Mounted search and rescue

["Jeff Ezell" <eztech@pdq.net>]

Terry,

What is your horse's alert when they locate the source? Dog handlers as you
know train various alerts: either active like barks (whinny), scratch/dig
(pawing), refind taking handler back to source (rider already there), or
passive like sitting, a down at source, which would be quite noticeable with
a horse! ;o) But challenging for rider! ;o)

I'm imagining they just stay at the source and that's it. How long would
they stay with source (loyalty to source)? After they find the source will
they check other areas or holes to see if they have it for sure? Some dogs
will "comparison shop" after passing the source and then come back to it.
But that's less desirable and usually takes more training to resolve.

What's your reward for the find?

It may not be fair to expect answers to some of these questions because
Horse HR scenting (HHRS) is so new.

Just curious,

Jeff Ezell
US Regional Search Dogs
US Search Affiliates
...to Search...to Save...


 -----Original Message-----
From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Terry Nowacki
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 8:28 AM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: [MSAR] The First Tested Cadaver Horses


Una Smith wrote:
> Outstanding, Terry!

>Now, one likely criticism

Thank You

Couldn't you just have just have stopped after your "outstanding "
comment???????   Chuckle, chuckle!  Just kidding Una. As long as it is
open minded skepticism /criticism, I will except, appreciate and answer it.
(Just a side note - my open minded skepticism comment is getting as much
air time as "WARDROBE  MALFUNCTION")

Actually the blindfold idea came in part from one of my CLOSED OPEN
MINDED skeptics. This person had just heard how my horse had put on a
demonstration where while loose in a open field, my air scent horse,
Storm had just searched for and scented out the correct shirt that had
just been taken off by a county Sheriff from among a assortment of 30
shirts and pieces of clothing. This person said
" I still would not believe it unless the horse was blind folded"

The blind fold in my cadaver serch test was merle for demonstration
purposes they do not need the blindfold.

That same morning a SAR certification officer also buried some cadaver
material, which we also going to do test/ demonstration with, until
everyone froze in the MN wind and our out- of - state professional had
to catch a plane home.

Any way I wanted to save the material so I asked the certification
officer to go dig it up. Guess what, he did such a good job camouflaging
/ hiding it, plus digging fake proofing holes that he himself could not
find the right hole. Very tricky certification officer. (I like it!) So
we left it. The best he could do was narrow it down to 1/4 acre.
Since I really needed to find this material, the next day I took both
horses out to search.  It was very interesting searching for this buried
scent source since I did not know where it was.  My riding horse gave me
a strong signal next to one hole but before I started digging I double
checked by hit with the yearling miniature. Both horses were correct in
their finds!  It was buried about 8 to 9 inches deep.
As I measured later  I found out that since it was buried both horses
were at about 12 feet away before they picked up the scent.

Neither of the horses gave the decoy holes a second thought, it was easy
for me to figure out which was the right one.

The horses were not blindfolded for this  buried cadaver search.

TER

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