These Things We Do....

"These things we do, that others may live" is a quote taken from the Air Force - Air Rescue Service long ago and used quite often in the world of volunteer search and rescue.  Often shortened to "That others may live", it implies the desired end result of all the time, training, and effort all volunteer SAR folk strive for.  In this blog, if you've been following, you'll have a pretty good idea about what "these things we do" are.  I like to think I give what I can, but I have yet to give all.  In this story, this gentleman did give his all.  I hope not to follow his example anytime soon!  Years ago at the NASAR conferences, they would start off by showing a presentation of all the volunteer search and rescue members that had died in the line of service over the years.  It was very touching, and a little shocking about how long it took to get through everyone.

This post is about the final certification test that I just passed with Sirius.  It is the end result of three years of training.  Sure the training was hard.  And sure all the testing was hard (although easier than the first time I went through them with my first search dog), and even the final test was hard...but probably the hardest thing was just getting started again after Hero died.  Deciding to do it all over again with another dog was the hardest...that first step back into the woods looking at a furry four footed partner running around and it not being Hero.  I started Sirius thinking I was honoring Hero, but along the way, it turned out to be "This is Sirius' time now" and although I thought about Hero on my final certification test, I was more proud of Sirius and his success.  This is how it all went down:

I wanted my final certification test to be in conjunction with a full team training.  Having everyone there to witness what they will hopefully be doing one day was good experience, and at the same time, they could be doing their own training while I was out in the field.  So it was scheduled on a normal training day at Prince William Forest and we even brought in our mobile command post to run the search out of.  It's amazing that in all the years I've trained and even searched for real in PWF, my assigned test areas were areas I had never been into before.  160 acres of new territory, with what ended up being four people hidden in them, was to be the test of all tests.  I allowed the team on hand to listen to my briefing by the two evaluators, Jennifer and Jack.

Lori, me, Sirius and our two evaluators Jennifer and Jack afterwards.

The scenario:
I rolled up onto the scene and introduced myself as a canine handler with VSRDA and provided myself as a resource to help with their search.  Now everyone loves a good backstory, but the master at making back stories is Jack.  He told me that two first time solo-jumping parachuters had jumped from a plane overhead and deployed their chutes, but while decending could not maintain control and got diverted over Prince William Forest.  I asked numerous questions, but really the end result was that two people were somewhere probably hung up in the trees in the woods needing finding.  Based on witness reports, I was tasked with a large 160 acre area that had high probablity of them being in.  With scenario and map in hand, I headed to my car hood and developed my search strategy.

The searching:

Sirius on the last day he'll wear his In Training patches.

The map was one large area outlined.  In some places unimproved roads acted as boundaries to the area I was to search, and in other areas, it was either drainages and streams, and to make it even more difficult, some boundaries were simply undefined which meant I would have to do pace counting to figure out where I was supposed to be and match that up with compass headings.  I devised a plan to break the entire area up into three large "manageable" sectors and one small one.  I did a radio check before leaving base and headed towards my first sector, the smallest.  This one ended up being a warm up, it not being very large at all.  I immediatly bumped into a dog walker with a young silver lab puppy.  His dog was very interested in what Sirius was all about in his orange vest and bell.  With them past us, we finished that sector not having found anyone and then moved to the first of the larger ones.

The winds were variable and barely moving.  One minute they were creeping one way and then it would switch in another minute.  Sirius got a lot of interest in one area, but he just couldn't work it out.  I thought it was maybe scent coming across from the adjacent sector.  I didn't want to leave this first sector yet as it hadn't been finished so kept at that one.  He continued to get interest, so I had to grid the sector by both structured grind lines and then cross grided it by following loose contours.

Find #1:

Searching....

The reward for making the first find.

