Search and Rescue Dogs

　　Search and rescue dogs are dogs loved and praised by people because many times they can save human lives or property. Many people may also hope to have such a strictly trained dog by their side. Today, we will introduce the application scope and training methods of search and rescue dogs.

　　1. Application Scope

　　The working scope of search and rescue dogs is very broad, including searching and rescuing missing persons at natural disaster sites, such as earthquake ruins, building collapses, avalanches, mountains, and water surfaces. According to the rescue environment, it can be divided into mountain rescue, water rescue, and land rescue. Search and rescue dogs also undertake search and rescue work at certain crime scenes. Specifically, it includes:

　　1. Finding campers, hunters, tourists lost in the mountains;

　　2. Finding missing psychiatric patients;

　　3. Finding missing children;

　　4. Finding and rescuing drowning victims;

　　5. Searching suspicious areas that may have buried persons;

　　6. Searching avalanche sites where people may be buried;

　　7. Collapsed buildings that may have buried persons;

　　8. Identifying items; (for example, finding a piece of clothing at a crime scene suspected to be left by a criminal, letting the dog smell it first and then point out which suspect has the same scent as that clothing)

　　9. Identifying vehicles or items used by suspects;

　　10. Identifying human traces at fire scenes.

　　二、Training Methods

　　The basic training subjects for search and rescue dogs include: tracking, i.e., following the scent of the missing person; area search, i.e., letting the dog find humans within a specific area, where the person may be buried underground or in rubble; cadaver scent detection, i.e., discovering any human traces, including blood, bones, human tissues, etc.; water search, i.e., searching underwater and locating the original place of a corpse; avalanche search, i.e., finding humans buried under snow by an avalanche; natural disaster search, i.e., searching for survivors in various natural disaster sites.

　　Training also includes riding various vehicles such as helicopters so that the dogs can adapt to different transportation modes.