Mounted search and rescue

[Una Smith <una@lanl.gov>]

Paul Kearney in Australia wrote to Una Smith (with permission to
share):
>This air scenting business with horses [...] if its a worthwhile
>skill, I would take the time to train one of my horses in it,
>but if its [...] not really practical in the field or for
>searches (especially if you have tracking dogs there as well) I
>won't waste my time.  We already have strategies [...] to work
>with our dogs as a team.  Basically if the environment is such
>that the dog handlers don't know where to start etc (due to heavy
>rains overrnight, large bodies of water etc) they will use the
>horses to cover large areas as quick as possible to hopefully
>find the track again or some evidence our target has been there.
>Once located we don't go past, call the dogs in and let them 
>do their work.

I don't know enough about air scenting vs tracking in dogs to
have an opinion.  And I have not seen an air scenting horse at
work.  I do think it is valuable to train SAR horses to alert
on scents, and I want to learn more about their ability to 
discriminate among scents (that is the essential requirement
for SAR).  Alert horses tend to alert on all sorts of things
naturally, and if you pay attention they will tell you a lot
about what they see, hear, and smell.  My horse likes to flush 
rodents out of hiding;  I don't know if she first hears them
or smells them, but I do know they are smelly because at short
range even I can smell them.

I am very impressed with the noses of our local dog team;  on
one search I was on, a SAR dog found a frozen cadaver (suicidal
subject missing 4 days by the time SAR was called) concealed
beneath several inches of fresh snow.

So, I have these questions for those of you who have trained
and/or searched with air scenting horses:  

1.  How do horses compare to dogs, in the acuity of scenting?

2.  Is air scenting a sufficiently valuable skill (compared to
scent tracking or other SAR skills), that it is worth a major
investment of training time?

        Una Smith
        Santa Fe County Sheriff's Posse, in New Mexico