# practice search



## Jennifer Coulter (Sep 18, 2007)

I was away for a week, without my dog at an avalanche course. The day I arrived back at work a fellow dog handler sprung an avalanche rescue practice for our patrol.

We were going about our business when it was called in, and we responded in a natural fashion, those closest responding as the "hasty search" team, collecting the witness along the way.

Without getting into too much detail, the dog and I arrived when there were already about 4 other patrollers searching the debris. (Others on the way) There was no information about # of burrials, or last seen points from the witness.

I was snowmobiled to a high point with the dog and then traversed in along a little used skiier traverse. As the likely burrial spots are often at the toe of the debris and there were no ski tracks above the traverse (it was closed above the traverse) I chose to start my hasty dog search down from the traverse with the dog. 

Just before I was reaching the main toe of the debris (with no dog indications) a couple of patrollers on scene had found a avalanche tranceiver signal (a device people in avi terrain sometimes wear) and started to dig the first practice victim out. (a dummy with a tranceiver on)

At the bottom of the debris I put my skins on my skis (things that allow your skis to grip as you move uphill) and started to search back up the avalanche debris.

After getting back up to the traverse I moved above it focusing on a small bench of deeper debris. I was changing direction on the edge of the debris and when I turned around the dog was digging away (WATCH YOUR DOG JENNIFER  ) He pulled out an article (large human scented sweater) that had been burried 24 hrs in advance to get rid of any track to the article. It was burried 60 cm down. This represented our second victim. 

The dog had searched for 26 minutes before the find. If I had searched up from the traverse the find would have been very fast, but odds wise I stand by my decision to work down first. Had there been any wind (it was calm) he may have winded it on our first traverse accross.

The exersise was ended due to time constraints (further witness confirms two involved), but the dog search would have contined (and probe lines), until such time as the team, mostly relying on the dog teams called the site clear. Normally more than one of our dog teams would be searching a deposit this size as well, but the other dog handler who was working that day was the one that set it up.

There was nothing special about this practice search, just thought I would share a short training exersise that I was happy to have sprung on me. A change from searching the dog more on my own at work doing both lives and articles (with a few helpers), we get to do bigger scenarios about once every month or two. The patrollers are happy to have the dogs on these patrol practice searches as well as they imagine how long it would have taken to find that sweater using avalanche probes( long skinny poles poked into the snow used to hopefully "stike" a victim).!!!


I have included a picture of the site, taken from a chairlift, it is not great, but you get the idea. The debris is outlined in black and was actually old avi debris from about a week before.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

A lot more impressive than our training day! Guess I wil have to post a closeup of briars.


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## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

I love a realistic scenario. Good job. What was the approximate distance of the traverse? 

DFrost


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## Jennifer Coulter (Sep 18, 2007)

The slide path was approx. 300 meter wide (at the traverse) and 100 meters long. That is roughly 980 ft x 330 ft. You can see that the tougues of debris are not uniform however.


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## Jennifer Coulter (Sep 18, 2007)

Nancy Jocoy said:


> A lot more impressive than our training day! Guess I wil have to post a closeup of briars.


It will be at least a month until we have any vegitation in the valley bottom to work here. I will start to go out of town to begin some wilderness stuff probably next weekend. You have made me think of a question I will post sometime soon..thanks for that!

Not all our search sites have great mountain views. Here are some pics from a "roofalanche" that we were asked to check out at work, it burried a walkway used by workers. (No one was actually burried).


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## Matthew Grubb (Nov 16, 2007)

Outstanding training Jen! We call them "cold start" trainings.... You’re going about your normal shift… radio call…deploy… most realistic training you can get. No cues that it’s training… no barking dogs...great proofing tool!

On a side note...Your photo shopped diagram was great. We use Google Earth maps for our tracking and area search training.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

We have been applying for grants to get Garmin GPS60CS GPS units to use for mapping with searches - I have played with downloading data directly from GPS into topo maps and it works very well -- only problem with our cheap eTrex units is they are not to good in heavy vegetation and you get a number of "spurious" data points so you have to sometimes download to Easy GPS, remove spurious data and then import.


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## Patrick Cheatham (Apr 10, 2006)

Now thats a training day... Nancy maybe we can work that idea someday?


