/2024

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky . . .
Ring out the old, ring in the new . . . "

As we ended the old year -- in the pouring rain -- so we began the new year with the first team training of the year -- in the pouring rain, only colder.

Highlight of the day among a number of training reps -- the team training manager for the day arrived early and put herself out as a subject. The area was a very large field filled with high rushes, small knolls, little copses, backed up by a good sized woodland, for a total of 40 acres. Marion the handler pessimistically declared that in the cold and rain and considering the area, it could take hours to find the subject. (Rule of thumb -- the more uncomfortable a handler or subject may be in the conditions, the likelier it is that the search will take longer than it should.)

After a cook time of about an hour for the subject, handler Marion and flanker Brandon determined that there was a slight breeze and scent was moving northwards. They started the search with K9 Dock working the north perimeter of the area, traveling eastward, and -- true to their theory about scent, K9 Dock caught scent on that northern perimeter and left the border to travel into the field where he arrived at a small copse and knoll of pine, found the subject, and traveled back to Marion to alert, doing so twice before both handler and flanker arrived at the subject. Total search time was about seven minutes, contradicting our rule of thumb about uncomfortable conditions.

K9 Dock enjoyed an excellent portion of Smithfield ham as his reward.

12/31/2023

Our last team training of the year was conducted in a pouring rain and our attitude is well-represented by this slogan.

We will work call-outs in almost any weather except lightning overhead, and so we train in almost any weather as well.

Happy New Year to all of our friends, supporters, volunteers, and emergency management and law enforcement agencies!

12/10/2023

K9 Faramir worked his first 20-acre unknown recently and it was quite an experience watching him work. He is still . . . er . . . "eager but unpolished" so to speak. He found the subject very swiftly but then had to figure out what on earth to do after that -- and much of that consisted of his zooming wildly around the ridge, returning to the handler, then zooming back to the subject -- without alerting. Integrating his alert-refind into the search process is what we are working on now. Faramir has a complete alert-refind (find, return to handler, hit handler on chest, return to subject) but being able to remember that he needs to do that after the excitement of a search process that is longer than 60 seconds is a steady progression. Ultimately we will want a dog to alert after many hours of hard searching -- and we'll get there.

After some shaping during the exercise, K9 Faramir did indeed realize that he needed to alert the handler (a jump on the handler, hitting the chest with his front paws) -- and he was amply rewarded.

Here are a few shots of Faramir running -- and running -- and running -- taken by the flanker.

My, is his energy off the charts.

10/24/2023

Our hearts are broken at the death of K9 Maya who served on our team until 2021 in area search. Her handler, Marion Tisdale, has written her tribute below. We are grieving with you, Marion.

We will always love you Maya.

*******
Maya Tisdale Nov 2011 – October 23 2023

After a tough battle with Cancer we made the tough decision yesterday to let Maya go.

Maya came to our family in Feb of 2012. We picked her out from the Spartanburg Humane Society as she was a rescue from the pound. She fit in perfectly with our family and we soon discovered how smart she was. My wife and daughters grew to love her deeply and Maya could find any of those three in the blink of an eye.

In the beginning she loved playing hide and seek with my daughters but at that time I knew nothing about K9 SAR. Later that year I met Sarah Hey who is a K9 SAR handler for South Carolina Search & Rescue Dog Association. Sarah encouraged me to volunteer and learn more about K9 SAR. Looking back, we were so fortunate to meet Sarah in the beginning as she had a rescue dog as well and they had gone on to become Nationally Certified in Area Search. She understood the challenges of training a K9 that was not as high drive as some other breeds. Sarah was an incredible teacher and gave us so much time and encouragement especially when we were struggling and frustrated.

Maya was the perfect first dog as she had a great natural hunt drive and quickly developed a “love of the game”. Maya was patient and forgiving and somehow overcame all of my mixed messages, poorly timed rewards, bad energy and a whole other litany of handler mistakes. We hung in there and slowly improved thanks to the advice and guidance from some of our Team’s senior handlers. Mitch Henderson, my teammate, was there from the beginning and spent countless hours training with us and sharing his expertise. Nancy Hess Jocoy and Maria Pellegrino were very seasoned handlers who helped me develop my own sense of SAR training philosophies. Having a Team that was generous with their knowledge was the key to Maya and I finally becoming deployable and achieving National Area search certification through North American Police Work Dog Association. I want to Thank my family and all of my Teammates and volunteers who gave so much so that we could go on this journey together.

Maya and I attended 4 Canine Search and Recovery, Inc. conferences and these were all incredible learning experiences. We had great instructors and classmates and spending a week training and learning with Maya are cherished memories. As she got older Maya and I spent a lot of time in the woods running negatives and I soon discovered that my time with her was very therapeutic. We could communicate without talking and developed a deep bond and sense of what each other was thinking. Solving training problems together as a Team is what K9 area search is all about and after many years we became that kind of confident Team. She was a very resilient dog and overcame 2 ACL surgeries and a copperhead bite. She participated in dozens of searches and was able to work efficiently until the age of 10.

In these last few months, I have come to realize how important her identity as a working SAR dog was to her. As she declined from the cancer and lost energy. Her interest in food rewards or toy rewards disappeared but there was always one last command that would get her up and moving. “Load up” I would say and she would head to the truck ready for one more ride and walk in the woods. I will miss our time in the woods together. Rest in Peace my pretty girl.

10/16/2023

Late last week K9 Dock and his handler, Marion Tisdale of Spartanburg, SC, returned from a week away at the annual Canine Search and Recovery, Inc. (CSAR) conference, which was conducted in Jackson, Ohio. CSAR events typically offer beginning, intermediate, and advanced training opportunities in Trailing, Air Scent, Land HRD, and Water HRD. As a side note, developing and producing such an event is extraordinarily time-and volunteer-intensive, as you can imagine. Setting up problem scenarios for K9 teams, having enough subjects for hides, setting out hides (in the case of HRD), instructors, transport, meals, lodging, getting private property permissions -- it's an extraordinary effort by CSAR to produce an event that provides substantive and intensive training for an extremely valuable segment of emergency services.

The CSAR event allows a K9 team some intensive training time for several days in a row in a variety of sometimes-unusual contexts. Team Dock was one of 8 K9 teams to participate in the Advanced Air Scent track of the event, and was able to run four to five problems per day and receive feedback from experienced instructors.

Needless to say, all of this is worth its weight in gold for a young SAR K9 like Dock. He had to navigate a full day of travel (and another day of travel to return home), new accommodations, working around a different set of handlers and dogs, and full days of encountering and solving new problems and unusual situations. Advanced area search typically exposes a K9 team to unusual situations to help deepen knowledge, experience, socialization, and rock-solid stability. If you are the parent or a spouse of a missing person, know that a K9 team that has successfully participated in such an event has to be strong, innovative, and talented.

Additional descriptions will be in the photos.

Welcome home, Team Dock!