Snohomish County K9 Search & Rescue Community Service

 Meet the Team! Although you may see that there are only a select handful of breeds on the team, that does not mean that there is a reqiurement that the prospect dog needs to be a certian breed. The K9 Team doesn't discriminate against breeds. The only requirement is that they need to be able to work on their own (example: no chihuahuas because they can't jump over a log by themselves) and that they have a great work ethic. The Handler can't force the dog to want to work, they have to decide that for themsleves. Not every hyper dog is just right for Search and Rescue.  All of these dogs are on the team and in various stages of their training.  Prospect : They have a spot on the team, they are working on imprinting the game.  Team in training: A dog who is in training to become certified. Pre-Certified: A team who has passed a practice certification test. They are allowed to deploy in Snohomish County for 6 months. In that 6 months, the team has to certify.  Ce...

Things I did Since a K9 Team never deploys without at least one Field Support or "Follower", I was a follower for many teams. The duties of the follower include navigation, safety and communication.  Navigation: This duty has the follower always know where the team is in regards to their assigned area. This is done via compass and map, GPS (Alpha Garmin), and/or phone (CalTopo, Avenza, Gaia Maps). The Navigator should tell the rest of the team if we are approaching on a boundry, if a spot was missed while searching, or if there are incoming impassable geographical features such as a cliff or river.               Safety: The duty of this follower is the most important, personally my favorite. This person will constantly be looking around for possible dangers that could effect the team. This includes but is not limited to saying "upcoming car!" or "downed tree 25 yards" or "BEAR! RUN!" which is always fun! It is the sole responsibility of this ...

 Urban Trailing The Trailing Lead is Linda Binkley. There are 3 K9s who are either certified, pre-certified, a team in training or a prospect in trailing.  Trailing is one of three disiplines that SCVSAR K9 can provide when someone goes missing. Trailing and tracking are often used interchangably but the team prefers "trailing" since tracking is used to follow someone's direct footfall whereas trailing is following the path of scent the missing person left behind. Trailing dogs are deployed the most often, mainly after missing dementia or alzheimer's patients and kids who walked away from their family. These dogs are not used to find the person at the end of the trail. They are primarily used to determine a Direction of Travel (DOT) in urban, woodsy and suburban areas. Traililng K9s follow a specific someone's path they took while working on a leash of 15-20 feet.  Urban trailing K9s work with their nose down following a specific scent. It is up to the handler to ...

 Human Remain Detection The HRD Lead is Pam Harding. There are 6 K9s who are either certified, pre-certified, a team in training or a prospect in HRD.  Human Remain Detection is one of three disiplines SCVSAR K9 can provide when it comes to finding missing people. This group works closely with the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office. HRD dogs are deployed to find deceased people. This can be from a few hours old, such as when we get called out to find a suicidal person, or decades old to find clues to a cold case. These dogs work off leash, similar to airscent. Since human remains smell drastically different than live human, HRD dogs are looking for a certain chemical smell that deceased humans release instead of a scent pool a live human creates for airscent. Don't get us wrong, deceased humans can create just as much as a scent pool a live human can create, the smell is just different.  Just like how one can teach a dog to smell low blood sugar in a diabetic vs t...

 Wilderness Airscent The Airscent Lead is Nicole Donohue. There are 12 K9s who are either certified, pre-certified, a team in training or a prospect for Airscent.  Wilderness Airscent is one of the three disiplines SCVSAR K9 can provide when it comes to finding missing people. Airscent dogs are mostly deployed for overdue hikers but are also deployed for dementia walk-aways in nearby greenbelts, fields, and woods. These dogs can cover large areas in a short time as they do not work on leash and can range away from the team to work at their own pace.  Airscent dogs work with their noses pointed up. They look for the largest human scent pool or the freshest in the general area.  In order to certify, the airscent dog must be able to search a blind 40-acre wooded area in 2 hours with 2 unkown subjects. It is up to the handler to make sure the area is adequately cleared and to read their dog if they have any Change of Behavior (COB). The dog must convince the handler if t...

How do Search Dogs Find Missing People? Back in the olden days when dogs were bred for certain work, like German Shepards and Boarder Collies for herding or Catahoula Leopard Dogs for hunting wild boar or Labrador Retrievers and Golden Retreivers hunt birds, we take that natural instint to go after their prey and direct it towards humans.  Starting this process young is preferable although some older dogs (2-4 years old) have worked in the past. This is due to the process of training and certifying a dog takes around 2 years. By the time the dog is certified, they only have so many years as a deployable SAR K9 until health issues and old age sets in, the dog will retire sometime around 10 years old.  Humans constantly shed skin cells which hold a unique scent of ourselves. I like to relate this to a person holding a smoke bomb (like what we see on the 4th of July). We can see that if there is a slight breeze, the smoke will shift to blow with the wind. We are constantly doing ...