Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] Drone desensitizing

msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Mounted search and rescue

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "irvin lichtenstein" <ilichten1@verizon.net>
  • To: "'Mounted search and rescue'" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] Drone desensitizing
  • Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2015 12:58:54 -0500

Many demand a horse that doesn't react to threats. Desensitizing is a process
used by
mounted police/patrol instructors using guns, flares, noodles, balloons,
screaming people
to train some self-preservation reactions out of patrol mounts. Note: It was
reported that the
Metropolitan Police (London, England) had to replace all their Doberman
police dogs because
they learned what a gun was and refused to get shot at, which was their job
since the cops didn't
have guns most of the time. Horses that run from rioters, smoke bombs, stink
bombs, rocks and bottles
may live longer but are not doing their job for law enforcement.

A search horse is selected for its intelligence and sensitivity to its
environment, and self-preservation
instincts, the opposite of a riot control or police assignment. You want to
heighten this capability
in a search horse by exposing it to as many different stimuli as possible so
it can build a "reference
library" of sounds, smells, sights, and associate them with accepted
reactions, and even spoken words.

Historically, in the 1980's there was a great deal of conflict between MSAR
researchers and users
on the East Coast who were primarily volunteer search only riders and the
posse riders on the
West Coast. Fortunately, the search partner (discriminating air scent and
sensor fusion) concepts
moved ahead of the grid search concept used by the posse. Early anecdotal
results were presented
at an international conference sponsored by a Santa Barbara, CA based
foundation, ironically in Carolina
on the East Coast, as early as 1992. There have been several peer reviewed
papers and ASTM working
documents published since.

For computer disk copies of these documents please contact me directly with a
mailing address, ilichten1@verizon.net

-----Original Message-----
From: MSAR-Riders [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
Laurie Hanahan
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 12:22 PM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Drone desensitizing

Irv,

Thanks for the extensive info re drone use. Very helpful.

When I refer to desensitization, I intend to train a horse not to overreact
to a new stimulus but to remain in control. Of course a horse will alert or
react to everything they encounter or we wouldn't be using them in MSAR. I
think the generic idea with desensitization is to not create a dead horse,
which obviously is not to anyone's benefit, but rather a sensible horse with
appropriate/safe reactions to a new stimulus.

Please excuse my use of the incorrect terminology if that is the case.

Laurie







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page