Mounted search and rescue

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

Faye Neff wrote:
>Emergency muzzles can be made from most anything.

Sure.  Duct tape comes to mind.  But as Susan Duke mentioned, in case
the dog vomits you need to allow the mouth to open.  And I would expect
a sick, exhausted dog on a horse to vomit.  So many dogs vomit just
riding in cars on the highway.  So, a safety-first approach would be
to use gear familiar to the dog's handler and the dog too.  And the
gear used will be a cage muzzle.  I have seen some SAR K9 pack lists
that include a dog's own personal muzzle, but I don't recall any of
them specifying that the muzzle be suitable for a sick dog.  For the
most part, there seems to be an implicit assumption that the muzzle
will be used on a well dog, during helicopter flights or something as
exciting as that.

Here is a source of some useful books:
http://www.dbs-sar.com/Dogs/dog_FA_publicatio.htm

As a very preliminary test I once carried a highway grade traffic
cone (large and heavy) across the saddle.  In a brief arena ride it
seemed easy but on a natural trail for an extended time the traffic
cone was, to my surprise, very difficult to manage.

        Una Smith
        New Mexico

Mounted Search and Rescue
http://www.ibiblio.org/msar/

MSAR-Riders
http://www.ibiblio.org/msar/msar-riders.html