Mounted search and rescue

["IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

A leo is a law enforcement officer.

The horses used must be trusting in their rider not to put them in harms way in unfamiliar terrain and their rider must be able to read the horse’s response to the environment in very subtle ways.  This requires a lot of riding over years in many cases.

Our group is a regional resource but hauls much over 90 mins to 2 hours mean we are often out of the region, and often out of state. It depends on your service area and the roads.  I can east west on the Turnpike at 55 but when off the interstates (and often on them in rush hour) speeds around 25 are more likely, or even less.

City searching is possible, and may be preferable mounted, however your horse must be shod appropriately, know about manhole covers and broken glass, etc. I recently went for a carriage ride behind a well schooled Morgan, used to the streets around his neighborhood. The township raised some manholes in preparation for repaving and the new orange monsters resulted in some interesting moments for the driver.  Most mounted police units train for patrol and possible pursuit, the horse has to be friendly to little kids and not afraid of dodging screaming patrol cars.

We do not expose searchers or horses to ice, lightening, or swift flowing water due to flooding, and we try to avoid debris fields (like houses after a tornado) because of the danger of nails, broken glass, and other materials. We also do not expose our personnel or horses to gunfire so we don’t chase bad guys.

In our region there are over 100 000 acres of wilderness, and about 20 million people.  We have major metropolitan areas (Philadelphia, Camden-South Jersey, Wilmington), not so major areas (Chester) and developed suburban areas. We have a large mall and office park across an interstate from a national park.  We have a watershed protection area with 9400 acres of trees and rocks totally inside a major city. 

 

Our service area causes our training to differ from others, just as theirs differ from ours.  For instance, there are no legal places for the public to ride ATV’s in our area so we don’t have any.  County and state parks have several Gators and dirt bikes so we can work with them as needed.  Our state parks segregate bicycles and horses to different areas and trails so we ride where we can and they ride where they can. 

 

We stress navigation by terrain feature (hard enough in old growth forest) rather than by GPS because our task areas are relatively small, fractions of a minute or maybe several kilometers on a side. We stress using the horse as a search partner, not just transportation.

 

Irv Lichtenstein

SE PA SAR  

 

---

From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Joan Pottinger
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 11:10 AM
To: eztech@pdq.net; Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] horses

 

What is LEO?