Hello

[Pennypat]

I hope you don't mind being onyour forum. I was doing a project in school and a nice man form mountain rescue dogs helped me by telling me about how they do exams and things for being a dog handler in the snow. Mrs Gilbert thats my teacher sid it was such a good project by everyone we are doing it again and i said I wanted todo dogs agin but she said I had to choose someother sort of dog and I found you. Can you tell me what sort of training you do and the sort of exams you do. Do you have a teacher like Mrs Gilbert to teach you ( i hope not cos she is strict).
thank you very much
Penny

[StuartL]

Hello Penny!

The work we do is very similar to Mountain Rescue. Where Mountain Rescue look for people hurt or lost in the mountains and hills we, as part of Lowland Search Dogs, look for people hurt or lost in the other parts of the UK. Our dogs are pets at home and live with our families every day. They are trained to look for the smell of people and to come back and tell us (for example by barking) when they find someone.

Just like you we have lots of teachers, some are strict and some aren't. To learn lots it's best to have a combination of strict teachers and nice teachers. Mrs Gilbert may be strict but I'm sure she's doing everything she can to teach you everything you could possibly need to know!

Depending where you are you may be able to get your parents to find a local search dog group. Get them to look at the LSDogs and NSARDA web pages to see if there's a group near you. Depending on the group they may be able to use yourself and your parents in an exercise and you'll be able to get photos etc for your school project. It does depend how busy they are and what training they're currently doing.

Good luck in your project and be patient with Mrs Gilbert, she IS trying to help you

Stuart