Night training - rain, mist and fun as well as random photos

It was dark, misty and cold outside and it was passed the Munchkin's bedtime. Did you know she goes to bed at 8pm every night? Or, at least wants / tries to... This time, however, she had to stay awake as we went up to Alverstone a couple of months ago to play with some people from Mountain Rescue, KZN.

Part of my brief was also to provide a 20-minute informational lecture on K9 SAR dogs in general. Google is my friend!!! With the help of Google, I managed to put together a power point presentation. After singing the SAR dogs praises, we had to go out, in the dark and mist to find a lost 'victim'. We also attached a glow stick to her collar as it was important for everyone to be able to watch her work. 

The victim ran away to hide and after a while, I told the Munchkin to go and find the "missing person". Off we went. It was dark, cold and very misty so I couldn't see much.  As usual, we found the "missing person before he died of hypothermia; actually, as always it was the Munchkin who did the finding and all I did was walk behind her and watch her work. We also discovered that there were actually 2 wet and cold "missing people." They were very grateful that we found them.


This was an interesting search exercise. I learned a lot. Because of the layout of the land, we had to start our search with the wind behind us at about a 60-degree angle. We should have driven to the other side of the search grid but that was too difficult so we just walked.

While walking down the road the Munchkin turned back to look at the flanker and guests. She circled back to them once so I decided it was time to move off the road into the bush.It was wet, dark knee high grass, and it didn't take long before we were both soaked as well.

The wind was blowing in the wrong direction so my plan was to walk to the end of the search grid and then turn around and walk back. The Munchkin would pick up their scent on the way back. Fortunately, In true Munchkin fashion, she picked up the scent of 2 wet cold victims just as we walked passed where they were hiding.

At the start of the search area, there was a wire run full of turkeys. Oh no, I thought, the Munchkin is going get side tracked by the turkeys. As usual, I was proved wrong (I love being proved wrong), the Munchkin looked at them for a brief moment and decided that finding the human that has her toy is a much better idea...So on we continued....we had a toy to find. Then it's time for a good game of tug-of-war.

The interesting thing that I picked up is that Electra gets frustrated when the search takes too long. She comes back to me and cries. A bit of verbal encouragement usually gets her going again. We have to work on increasing the distance and length of time of the search exercises slowly so she gains confidence in her ability to find the victim and her toy.

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