Video Showing How Avalanche Rescue Dogs Find People Under the Snow Is Fascinating
Though nowadays, most people think of their dogs as little more than companions, many of the most popular of today’s breeds were originally developed to be hard workers. Not for them a life of lounging on the couch and being taken on a few short daily jaunts around the block. Hunting dogs, sled dogs, herding dogs, and many other breeds were bred for serious, tiring jobs, and those abilities are still being put to use in many places around the world today, including the important, difficult, and life-saving work of search and rescue.
Though the idea of a search and rescue dog immediately conjures up images of a St. Bernard climbing the Alps with a little barrel of brandy about his neck, in real life search and rescue dogs come in all shapes and sizes.
Related: Lab Mix Rescued 2 Years Ago Is Now Training to Be a Natural Disaster Search Dog
Common breeds include retriever breeds like Labrador, Golden, and even Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers. Other popular breeds include herding shepherds, like Australian and German Shepherds, and even Border Collies. But mixed breeds work for this kind of work too, and indeed, it appears to be a mixed breed doing the work in this video. The important thing for a good search and rescue dog is intelligence, agility, endurance, and a strong hunting drive. They should also be friendly breeds who are gentle around people.
Why Dogs Are Superior Searchers
Dogs are particularly good searchers in the wilderness because of their keen sense of smell. Where an avalanche may wipe any visible trace of a human under layers of snow, a dog can still smell their traces and know precisely where to dig to get them out. Thanks to their keen sense of smell they are capable of searching vast stretches of space in a small amount of time. A properly trained search and rescue dog can scan an area as big as two football fields in about thirty minutes. The same area would take a team of twenty people over eight hours to search.
And in an emergency, time is of the essence, as people can freeze, succumb to their injuries, and even be suffocated under an avalanche very quickly.
Training Avalanche Rescue Dogs
It takes years to train a proper avalanche dog, and actually finding people under the snow (as shown in this video) is only a small part of the training they must undergo.
This video shows how dogs are trained to track scents under several feet of snow through elaborate games of hide and seek, where they are rewarded for their successes finding people or clothing trapped under snow or inside snow caves with treats, games of tug of war, and other special treatments.
Rescue dogs are trained to bark to signal their findings to the humans on their team. They are also trained to respond to their owners’ hand signals, and to endure long searches in bad weather.
On top of this kind of training, they also must learn to deal with the realities of mountain rescue. Dogs are also trained in skills ranging from riding on the backs of skiers to help cover ground more quickly, or even tolerating being lowered from helicopters on ropes.
Aren’t we lucky to have dogs?
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