Mounted search and rescue

["David C. Kovar" <kovar@1srg.org>]

Greetings,

Several people have pointed out that the canine teams are well typed by FEMA
and suggest that this indicates that they're falling into line and may be
leading the pack in terms of meeting minimum standards.

If you believe this to be true, I suggest you subscribe to one of the
several canine lists and watch for awhile. I think you'll find that canine
SAR is more art than science, training methods are debated hotly, and
standards differ widely. They're wonderful resources, but there's no
consensus on many points. The fact that there are three major general
purpose canine SAR mailing lists and only one major mounted SAR and one
major ground SAR lists indicates something by itself. 

I suspect the reason FEMA typed canine resources effectively is because of
their use in urban SAR. In US&R they're a very well defined, well understood
resource. There is only one nationally accepted US&R standard. If you want
to be on a FEMA US&R team, you do a bark alert and that's it. Play the game
their way or don't respond. 

MSAR is probably far closer to consistency than canine SAR. 

-David