Hot Weather

[Daryl]

We have just had a spate of really hot weather in the UK (which is pretty unusual) which has no sparked off a few questions and queries from multiple search dog units in the UK.

Do units have Hot Weather Policies with regard to working their dogs safely whilst searching or whilst giving demonstrations?

Have people identified maximum working temperatures for dogs? For the safety of the dog and also the viability of scent detection?

[Robert Bradley]

I'd be very interested in people's thoughts on this as well.

Being me; not because of the dog's safety, but because of the affect on the "viability of scent detection" as Daryl puts it.

Did many of you train/search in the hot weather? At what time? Did it have a noticeable effect on the dog's behaviour? What about on it's ability to detect the scent? How did you compensate for this?

Not knowing much; I assume the dog wouldn't work as long, it would range less, it wouldn't pick up the scent as easily and handlers would be doing much tighter "sweeps" ensuring the dog covered more of the ground - but I'm guessing... over to you.

[Daryl]

I have been informed that scent will be affected more by wind than by high temperatures, therefore whilst the scent will go up (if its still) it will also pool around the scent source.

However if there is a wind the scent will move with that firstly and will then go up secondly.

In answer to strategy, I would expect teams to complete slightly smaller sweeps, but would only work for short durations with equal time for breaks.

We need to try and educate people that the best time for a K9 to search is at night or first/last part of the day, that isn't to say that they can't be used in the middle part of the day....