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## Lou Castle (Apr 4, 2006)

Jennifer Coulter said:


> After getting back up to the traverse I moved above it focusing on a small bench of deeper debris. I was changing direction on the edge of the debris and when I turned around the dog was digging away (WATCH YOUR DOG JENNIFER  ) He pulled out an article (large human scented sweater) that had been burried 24 hrs in advance to get rid of any track to the article. It was burried 60 cm down. This represented our second victim.


Jennifer can I ask why you folks had buried a sweater 24 hours before the exercise? While it's going to have human scent on it, it's not going to be "fresh scent" any more. If your dog alerts on this and then digs it up, the real buried person, is still waiting to be found. Isn't this a waste of time if the real person is ignored because the dog is digging up clothing? Especially "old" clothing? 

But maybe I'm missing something.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

Just saw a clip on avalanche dogs in the news ..................it was in Aspen, nice peice.

Patrick - are you talking about the 2-4 inches of snow we get once in a blue moon? We could do that with Kudzu. 

On the GPS thing, I really need to hook it up during training and show everyone what we can do.


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## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

We practice and use GPS for all tracks and searches. The tracklayer can use GPS then the handler. You can overlay the two and see how close to the track you were. In real situations you can bring the helo directly over head with the lat/longs. Indespensible piece of equipement. We also have an infared light on the dog's harness. Particularly useful at night for the helo.

DFrost


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## Jennifer Coulter (Sep 18, 2007)

Lou Castle said:


> Jennifer can I ask why you folks had buried a sweater 24 hours before the exercise? While it's going to have human scent on it, it's not going to be "fresh scent" any more. If your dog alerts on this and then digs it up, the real buried person, is still waiting to be found. Isn't this a waste of time if the real person is ignored because the dog is digging up clothing? Especially "old" clothing?
> 
> But maybe I'm missing something.


Contentious issue for sure Lou.

We do train on live poeple as well of course. Training with well scented articles allows us to simulate things that are not safe to do with people, so we use both.

So much surface scent and tracks are involved in burrying someone right before a search (even a half hr before a search). Even if you track up the rest of the site, roll around on the ground in other places...all things that we do as well.

You can only burry a person so deep for so long with out endangering them. For this reason we use articles to simulate deeper human burrials with no surface scent clues around. Even visual and tactile (such as the feel of digging in recently disturbed/shovelled snow) clues are often present and hard to mask with recent snowcave burrials and so on...

The first thing we do on scene is a hasty/scuff search, covering the site quickly. Only red hot scent will be picked up by the dog because we are moving quickly. We are first looking for surface clues (skis, poles clothing) and people burried close to the surface. A glove on the surface may have a hand in it, equipment may form a line of tragectory that combined with witness statments may cut the search area in half for example. 

We do practice working with articles and lives on the same site and a dog will pass right over an article to go for the live if he is in the scent cone of the live.

Secondary passes are progressively slower, looking for smaller amounts of scent (deeper burials). Articles are clues on an avalanche and can suggest lines of travel or be very close to a victim. We do not train the dogs on small articles and crappy scented ones. I turn down the opportunities to search for peoples missing skis, cellphones and keys alll the time. I have no interest in the dog working slowly for very small amounts of scent. I would not be bragging that my dog found a dime in a slide path for example, that is not our goal.

I am extremely unlikely to be alone on a site and indications are probed and wanded and dug up by other parties and the dog an I keep working. Triaging is nessaccary.

Large well scented articles are just a tool in the toolbox and do not replace the use of lives. Snow preserves scent well. I mean we train for lives, but in the end most people are dead, the dogs arrive on scene long after survival would be possible. Dogs alert to body parts with clothing on them as well. (I am talking trauma, not decomp)

The canadian program is overseen by the RCMP who are article fans in the first place. This is a successful program, though there are some that disagree with it, there are many in the avi dog field working more towards our standards and practices including very well respected mountain rescue groups in the USA. I can't say that one way is the only way because we all know that there are many ways to reach the same goals. I work within the confines of the system to with I belong. 

I would bet that a dog trained only on lives would alert to a large human scented article (maybe even skis and poles) as time progresses and they move more slowly across a site. An avalanche is different than disaster site like a building collaps when everything has human scent on it and they have to pick out the human. 

Maybe Kim Gilmore has some insights here.

Hope I was able to give some insights into the use of articles in our program.


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## Kim Gilmore (Feb 18, 2008)

Kim Gilmore here.

To try to add a bit to Jennifer's post while addressing Lou question regarding the use of articles in an avalanche context may I first state that I am not an advocate for the use of articles in a testing scenario as I firmly believe that the priority is live finds and would hate to have a dog fail due to the fact they can't find a backpack, helmet or ski jacket.

