Mounted search and rescue

[Una Smith <una.smith@att.net>]

Jeff Ezell wrote:
>One of the things I've noticed in many horses is their aversion to dead
>animals. They usually don't want to go near them even after strong
>encouragement. Others have the same experience?

First hand, my experience has been the opposite.  My MSAR horse
and others I have ridden in the vicinity of dead bodies have not
cared.  They may alert but it is no big deal.  To date, they
have been exposed to one suicide, one criminal evidence search,
and many, many dead cows or deer or dumped remains of butchered
cows.

Jeff, I think you know too many City Slicker horses;  horses 
that spend their lives in stalls and small paddocks don't have
much experience with the natural world.

Local MSAR resources are called on routinely to recover human
remains.  Some groundpounder teams and many individuals won't
even search if the chances of a body recovery are high.  That is
their right, of course, and I sympathise.  I would not want to
deal with a long litter carry for a cadaver.  Litter carries
are hard enough when the subject is alive to justify the effort.

Anyway, on average horse folks seem less squeamish or perhaps
more experienced with death.  That's part of life, if your work
is ranching.  And horses don't live as long as most people.
Are K9 folks similarly experienced?  I would expect so, because
dogs don't live as long as most horses.


>As a dog handler, we must proof our K9s off all animal remains including
>bones. If they alert on animals they will fail most everyone's
>certification.

There is a set of basic standards for SAR dogs, available from
both NASAR and ASTM (www.astm.org);  I expect that many aspects
of the standards could be applied also to scenting horses.

        Una Smith
        New Mexico