So this isn't exactly related to music but it's certainly off topic.

Many of you know that I'm training my dog Lilly for HRD. (human remains detection)

we spent the weekend out in the woods. 730 acres of woods, streams, a lake and fields. We arrived Friday afternoon and received a briefing on some missing campers.... 6 kids of varying ages and 2 with serious medical problems. We set out searching.... trying to determine what direction they might have gone. It was well after midnight before we were recalled to command. We used air scent tracking and trailing dogs to get some idea where they might have gone.

Saturday morning, we were back in the field with hounds. Saturday afternoon it was determined that several of the kids may not have survived the night and my dog (HRD) was sent out to find the body of one of the girls where the hounds had indicated she might have gone. Hounds only track living people.

So, as we were loading into the transport vehicle, it started raining. We searched the area where we were instructed to search and spent a good hour in the rain, poking through briars and thorn bushes and high weeds. We found nothing and called command for further instructions. They expanded our search area to include a section of woods between the ball fields and the clear cut along the stream. Within 5 minutes of moving to the new section we located the missing victim.

It was a good weekend of training. The outcome of the training scenario was that 2 of the kids didn't make it but 4 did. We continued the live tracking into Sunday morning when we had a dry sunny morning. Out of concern for the actual kids who were playing the parts of the survivors, we pulled them from the woods or didn't put them out to start with in the rain. So the dogs that were tracking them were following at least a 24hr old trail that had endured 5 hrs of rain..... amazing dogs.



This is Lilly. This was a photo from last year's SAREX. I rarely get pics of my dog when she's working because I'm too busy watching her for body language changes that tell me she's "in odor" as we call it. It's subtle and if I'm not paying attention it's easily missed. This pic was taken above the lake and in the general area where she made her find this year. Sunday morning, we did some HRD training. 3 small sources in a wooded half acre section. All dry bone.... which is low odor.... humans can't smell anything at all.... Lilly went first so she didn't have any "dog scent" to follow. I put her in the wooded area and she had all 3 bones indicated within 3 minutes or so. She's come a long way. The first find was 15 seconds into the sector. Very quick and very impressive.

We had a team from Georgia (non-K9) come up and participate, and individuals from several other states as well as a number of people from our own team were there. We always train with K9's so it was good to get out and do some man-tracking on foot. Totally different set of skills. Personally, I'll defer to the dogs on that skill.

Last year was a bad year for our team for a number of reasons.... medical and personal for our leadership, but this year we're hoping things go better and we can train more often. My hope is that very soon, perhaps before the summer gets here, Lilly and I will get the chance to take the NASAR K9 HRD Land certification. That lets us become "operational" on our team.

A lot of valuable lessons learned..... gotta have rain proof gear (gloves were the weak link) ..... you won't find a missing person where they are not, you only find them where they are. Not every search finds someone, in fact most don't, and when you do, the results are not always good....and having an HRD dog.... that's how our searches usually end.

But we had fun. Anyway, that's what we did this weekend. Lilly was one happy critter to get back to the house.... just saying.... so was I.

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www.herbhartley.com
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