Posts Tagged ‘Greg Fuller’

Searching in the Dark

January 27th, 2010

You may remember a long while back me writing a short news article introducing a Specialist Night / Low Light Search Technician Certification Course from Gary Foo. Several comments were made at the time, with Jennie Webster making the valid point that;

Maybe explicit courses such as this would make it more obvious that ALSAR teams can and do search at night?

It’s a good idea in principle, although other courses e.g. UKLSI search techician and team leader have their main exercise at night anyway, and stress the importance of night search too.

The purpose of this piece then is to reiterate that ALSAR and other SAR organisations not only routinely search at night – but actually expect search to continue through the night. As I noted in my piece on do the police suspend vulnerable missing person search too quickly some advice from the ACPO guidance, which I think is worth repeating here…

As a general principle, searching should take place throughout the day and night. This will be determined by the circumstances but in all cases where a full managed search is undertaken, there must be valid reasons why it is not continued throughout the full 24 hours.
ACPO Guidance on the Managment, Recording and Investigation of Missing Persons, 2005

Here is also a quote from the book of the week – Greg Fuller, Ed Johnson and Robert J Koester’s book Man-Trackers and Dog Handlers in Search & Rescue – Basic Guidelines and Information.

…night itself should not be a concern to trained searchers. The possibility of walking off a drop-off and branches snapping back into searchers’ eyes are the chief concerns. All of these concerns exist during the daylight hours…

It is true that searchers will have a greatly reduced POD during night-time searches. However, it is important to remember that POD is NOT the aim of the search. The aim of search is to drive up POS as quickly as possible (FIND THE MISPER!). Waiting 6 -8 hours in order to get a higher POD means that the misper will not be found during those hours. The misper’s only chance of being found is if searchers are actually out searching!

ALSAR teams train at night, they search at night and they find mispers at NIGHT!

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Combining Tracking with Lowland Search Dogs

January 25th, 2010

As you may have noticed from my recent writing on the POD of a Search Dog is 100%, I have been reading Greg Fuller, Ed Johnson and Robert J Koester’s book Man-Trackers and Dog Handlers in Search & Rescue – Basic Guidelines and Information. One of the reasons I was keen to get hold and read this book was because of the simple, but great idea contained within it’s pages – the idea that it is possible to successfully combine the two SAR disciplines of Tracking and Search Dogs into one field team unit.

I had been toying with the idea for some time for Lowland Search Dogs. A Lowland Search Dog team working as a Team consists of a dog, a handler and at least one support person. I have had some concerns [although this is probably too strong a word] for a while about the under-utilisation of this extra body. In my mind this person is a potential foot searcher who is being restricted from searching fully by having to accompany a search dog and handler [before you comment I am aware they do have a specific role - just that this role takes away search effort!]

I had been toying with the idea of spreading handler and support out more to allow for a “better” [?] search by the support alongside their support role. However, if LSDog support personnel were all trained at a minimum in track awareness [and better still at tracking] this would add a whole new dimension to the search dog team.

Obviously the dynamics of the team would change – but having the support walk the path, with the handler off the track so as to avoid track and sign contamination is not perhaps the most difficult change.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this one…

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The POD of a Search Dog is 100%

January 18th, 2010

When writing a blog you have to always have something left to write about tomorrow. This means that when you think of something to write about you tend to note it down somewhere, to use another day. BUT, some days, you just have to jump on the computer and write something, NOW!

It might be a news item, it might be a thought or idea going through your head, or it might, like today, be something that you read.

I’ve just taken delivery of some books from dbs productions ready to sell in the SAR Bookshop. One of Bob Koester’s books that I hadn’t read was Man-Trackers and Dog Handlers in Search & Rescue – Basic Guidelines and Information - co-authored with Greg Fuller and Ed Johnson.

In the chapter Dog-Handling Misconceptions I came across the following, which I truly hope the authors don’t mind me copying here as it has some implications for the way lowland search dogs are used and viewed.

“Dogs never miss”

If the dog handler believes this, management has a problem. If the search manager believes this, the lost subject has a problem. If a dog team ever reports a POD higher than 75% and the area is not a paved parking lot, it’s likely they have over-reported their POD.

While a discussion of scent transport is well beyond the scope of this publication, it should be noted that a myriad of conditions contribute to the success or failure of each individual search task. Wind direction, spotty scent pools, contaminating scent sources, and handler fatigue can all contribute to missed detection/find by even a focused, well-trained dog. Dog teams are another “tool” for searching — they are not infallible. Many search coordinators can relate stories of ground teams finding a subject in an area “cleared” by a search dog team. In some cases a not completely trained dog actually found the subject but did not indicate this to the handler. Dogs are a great contributor and they can cover large areas effectively, but there’s never 100% POD with any one resource. In the long run, overstating a resource’s capability only decreases the value of that resource in the eyes of management. In some areas of the country overstating has resulted in resources no longer being requested.

(Man-Trackers & Dog Handlers in Search & Rescue, Fuller, Johnson & Koester, dbs Productions)

I’ll leave my thoughts on this important issue to another day – but I’m sure many of you have views on this…

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