That said, in training, they do serve a purpose.

If you look at the statistics, you only have a 50% chance of survival after being buried 30 minutes (possibly higher if you have an airpocket, significantly less if not or suffering injuries). At 30 minutes your chance of a live recovery significantly declines and believe, at 45 minutes you are almost at 0% (Jennifer is probably more versed on this than I am). Most of our avy deaths around here are due to trauma more so than asphyxiation and it would be HIGHLY unlikely that SAR resources would get to where our avalanches occur (15-30 miles into the backcountry at a minimum) for upwards of 2-4 hours. More in some cases, less in others.

That said, think there were studies somewhere that showed that decomp slows to just about nothing at 42 degrees Farenheit which would be warm snow. If person ceases respiration (what is what is pumping the scent out) and decomp is delayed due to the refridgeration/freezer concept, they become nothing more than one big article of clothing (snowmobile suit, etc.).

So, the idea is that if a dog is used to/trained to find articles, that they will be better at finding more subtle scent which a) simulates deeper burials and b) simulates dead body on ice.

Dogs trained solely on live don't always search for/find articles. My dog for instance is trained in the article search discipline (surface/tossed articles) and in avy and did not want to incorporate the two together (face it, articles don't reward and people play tug!). Took me awhile to get him convinced that finding the snowsuit was a good thing in addition to the victim. As Jennifer stated, when you have both articles and humans in the same search area, dogs will run over the article as humans pump out 90% more scent. Once the humans are recovered, they typically go back to work and fine search for the articles.

Now then, in NW Montana where we are a bit odd by most standards anyway, we typically don't mind being buried 4-6' for upwards of an hour for training purposes. Trust me, the only time I can get caught up on recreational reading .


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## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

Kim, really a well laid out explanation. 

Thank you

DFrost


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## Jennifer Coulter (Sep 18, 2007)

Kim Gilmore said:


> Kim Gilmore here.
> 
> If you look at the statistics, you only have a 50% chance of survival after being buried 30 minutes (possibly higher if you have an airpocket, significantly less if not or suffering injuries). At 30 minutes your chance of a live recovery significantly declines and believe, at 45 minutes you are almost at 0% (Jennifer is probably more versed on this than I am). Most of our avy deaths around here are due to trauma more so than asphyxiation and it would be HIGHLY unlikely that SAR resources would get to where our avalanches occur (15-30 miles into the backcountry at a minimum) for upwards of 2-4 hours. More in some cases, less in others.


Thanks for your insights Kim, so glad you are able to shed some light! I sometimes have trouble explaining things. This chart may help folks understand burial survival times. This is for NON TRAUMA burials from the Canadian Avalanche Association (a scanned copy). 

http://s161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/farwesttoller/?action=view&current=burialtime.jpg



Kim Gilmore said:


> So, the idea is that if a dog is used to/trained to find articles, that they will be better at finding more subtle scent which a) simulates deeper burials and b) simulates dead body on ice.


I would only add my point previously stated about being able to use articles to look for scent with no outside cues (such as tracks, surface scent, snow disruptions..etc). You maybe able to leave a person in a hole for over an hr, but it is not long enough for mother nature to get rid of other hints dogs may get accustom to using to help them pinpoint a burial. 

Having articles in overnight is also a good learing tool about how settlement of snow/avi debris, windtransported snow, further snowfall accumilations, changes in temps and so on can do to affect how the scent travels through the snowpack in different conditions. This is in sharp contrast to a snowcave with hour old (on the max end) shovelled in snow in front of the entrance by which the person was buried for the practice.

As well as burrying articles by hand (well shovel actually) a day or two in advance of a search so the dog is forced to pure air scent, I can have the opportunity to put an article out and CAUSE it to be burried by an avalanche. (This is hit and miss of course). Another good training opportunity. No human volunteers willing to be buried on purpose by an avalanche! Probalaby not even in NW Montana 



Kim Gilmore said:


> Now then, in NW Montana where we are a bit odd by most standards anyway, we typically don't mind being buried 4-6' for upwards of an hour for training purposes. Trust me, the only time I can get caught up on recreational reading .


Well just another reason I have to get you and your team up here KimO Though I do not lack folks willing to go in an average hole for me, I am always looking extra folks for the long deep ones... 

Can I lure you with Canadian Beer? :lol:


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