Avalanche Dog Practice Search

Anne and Seren

I didn’t ski today, but here is a video I took yesterday of a ski patrol’er on her day off conducting a practice search with her avalanche rescue dog. It was my first time watching such a search, and I was pretty impressed when Seren (the border collie) was able to find 3 sweaters buried ~20-30cm deep in just over 6 minutes.

If you are in Whistler, please consider going to a fundraiser for CARDA (Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association) and WAG (Whistler’s Animal Shelter) being held at Moe Joe’s on Monday February 13th. Tickets are $10 and the proceeds go to both organisations. No doubt it will be a fun night and according to this page (visit it for more info), there are a number of auctions taking place with prizes such as heli-ski trips up for grabs. If you can’t make it, why not consider making a donation to one (or both) of the organisations (links available on their websites).

For more information call WAG at 604-935-8364

In the video, you might notice that Seren spends extra time around 3 other areas – buried at those spots were avalanche transceivers (the kind worn by people). This whole area is a transceiver search practice zone often used by patrol and members of the public. To her credit, Seren decided to move on rather than dig at those spots (she was smelling surface scents rather than a scent coming from below – I think?)

Thanks to Anne and Seren for letting me watch and film their practice.

Extra info: Accredited rescue dogs and their handlers (which Anne and Seren are) are required to be able to find 3 articles of clothing buried 65cm deep in under 10 minutes.
In this search, the articles were not so deep for a few reasons: time constraint in setting up the practice, less time waiting for the scent of the articles to reach the surface, the wind was very light (the dogs require the wind to pick up the scent), conducting easier searches once in a while helps encourage the dog with positive reinforcement by doing well, and probably a few more reasons I can’t remember right now.
During this search, the wind was very light and coming from the top right, which is partly why Seren took a bit longer to find the last article (on lookers left) since she didn’t get to spend much time downwind of it.

Avalanche dogs are unpaid volunteers, so please donate to help them with their training

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Snow Reports.