Mounted search and rescue

[Una Smith <una@lanl.gov>]

Jorene wrote:
>I've long been a proponent of MSAR personnel attending a lot of
>training WITHOUT their horse. ;)

I agree.  However, it is a *huge* struggle to get MSAR volunteers
to even consider attending a SAR conference unless they can bring
their horses.

At ESCAPE 2003, the horse teams were assigned to a camp that was
20 minutes drive from the conference venue!  We were just lucky
the weather was good so the normally greasy dirt road stayed dry.
Most of the MSAR participants spent very little time at the SAR 
conference per se, and a few of them never even left the horse
camp.  That may seem pathetic, and in some respects it was, but
on the other hand I was very uncomfortable leaving my horse and
equipment in an unsupervised, insecure location that got a *lot*
of public traffic (the camp was on a road into a popular hunting
area).  I heard after the fact that while I was giving my class
the state SAR honchos were skipping it (so much for MSAR geared
toward SAR managers!) and instead drove out to inspect our camp.
The political implications of this act are...complex, to say the
least.  I was *so* glad that I'd taken time that morning to pick
manure out of the corral holding most of my unit's horses, and
transfer the manure onto an established manure pile.  Unlike some
other MSAR units I have seen, we clean out our trailers only at
home.  No dumping manure and dirty bedding on the ground at SAR
incident base camp, thankyouverymuch.

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