Blue and Gray Search and Rescue Dogs
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Misty Sampson, president of Blue and Gray Search and Rescue, with her K9s Took, Ditto and Kitty, after a training session in 2014.
Sumac, a K9 Black Lab, is practicing airscenting to hunt for hidden simulated human remains under the house. Airscenting is a method of search and rescue that trains dogs to pick up human scents and odors without needing subjects’ samples to find them. Wind carries the scent indefinitely, and the K9s use it to find people in any terrain.
Golden retriever, Semaus, and recently certified black lab, Sumac, observing the training from the back of a trainer’s car.
Sampson holds a chewed up Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Grid Square. Each small square is a hundred meters, which covers about 2.5 acres of land. The SAR (Search and Rescue) squad uses it to measure distances around certain areas around the map, to ensure no location is missed or repeated for an efficient search.
Sampson points to the edge of one of the sectors bordering two counties, Craig CO and Roanoke CO. Sampson and the team use this map to trace their steps to track down missing persons.
Trainer Bryan Pardoe prepares Kermit, often called Kermi-LouLou, for trailing by adjusting her harness. Trailing is a form of tracking that K9s, specifically bloodhounds, specialize in by picking up odors from the ground by a person’s footsteps. These dogs are kept on leashes with their noses low to the ground to follow a missing person’s every move.
Kermi-LouLou finds trainer Vaskino after trailing for 30 minutes. Kermi used Vaskinos’ tissue to identify his odor, tracing his scent on the ground and leading him to Vaskino. It took Kermi about 20 minutes to find him.
June, Robert Vaskino’s German Shorthaired Pointer, preparing to practice air-scenting to find a missing person hiding in debris. June and Vaskino are working towards their “Live Finds” certification, which is the act of finding people while they are still living. They have been training for two years.
Members of the Blue and Gray Search Rescue Dog team. Robert Vasinko with June (far left), Kathleen Connor with Seamus, Bryan Pardoe, Allyson Lee with Floyd, Wren Walker with Sumac, Misty Sampson and Debby Thompson with Orion (far right).