Mounted search and rescue

["colleen combes" <ccombes@pacbell.net>]

Hi,

 

I’m Colleen Combes with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office Mounted Search and Rescue Unit (quite a mouthful I’m afraid), we have formally been in existence for almost four years and are 30 members strong. Like all of you, we do a lot of training, including desensitizing, horse-rider bonding, map & compass, first aid for both horses and humans, tracking (on foot), etc. We are called out by the Sheriff’s office for searches both on horse and on foot throughout San Mateo County, California, and in neighboring counties when there is a call for mutual aid searches. Plus we represent the sheriff’s office in a lot of community activities.

 

I’m pleased to see that there is so much activity on the mail list. Since Una first notified us of the mail list last year, the activity level has increased a 1000 fold… and such a wealth of information! I’m encouraging my MSAR colleagues to sign on.

 

Meanwhile, I’d like to put in a plug for Terry’s seminar on training horses to air scent.  Last year our group was the first to sponsor his seminar on the west coast. The process is very much like training sar dogs to air scent, however horses depend much more on air currents carrying scent, rather than ground scenting. Therefore the riders must be aware of how air travels and pools.  We invited members of our dog sar unit and they were impressed with the research that went into the seminar and the training methods Terry uses. But interested MSAR folks should keep in mind that many horses don’t take to scenting. Young horses are better to train for this because they are more energetic and playful. Playfulness is important, because it is more of a game to horses than it is to dogs which is why many older horses don’t get “into the spirit” of air scenting. In our seminar, we tested a selection of horses to see if they had any inclination toward air scenting. We found that the most responsive horses were mustangs. There were a couple of young horses, including an Arabian, that showed some ability also. But only about 4 out of 10 horses showed any inclination to air scent at all (my older quarter horse thoroughly flunked the test).  I think it is a great additional “tool” in a mounted search. The training is fairly intensive and has to be continually reinforced, so it takes a dedicated individual *with a horse that shows promise* to follow through.

 

Feel free to contact me via our website at www.smcmsar.homestead.com if you have additional questions about our experience. (Go to the bottom of the “About Us” section to find our contact email)

 

To get a better idea of how the horses are introduced to air scenting during the seminar, visit our photo page from our air scenting seminar with Terry Nowacki: http://www.smcmsar.homestead.com/2002_airscent_main.html

 

 

Cheers.

CC