Yesterday we went out to Rocky Gorge Reservoir. It’s a large body of water (hundreds of acres) that has a trench-like area descending to around 60 feet. The Laurel Rescue Squad has performed actual recoveries from this lake and is very familiar with it. They’ve also worked with search dogs in the past and were very knowledgeable and helpful! Luckily for us dog handlers, only three of us showed up… so we got a lot of excellent training! We each went out into the boat three times. We also got to do several finds on divers from shore.
Mostly, water search dogs are used for pinpointing a search location for divers. As explained to us by the divers, most of the bodies of water where local divers might be called to do recoveries have limited to no visibility. The diver moves through the water, hands extended, in a sweep pattern searching for objects or bodies by touch. Since current moves objects in the water, it can be very useful to employ a dog as locating sensor. This past week, Mid-Atlantic D.O.G.S. had a water search in the Potomac where a dog was effectively used to narrow down the search area. The body was recovered upstream from other estimations. Here is a picture of Glory searching for a submerged diver in training. Adjacent to that you can see BB on a boat sampling the water. Dogs sometimes taste the water when near a scent source. BB always lowers his body and nose to the water when he comes into scent.
To train a beginning dog in water search and rescue, we typically start with a dog that already understands the concept of finding a person. Area search dogs on land employ the same basic principles as water search dogs. Same with cadaver dogs. Both are using scent to pinpoint the precise location of a scent source (e.g., human). So, typically, we’ll use an area search or cadaver dog to specialize in water search. With an area search dog, we’ll first teach the game of finding a person in water. In search training for live people, we use the “subject” as a helper for training and rewarding the dog. So in the case of water training, we like the diver to reward the dog early in the game. The diver may have a bit of hotdog or the dog’s toy. Here’s a diver going out to a location offshore. With a new dog he may submerge only a few feet. Later he’ll go down further and stay down longer as the dog searches for him. The clip below on the right, shows a beginning dog, Tessa, finding the diver. As soon as she gets out to him, the handler indicates that the diver should “pop up” to reward the dog. Laural Rescue Squad uses a communications line for talking to divers from shore.
Later in training, we take the dog out in a boat to find a person. The driver of the boat may be directed to work downwind or upwind of the general search area (depending on the tactics employed by the dog handler). Then the boat will sweep in a grid back and forth perpendicular to the wind direction. The dog handler has to take into account both surface and water conditions and movement when developing a water search strategy. Here is BB in a boat working a diver. Sometimes during training he’ll jump in after the diver since as an area search dog he’s conditioned to going to the scent source and then returning back to me to tell me that he found someone. For safety reasons, on a real search, I would not allow him to do this.
There was a whole lot of excited barking going on shore when any of the dogs were working. Here’s a picture of BB in his water search vest and Titan nearby. On the right, is BB conked out after working today.
Okay. He only conked out for a few minutes. Then he was ready for more action. Later that day we went to a SAR prevention demo and BB looked for a kid volunteering to be lost and then enjoyed retrieving balls for a bunch of boys trying to see who could throw the furthest.
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