Despite all the technological and scientific advances of GPS, the images offered by satellites and robots, the search and rescue dogscontinue to be one of the best tools of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) teams.
Dogs trained to search and rescue people must receive training provided by a professional in this sector, since it is a complicated process. Likewise, there is not a single work speci alty, but these dogs can be trained to search for specific living or deceased people, for signs of life in general after a natural disaster or only for corpses. Keep reading and discover in this article on our site the characteristics of search and rescue dogs, as well as all their speci alties.
Work or play?
While a lost person, or the victim of a disaster, suffers an endless nightmare waiting for someone to come to their rescue, search and rescue dogs work tirelessly to reach them. Although it may seem that it is a stressful situation for them, the truth is that for them is nothing more than a game They tend to be dogs that end up becoming obsessed with the game and live to find the prize that comes to them when they find that person who was lost.
Thanks to this obsession with play, a heightened sense of smell, exceptional hearing, rigorous training and an experienced handler, search and rescue dogs save the lives of hundreds of people each year. But not everything is happiness. Although these canine specialists are trained with games and rewards, their work can be so hard that many times they "retire" early due to the enormous physical wear and damage caused during this noble task.
In tragic situations, such as the one that occurred on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center, both dogs and their handlers come into emotional problemsdue to the impossibility of finding people alive. After encountering so much death and desolation, the dogs not only lack the promised reward, but also feel the pain, frustration and sadness of their handlers and the other members of the rescue team. In other situations, however, success is not about finding people who are alive, but people who have died. In these cases, so-called cadaver dogs are used, which are trained to find human remains. Although these dogs cannot return a child to its mother or a father to the family that needs it so much, their work allows them to solve crimes and give a decent burial to those who had the misfortune to perish in a disaster.
In addition to being rewarded for continuing to work as if it were a game, the search and rescue dogs must receive all the love of their guides and have all the necessary care to lead a full and happy life outside their "working hours".
Characteristics of search and rescue dogs
While there is no single breed for search and rescue, not just any dog is useful for this activity. Of course, all dogs have highly developed senses of smell and hearing, but for a dog to be a good rescuer it has to meet certain additionalrequirements.
- First of all, the search and rescue dog has to be agile and tough enoughto withstand the difficulties of jobs that she does. For this reason, Pekingese, M altese, Chihuahuas and other small dogs are not usually used in these tasks, preferring larger breeds.
- On the other hand, dogs should not be so large that their size makes rescue efforts more difficult. A very large dog can present a significant difficulty when it is necessary to rappel it down or when it has to be transported in helicopters and small boats. For this reason, giant breeds such as the Saint Bernard or the Great Dane are not usually used either. However, the exception to this rule is when dogs need a lot of strength to hold or drag people, as is the case with some lifeguard dogs. In those cases, large breeds like the Newfoundland are used, which are strong enough to swim while a human is attached to their harness.
- Search and Rescue Dogs must also have exceptional motivation to carry out prolonged searches, even under the most unfavorable conditions. That is why those dogs that have a highly developed prey drive and are obsessed with finding the victim in order to obtain their reward are preferred.
- Last but not least, every search and rescue dog must be perfectly socialized with people and other animals. He will also have to be used to stressful situations, such as the presence of many people around, explosions, shouts, etc. In short, any dog can be used for search and rescue as long as it meets the above requirements and has received high-level training.
Search and rescue dog speci alties
Currently, search and rescue dogs can be classified into different groups, depending on the tasks in which they are specialists. The two main groups are tracking dogs and air dogs.
Tracking dogs
Tracking dogs, as their name suggests, follow the trail of a person from point A to point B. These dogs need a starting point and some uncontaminated clothing of the person they are going to search. They are used to find lost people, although they can also be used to find fugitives. However, in the latter case they are usually police dogs and not SAR team dogs.
Tracking dogs carry out their work in two main areas: wild areas and urban areas. To do this, working on wild land is much easier and faster, since the smells they are looking for are maintained for a longer period of time. In urban areas, on the other hand, being much busier, it is easier for odors to disappear or weaken.
Although most breeds can be used for this job, tracking dogs classified in group 6 of the FCI are preferred, as well as mixed dogs between these breeds.
Dent Dogs
Sniffing dogs are those that look for the human scent in the air, without following a particular person. These dogs are specialists in finding people buried by landslides, people buried by avalanches, bodies of drowned people, human evidence at crime scenes, etc.
Since these dogs do not follow a particular scent, search and rescue dog teams tend to divide the terrain into grids to spread out so that each of the dogs covers a single grid. In general, teams are usually made up of a handler and a dog, so the probability of error using this method of separation is practically nil. In addition to working in separate areas to make searching easier, air vent dogs need to start tracking upwind. Once the scent is detected, they are able to focus on it until they find the source, no matter what.
Depending on the type of search that the vent dogs must do, they are classified in one category or another:
- Carcass Search Dogs. They usually detect the presence of deceased persons or human remains after accidents, natural disasters, etc.
- Search dogs in water. In this case they also track lifeless people but in the aquatic environment. In general, they carry out their work on boats.
- Avalanche Search Dogs. After an avalanche occurs, air-sniffing dogs specialized in this type of search track down living people who were buried under the snow.
- Search dogs in urban disasters. They track living people who were trapped after a disaster in an urban area, such as a landslide.
- Dogs of evidence. The sniffing dogs specialized in these searches are trained to detect human traces and help solve crimes.
