Search and Rescue Dog Tales

Amber Higgins
May 8, 2016
2 min read

As some of you may know, I was a volunteer Firefighter in the Ozark mountains for quite of number of years which led me to training search dogs and raising Bloodhounds for over a decade.

You can read more about me and my dogs on the Instructor page above and at the original Family Disaster Dog site.

In the coming months on this blog I will be sharing with you some of the incidents and stories from the many miles of lost person trails that Bloodhounds Incredible Sue and Blue Boy Homer led my daughter and I on through the densely forested woods and hollers of the Ozark mountains.

I though by recounting these search incidents with you it will give you a chance to understand both sides of the leash in an actual lost person incident. From this I hope you gain valuable knowledge that can help you train your dog to find lost and missing members of your family or friends and neighbors after a disaster or in the event that somebody becomes lost.

The most common lost or missing person cases are those involving either the elderly or a child. Why ? Well, both of these groups of people have a tendency to wander off exploring the world around them or they believe they can go someplace unassisted and find themselves disoriented or in an unknown place.

Often they do not know or think they are lost, as far as they are concerned they know what they are doing and where they are; therefore keep in mind, the person may only be missing or lost from our perspective not their own.

Sometimes this can make the task of finding a person much more difficult as you will learn in upcoming articles. There is always the case of a run away too, the person who does not wish to be found and hides from you and the dog can be most difficult to catch up with if they know they are running from you. Sometimes a search team has to be on the sly side to catch a person in their tracks other times its best to be heard.

These tricks and tips will be covered in future posts. Feel free to contact me If you have any dog training or disaster survival questions or topics you would like us to explore here.

In the next post I will Introduce the dogs...be sure and sign up to follow our trail !