Working Dogs - Mountain Rescue Dogs
For centuries, the St Bernard with a small keg of brandy round his neck has been the enduring and instantly recognisable symbol of a mountain rescue dog though, in fact, none of the dogs from the famous original St Bernard Hospice ever wore any keg containing any sort of spirits. So much for popular legend. Nowadays the breeds used for this work are more likely to be German Shepherds, Labradors or Border Collies. The Swiss Alpine Club began training these dogs in earnest just after World War II. Though the human eye could never see a skier or climber covered by drifting snow or trapped by an avalanche, a dog can soon find the missing person by scent. Being ~ infinitely quicker and more accurate than any human, dogs save many man hours and it has been estimated that in winter conditions one dog is worth no less than twenty men.
In 1963, Hamish MacInnes, leader of the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team, was invited by the Red Cross to watch a dog training session in Switzerland and he immediately realised that their work could be adapted to conditions in the hills of England, Scotland and Wales, at night and in poor visibility, as well as in snow. So SARDA (the Search and Rescue Dogs Association) was born, and divided into its three regional branches in 1971. Training is rigorous and only dogs with a good grounding in obedience can go on to specialised training. Their handlers must be qualified mountaineers. All this hard, dangerous, disciplined work is undertaken on a purely voluntary basis and most of the costs are borne by the handlers themselves. As they say, ‘It is an unwritten law that every dog handler will answer a call for help at any time’.