Mounted search and rescue

["irvin lichtenstein" <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

Many demand a horse that doesn't react to threats. Desensitizing is a process 
used by
mounted police/patrol instructors using guns, flares, noodles, balloons, 
screaming people
to train some self-preservation reactions out of patrol mounts.  Note: It was 
reported that the
Metropolitan Police (London, England) had to replace all their Doberman 
police dogs because 
they learned what a gun was and refused to get shot at, which was their job 
since the cops didn't
have guns most of the time. Horses that run from rioters, smoke bombs, stink 
bombs, rocks and bottles
may live longer but are not doing their job for law enforcement. 
 
A search horse is selected for its intelligence and sensitivity to its 
environment, and self-preservation
instincts, the opposite of a riot control or police assignment. You want to 
heighten this capability
in a search horse by exposing it to as many different stimuli as possible so 
it can build a "reference
library" of sounds, smells, sights, and associate them with accepted 
reactions, and even spoken words.

Historically, in the 1980's there was a great deal of conflict between MSAR 
researchers and users
on the East Coast who were primarily volunteer search only riders and the 
posse riders on the 
West Coast. Fortunately, the search partner (discriminating air scent and 
sensor fusion) concepts
moved ahead of the grid search concept used by the posse.  Early anecdotal 
results were presented
at an international conference sponsored by a Santa Barbara, CA based 
foundation, ironically in Carolina
on the East Coast, as early as 1992. There have been several peer reviewed 
papers and ASTM working
documents published since. 

For computer disk copies of these documents please contact me directly with a 
mailing address, ilichten1@verizon.net 

-----Original Message-----
From: MSAR-Riders [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of 
Laurie Hanahan
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 12:22 PM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Drone desensitizing

Irv,

Thanks for the extensive info re drone use.  Very helpful.

When I refer to desensitization, I intend to train a horse not to overreact 
to a new stimulus but to remain in control.  Of course a horse will alert or 
react to everything they encounter or we wouldn't be using them in MSAR.  I 
think the generic idea with desensitization is to not create a dead horse, 
which obviously is not to anyone's benefit, but rather a sensible horse with 
appropriate/safe reactions to a new stimulus.

Please excuse my use of the incorrect terminology if that is the case.

Laurie