george ledger photography SARDA dog rescue mountain rescue

S.A.R.D.A

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The Search And Rescue Dog Association (England) is a voluntary organisation responsible for the training of Mountain Rescue team members to become Handlers of air scenting Search and Rescue dogs, enabling them to search for missing persons, predominantly in the mountains and high moor land, and also lowland, rural and urban areas of Britain.

SARDA England's search dogs are trained to 'Air Scent', this means they do not as a general rule track the missing person. The dogs will react to a human scent being blown towards them by the wind or air currents. Therefore as long as the dog is searching downwind of a casualty, or items which have human scent on them, they should find them. In bad conditions a dog can cover large areas of ground in the search for a missing person. The dog is very sensitive to any human scent it finds and will immediately follow that scent to where a human is located. It will then indicate to its' handler to let them know it has had a 'Find'. It matters not whether it is dark or very poor visibility, the dog can search just as well as if it were a clear day. If there is no wind or it is storm force the human scent will not carry as far, before it is recognised by the dog. The handler will then compensate for this by shortening their sweeps of the area. This will take more time to search an area, to get a high Probability of Detection.

The History

Search and Rescue Dogs were first introduced into the UK, after Hamish MacInnes (team leader of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team) attended an International Red Cross Search Dog course in Switzerland where they were training and assessing avalanche search dog's. He immediately saw the potential for using dogs to search for lost walkers and climbers within the UK, so on his return he started training his two German Shepherd's Rangi and Tiki.

The first training course was held in 1964 with Mountain Rescue Members from throughout the UK in Glencoe, it was a great success and everyone saw the potential of using dogs. A meeting was held in May 1965 and SARDA was formed.

All members of SARDA must first become members a recognised Mountain Rescue Team for a minimum of one year before SARDA England will allow them to train their dog to become a Search Dog. The reason for the one year rule is that they will only be taught how to train their dog, as they should already be trained in Mountain Rescue skills and further develop these skills as part of their team.

There are three stages in training a SARDA dog, but training starts with the puppy to ensure that it shows no interest in any stock, grazing on the hill. The First stage is called the 'Find Stage' - This is when they find the hidden volunteer, 'The Dogbodies' and indicate to the handler that they have found them. The second stage it is the handler who is taught how to search with the dog, and the search area gets gradually bigger as the training progresses. In the third and final stage the handler doesn't know the location of the hidden 'Dogbodies' and has to search an every growing area. When they are competent with searching three hour areas they are then ready for assessment.

These images were taken during three of their regular training events. The first near Thropton, Northumberland, in July 2007, the second at RAF Boulmer, Northumberland, in August 2007 and the third on Helvellyn, Cumbria in December 2007. The images were taken as part of a charity fund raising initiative - to produce a calendar for 2008. The images were taken by 5 photographers Bob Turner, Carl Roberts, Colin Davidson, Richard Nixon and of course me.

The calendar went on sale towards the end of 2007 with all proceeds towards SARDA. To view SARDA's web site please clink on the link.


	George Ledger Photography