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msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] What Rick Maxon wants to learn

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Subject: Mounted search and rescue

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  • From: "Felicia Browell" <felicia.browell@gmail.com>
  • To: "Mounted search and rescue" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] What Rick Maxon wants to learn
  • Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:38:02 -0400

Una, if I may, a caveat on your last reply regarding "spontaneous" volunteers, at least for Pennsylvania SAR ...
 
Recently, my Civil Air Patrol unit trained with a canine SAR team.  In the pre-field work, it was made very clear (repeated over and over) that even if you have a dog who is a great tracker and you show up without a full team and recognizable credentials, you will be sent home.  There is a lot more to SAR than trudging through field and forest, as I believed when I first joined CAP, and a lot more to working on a SAR team than I ever imagined.
 
From the canine SAR training, we learned that there are so many ways to screw up a trail for the dogs (and I have to assume this goes for horses as well) that having someone out there who isn't trained in even the basics of SAR could lead to all sorts of problems, from them simply being in the way or slowing things down, to them becoming the next mission.  I even asked about using MSAR teams with dog teams and the general reply was something like "we'll search different areas, but it's very hard to use them both in the same search grid area" mostly because the dogs will follow the trail once on it, and grid be damned.  It will take some convincing to get them to believe the horses can trail/track as well as the dogs...
 
So Rick is definitely in the right place here!  Get the training, get some credentials, get on a team, learn to work with the team... then be ready when the call comes in.  Oh, and let the local CAP unit know you are available and they'll be happy to train with you and involve you in their alerts as well (when it's a ground search, of course!).
 
Felicia Browell
*Author - Technical Writer/Editor*
*Entrepreneur - Business Analyst*
PAO-Squadron 601, Group 1, Pennsylvania Wing
Civil Air Patrol



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