K9 Team
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K9 Team
Arrowsmith Search & Rescue is among the few SAR groups in the Province that are fortunate to 
have a Civilian Search Dog Team, or K9 Team. The K9 Team is one of the many valuable resources that ASAR can utilize in a search, to help locate the missing person/s quickly.
ASAR's K9 Team has three validated dogs, any of which can be called upon at any given time, and one Ground Search & Rescue Certified Dog Handler. On most searches an additional Ground Search & Rescue Team Member is assigned to assist the K9 Team in the field.
K9 Team Certification/Validation
Operational Civilian Search Dog Teams in the Province of BC are required to be validated (certified), once a year, by a RCMP Dog Handler. There are two primary types of validations that can be obtained/achieved. Air Scenting/Wilderness Validation, or Tracking/Trailing Validation. Whether validated in one or both, the Search Dogs are always seeking scent clues.
Interesting Fact's About Scent
There are two basic types of scent clues that are outlined below to help give you a better understanding of what the Search Dogs are seeking:
One type of scent clue comes from the human body shedding minute particles. These particles are referred to as rafts. Rafts consist of dead skin, beads of perspiration, hair, bacteria, oil, etc. Rafts come off our bodies at the rate of approximately 40 to 50,000 per minute. These rafts fall to the ground or blow in the wind and the heavier ones alight on bushes. Rafts can behave very much like the smoke from a bonfire.
Another type of scent comes about when a person walks along the ground and the pressure of their footsteps crushes or bruises vegetation, kills microorganisms, breaks sticks etc. This is called track
scent. It is this combined scent, which the Tracking Dog uses to locate people.
We hope that we have been able to answer some of the questions you have about our K9 Team. Please note, we often have enquires from people that wish to train their dogs to be Search Dogs. This is no small task and at a very minimum Arrowsmith Search & Rescue requires any interested individual to be Ground Search & Rescue Certified before we can assist.
