Mounted search and rescue

[SARCRNA@aol.com]

It is funny this subject comes up today as I was just on a ride with an endurance race group with about 20 horses from the same ranch in addition to others.  This was a 3 1/2 hour ride for us (longer for others), but the horses thought it was a race...yes the whole time!  We ended up loosing most of our group (and we were the medium speed group!) and had to locate the "fast" group.  We used our tracking skills to look for hoof prints and ALWAYS right before we saw the prints the horses would get excited and pick up the pace again.  Then we would round the corner and see the prints.  When we were inside the woods the horses again would smell the other group and head towards them and we would see the tracks to verify their direction.

 

When speaking to one of the endurance riders who is also on our K9 group, she told me a story about getting lost on one of her races and her horse showed her the way to go.  I saw today how all these horses trailed and air scented their buddies.  It was an amazing sight to see!  We are going to use some of these horses and train them for air scenting.  We started with a stallion owned by the above mentioned team member and the horse took to it like one of our dogs!  I think because these horses have a different background than the typical horse (mostly because of the owners), they are going to be very easy to train.  They are not overcontrolled and the owners believe in working with the horses.  When they are racing they are given the freedom to pick their own way around obstacles and run.  We got Terry's material (thank you Terry) and have only played around with it, but will get serious now that we have an area to work them off lead for training.

 

Recently we worked with a woman who had a mule she had previously used in the mountains for search work.  This mule had lead her to live and dead finds.  She hadn't worked search work for a couple years since moving to Houston, but was a huge help on a recent search for a missing man.  She thought people would laugh at her on a mule, but she could cover ground and they really worked great as a team.  I liked the size and ability to get into tight spots.  There are many possibilities for these animals and I'm glad so many of you are receptive to doing this with horses. 

 

Susan Martinez

Greater Houston Search Dogs