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…