Which Dogs Can Become SAR Dogs?

To know which dogs can become SAR dogs, it is useful to review the tasks of the search and rescue dog once again. A search and rescue dog must search intensively and with perseverance for the odor of people who are trapped beneath the rubble or snow, or people who are lost in wilderness areas. The search and rescue dog must not allow itself to be distracted, because it has to work in almost every kind of area and under almost all circumstances.

Figure 13.1 Search and rescue dogs must not allow themselves to be distracted because they have to work in almost every kind of area and under almost all circumstances. (Calabritto, Italy, 1980)

The search and rescue dog has to be able to communicate clearly to the handler that it has found a victim in the place where the human odor concentration is the highest. It is not important how a dog locates a victim, or how it tells the handler, but it is important that it be a clear and reliable alert, even after hours and days of intensive searching.

From all this we can conclude that the best working dogs are also the best search and rescue dogs. Of course, dogs without pedigree, just like dogs that don’t belong to an official working dog breed, are in principle useable as search and rescue dogs. In addition to hunting dogs, we have seen handlers get excellent results in search and rescue dog work with mixed breed or unofficial working dog breeds. The breed and the size of the dog do not much influence the suitability of the animal for the search and rescue dog work. Small as well as medium-sized dogs can be trained for special tasks.

Figure 13.2 It is not so important how a dog locates a victim, or how it tells its handler about the find; it is important that the dog gives a clear and reliable alert.

Using a hunting dog to search in the wilderness for missing people is going to cause some problems and is sometimes even impossible. On the other hand, hunting dogs can do excellent work on rubble. We have seen a German Shorthaired Pointer working on the rubble, and we were very impressed with the dog’s fast and effective way of working. Golden and Labrador Retrievers are also used very successfully for search and rescue dog work. The smaller breeds, like our Welsh Corgi, have also had remarkable achievements as operational search and rescue dogs.

No matter what pedigree it has, a search and rescue dog must have good behavior, courage, perseverance, and hardness, in addition to having sufficient search and tracking capabilities and good social behavior with people and with other animals. The dog has to be, of course, obedient. Dogs with a Schutzhund certificate (Sch.H. or IPO), a police dog certificate of the KNPV, and certainly dogs that have a tracking dog certificate, are preferred.

With search and rescue dog work, a lot will be required of the handler, both mentally and physically. Dog handlers must have knowledge, or obtain it during training, of modern dog training methods, and must have the necessary background in canine studies. The ability to work in teams and to absolutely accept direction are requirements for all search and rescue dog handlers who go on deployment. To crown it all, working as a search and rescue dog handler requires both real and financial sacrifices too. How many weekends will be spent on stinking debris piles or in dirty, wet woods and fields? How much money will be spent on long trips to the less accessible training fields? Training search and rescue dogs is a specialty within the dog-training world. You should carefully weigh whether you have the ability and resources for this heavy and difficult work.

Figure 13.3 With search and rescue dog work, a lot will be required of the handler, both mentally and physically.

It is a pity that sometimes people who do poorly at other dog sports turn to search and rescue dog training. Reasons for failing at other dog sports may be that the handler is not a good trainer or that the dog may have character weaknesses or is frightened by the decoy. Search and rescue dog work then looks like a good possibility to continue training with the dog. But poor handlers will not succeed in search and rescue dog work, and dogs with weak characters will also fail in the intensive training.

Another group of handlers who are unable to do the search and rescue deployment are those who are too tenderhearted. The well-meaning intention to help people in danger does not in itself make a search and rescue dog handler. These people have little understanding of dogs and often refuse to administer correction or punishment, which is sometimes necessary in training. These people often think that the dog helps missing people out of a noble sympathy, instead of its natural search drive.

The third group unsuitable for search and rescue work are those who are immature and those who are attracted by the semi-military system of operations, command over people and dogs, equipment, and alarm exercises. They get excited over a new jumpsuit with practical zippers or other tools of the trade. They can carry out a plan of operation in which everything is arranged to the finest detail, but are absolutely helpless in a real mission, because they can’t improvise. Disasters and emergency situations don’t let people arrange everything in advance.

The people who come from one of the aforementioned groups should not be allowed to take part in training for search and rescue dog handlers. For them, working with the dog is only of secondary importance. Search and rescue deployment is too serious a task to equate with other dog training. Trainers who are ambitious and only want to add a particular certificate to their dog’s record, or who like to collect points for a pin, have no place in search and rescue dog work. There’s also no room for breeders who want to sell more puppies, or who want to increase the value of a pup or mature dog because the father or mother once obtained a search and rescue dog certificate and after that was only used for breeding.

Search and rescue dog work requires people with perseverance and willpower. Through physical as well as mental training, the handler has to become a well-balanced and confident dog expert with the right mentality. It is not one handler or one special dog, but rather the whole search and rescue dog unit that succeeds during a mission.

It makes no sense to teach the bringsel alert to a dog that doesn’t like to retrieve. It also makes no sense to expect a dog to bark at the scent of a victim if the dog doesn’t like to bark. Every dog has a natural tendency to let the handler, to whom it has a strong connection, know one way or another that it has found a victim or that it wants the handler to return with it to the “prey.” Each dog has a different means of communicating with its handler. It is fundamental in our training program that each handler and dog team has the elbow room to develop their capacities and skills in an individual way. Or to put it in another way: handlers have to recognize how their dog naturally indicates a place where it has found something. By incorporating this natural behavior into training, handlers allow their dog to develop and attain its goals.

To extend the principle, only the handler, as the person who can most accurately recognize the dog’s alerts, can tell the instructor or the operational leader the location of an alert. The searching dog has different ways of indicating during a mission, depending on the time span and the degree of difficulty of the search action, not to mention different indications for alive and dead people. Handlers have a great responsibility during the search action to identify where there is a dead person versus where there is a living person. A yes or no decision can lay a heavy burden on the handler’s shoulders.

Depending on the dimension and character of the mission, the one who leads the search and rescue work, the operational leader, if possible in deliberation with the instructor(s), has to decide about the usefulness of the available teams. More important than certificates is the practical ability of handler and dog at the moment of the call-out. Successfully taking part in the Mission Readiness Test (MRT) for search and rescue dogs, during which the team is tested on how they hold up under pressure and how well they can make the right decisions under stress, is absolutely necessary before a team can be brought into action. The next chapter describes some of these tests.

Training is often hard, but real missions are even harder: on the spirit, on perseverance, on showing courage without carelessness, on social behavior, and in particular on relationships. Then everything learned in theory and practice is put to test under the highest stress and living in the dirtiest possible conditions. Please, don’t picture working with a search and rescue dog as a romantic jaunt in nature, just yourself and the dog. After days long walks in the rain through inaccessible woods or living in a somber tent with poor facilities in the stinking surroundings of an area damaged through an earthquake or explosion, you won’t be fantasizing for long.

There is no pleasure in the odor of a debris pile or a disinfectant substance. There are moments you will ask yourself why you are doing this. But the next time your dog alerts on a victim, you’ll be inspired again to work even harder.

Figure 13.4 Training is often hard, but things can become really tough during a real mission: on the spirit, on perseverance, on showing courage without carelessness, on social behavior, and in particular on relationships.

Figure 13.5 It is not just one handler or one special dog, but instead the whole search and rescue dog unit, that succeeds during a mission.

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