In my first large sector, Sirius got animated and really tried to work some scent out on three occasions, so we went back into that area. The wind was shifting back and forth and not being very helpful.  I was actually a little discouraged at how hard this was going and thinking I was racing against the clock.  When Sirius lost the scent, I ended up casting him out into a couple different directions and just like that he was back in the scent of the first missing person and bee-lined it right into him.  His first subject was Scott, who used to be on the team years ago and was my first dogs favorite person in the whole world.  Hero and Scott had a special bond, right up to the day that Hero passed away.  Scott was there to help carry Hero to the car after being put to sleep.  Scott had only met Sirius a couple times before, so he was still considered unfamiliar to him.  Scott was able to watch us coming for him from his hidden location behind a fallen tree and get some good pictures from his vantage point (some of which are in this post).  Scott was able to give Sirius a grand game of playing for his reward for finding him.  Scott was one of the two parachuters, playing the role of being impaled and deceased, so I had to treat this as a crime scene since any time you find a deceased person it's automatically considered a crime scene until police can state otherwise.  I left the area thinking I had one more person to find.

Find #2:

John managing our base of operations.

After finishing that sector, I moved to my next one.  I set my compass heading, restarted Sirius, and headed out.  This time, very quickly, Sirius started getting scent.  But again, he couldn't work it out with the wind conditions.  We crested a ridge and Sirius took off into fresh strong scent heading up a drainage and out of sight.  He came back like a linebacker and gave his indication that he had found someone by jumping on me.  It practacly knocked me down, so I knew for sure he had this one.  I followed him up the drainage and came across not one, but TWO people huddled together at the base of a fallen tree.  It was Eric and his son playing the role of some regular public people who had seen the parachuters come down and had hiked in to find them themselves but ended up getting lost as well.  Eric was also a special person to have hiding for Sirius and I because he had also been on the team when I first joined.  I modeled the training of Hero after his dog Skylar, with biting a batting cage ball on my belt for the indication that the dog had found someone.  Eric had not been out in the field either and I think had only met Sirius once, if at all, long ago when he was just a puppy.  Eric had also been there on Hero's last day to help carry him to to the car and drove Lori and I to have Hero taken care of.  So here I was with three people found, but one more to go...the second parachuter after directing these two wayward people back to the nearest road.

Find #3:

Lifting up the litter after packaging them.

While continuing on in the sector that Eric and his son were in, I got a radio call to divert to my last large sector saying that a parachute had been spotted in the trees in a general area.  So we left for that sector and developed a plan to search that one.  This one was a little trickier because I had an undefined boundary to work against and was pace counting into the sector about five hundred meters to grid it.  Eventually Sirius caught some scent, couldn't work it out, and then when we got a little furthur into it he nailed it down and did another great recall refind leading us back to the final missing person.  This subject was the closest one to the teams base camp, and was complaining of a leg injury and head impact.  So I called in for an EVAC team complete with medical kit and stokes basket to litter her out.  Sirius and I waited and rested and played.  This one took me a while to figure out where I was to call in the coordinates, but I was able to do it and help direct the team where to go.  Soon enough the whole team came tramping thorugh the woods with the litter, packaged up my last missing person and carried her out.  Sirius was happy to see so many people coming through the woods towards him.  He was praised and patted by everyone and he got to tug with his frisbee with whoever was nearest.  The last thing to do was draw my map and debrief.  We were done in 5 hours.

Heading out of the wood with our last missing subject packaged up.

The Next Day:

Sirius and I with our last find, Miriam.

The next morning it felt like a truck had run me over...TWICE.  Hiking about with 28 pounds on your back up and down ravines and hopping creek-beds is quite a workout.  But it was time to conduct a test on a newer member, Aaron and Grom.  So I headed out to Great Meadow to do his Open Field assessment that morning and right when I got there our team was paged for a search.  It was only the day after certifying...I should be resting, not conducting a test...and certainly not going out on a search...but I couldn't say no.  I had everything with me, I was already dressed in my uniform, and my car was gased up...I just didn't have Sirius.  So I was going to head home to get him and had just canceled the test when the page came in that the missing person was found.  So I was able to do Aaron and Grom's Open Field as originally planned.