Does SAR not exist in Ontario, Canada anymore?

[elisabeth_00117]

Carmen - my dog was evaluated less than 2 months ago and was asked to join training. I can send you the evaluators name and the person who wanted to train them with their team if you like. I will not post it here though.

Also, they knew she did schH.

[carmspack]

here is one link FAQ
here is another OVERT.CA - Canine - one of my dogs was one of the founding team members --

[Wild Wolf]

I love when people pretend they know me and make assumptions about me. It's really great.

[GSDElsa]

I don't really see anyone making assumptions about you? But anyhoo.

SAR people are finnicky. One little thing (or lack of one little thing) in your email can make them disregard you.

I know on my own team, this type of feel would have been an automatic "not interested": Would love to use Hunter's exceptional working abilities to help the community, and help him grow and mature as a working dog.

Not making any assumptions, but if you at all focus on your dog and not what YOU can bring and why YOU want to be on a team they could be feeling like you have a nice dog you want to get into SAR, not you are a handler desperate to do SAR who happens to have a dog who can do the job...or, for that matter....I wouldn't even mention your dog in your initial email since by the time you're on a team and they have you trained to the point where they think you're ready to work a dog they might say Hunter is too old to start.....although every team is different in these requirements.

Regarding the bitework issue...I'm sure Canada is no different than the US. It really varies from team to team. I wouldn't be surprised if the second team does allow it since they have a dog on the team who trained with the US Military who was washed from the progam because of an impacted tooth (and bitework is the only thing I can imagine would matter if he had in impacted tooth).

[jocoyn]

Originally Posted by Wild Wolf

I love when people pretend they know me and make assumptions about me. It's really great.

I don't really see that is the case in this thread but people on SAR teams can and do make assumptions based on what they see in emails or hear in person.

Assumptions based on years of screening applicants and seeing who does and who does not pan out...and some of the "obstacles" are because those are things that cause people to opt out.

So it is not fair, and people intentionally try to be open minded but we all see the world through different glasses no matter what we do.

[Mrs.K]

Originally Posted by GSDElsa

I don't really see anyone making assumptions about you? But anyhoo.

SAR people are finnicky. One little thing (or lack of one little thing) in your email can make them disregard you.

I know on my own team, this type of feel would have been an automatic "not interested": Would love to use Hunter's exceptional working abilities to help the community, and help him grow and mature as a working dog.

Not making any assumptions, but if you at all focus on your dog and not what YOU can bring and why YOU want to be on a team they could be feeling like you have a nice dog you want to get into SAR, not you are a handler desperate to do SAR who happens to have a dog who can do the job...or, for that matter....I wouldn't even mention your dog in your initial email since by the time you're on a team and they have you trained to the point where they think you're ready to work a dog they might say Hunter is too old to start.....although every team is different in these requirements.

Regarding the bitework issue...I'm sure Canada is no different than the US. It really varies from team to team. I wouldn't be surprised if the second team does allow it since they have a dog on the team who trained with the US Military who was washed from the progam because of an impacted tooth (and bitework is the only thing I can imagine would matter if he had in impacted tooth).

We both know how "finnicky" your team really was/is.

Also, if I knew back then what I know now, I would have joined the Hampton K9 group from the very beginning and safed myself all that trouble.

Stick with Schutzhund. If they don't even send you an email "We are sorry but we have no space" it's not worth it to begin with. If you would like to do SAR, try to do the IRO RH instead.

[jocoyn]

Mrs K, you had one bad experience and that is not a fair assesment of all the teams who bust their hump and loose their vacations to go after missing people.

A lot of times, a little discomfort in getting in is not about a "closed club" but about teams having preconceived notions based in experience on who does and does not "stick". Not intentional, most folks I know try to be openminded (well, we also have a no bitework policy) but no matter what we do, experience colors our perceptions. Mass generalization is a human trait. Every dogsport person who joins, then leaves a team because it is not living up to their "dog" expectations, reinforces the generalization.

Delays in getting in may be because it is more important to get that team who is nearing certification status finished so they can be a resource. New dogs need to be started when it is best for the team as the goal is to have operational dog teams up, running, and maintained.

If the passion is with finding people more than working the dogs, they are likely to stay and do whatever the team thinks is important because they also see the dog as one of many tools and the goal is to find the missing person. A lot of times we have a search and a perfectly good dog spends the whole night in the truck because we need to use the people in other ways.

The training part is great fun! Searching, not always, not by a longshot......I can't drive by a place where we went on a search without the whole thing "coming back" in my head. The hardest being the little three year old boy found in the river. We did a stress debriefing and all that but the tears still flow everytime I think about that one. On the other hand there is no joy deeper than what you feel when you hear "they found him" "and he's alive" , especially when it is a dog made the find (often it is a ground foot team without a dog-or even a last minute reverse 911 call response).

The IRO RH is a dogsport and not adopted over here by many teams (including FEMA I think) as a viable certification for any deployable dogs. I don't know if it is or is not in Canada. There is a lot good about it and I think it would be a feather in the cap of someone with an air scent dog (mainly for a non scent specific air scent dog, certainly not for a cadaver dog or a trailing dog-and the leadership of the IRO does not even really believe trailing "works" and push footstep tracking only)

[GSDElsa]

Another thing to think about is if you are willing to totally give up schh for sar....most teams won't let you do 2 things like that at once....

[Liesje]

Originally Posted by jocoyn

A lot of times, a little discomfort in getting in is not about a "closed club" but about teams having preconceived notions based in experience on who does and does not "stick". Not intentional, most folks I know try to be openminded (well, we also have a no bitework policy) but no matter what we do, experience colors our perceptions.

This sounds a lot like SchH actually, at least when you are training with very small clubs that have very limited resources. I know in the past I've come off as not very helpful or communicative but what a lot of people don't realize is that for every 20 people that e-mail me (the club address) asking how to join, telling me their dog's life story, I get *maybe* two people that actually show up to observe training and would be lucky if one of those two came back a second time let alone make an effort to join. People bring up the 80/20 but in our case (and probably similar for SAR) it was more like 95/5....5% of the people usually taking up 95% of the time/resources getting them started and able to make the commitment. Unfortunately for newbies that really are committed it's often like swimming upstream but we were all there before and pushed through. I know some clubs are intentionally standoffish in order for newbies to have to prove themselves. I've never done SAR so I could just be blowing smoke but I wouldn't be surprised if it is similar and can certainly empathize.

Anyway, like I said earlier, I never got anywhere via e-mail but got the information and contacts I needed when I found the SAR team at a local event and showed up in person.

[jocoyn]

Your obeservations are very much similar. Actually a lot of good folks come from EMS, Fire, LE, retired military because one big issue is the idea of chain of command seems foreign to many civilians....particularly younger ones.

Hunters are also great folks. They know the woods, how to multitask with reading sign, navigating, etc. One of our most recent members is a hunter and volunteer firefighter and he is jam up good.