Snowdonia: Search and Rescue Dog Association

The Search and Rescue Dog Association (SARDA) Wales is a specialist element of Mountain Rescue in England and Wales responsible for the training and deployment of dogs to search for missing people in the mountains and on the moorlands of Britain as well as lowland, rural and urban areas. When someone is missing in a rural or mountain environment, a dog team can be more effective than 4 teams of people, covering large areas much faster and effectively. For the handlers and trainers who bring their dogs along to be trained in this work, this work is voluntary and something that they do out of their sheer love of the great outdoors and, of course, the reward of working so closely with their dogs to search for missing people. Helen Mark joins some of the experienced, and not so experienced, dogs and handlers at the foot of Cader Idris in the Snowdonia National Park to find out what this work involves, how important it is to the search teams and to the people they help and to hear why 'one man (or woman!) and their dog are such a fundamental part of the British landscape.

Helen meets Helen Howe, an experienced trainer and handler, who explains how the dogs and their handlers are trained to search and rescue missing people. It can take around 3 years to train a new puppy to become a fully qualified Search Dog and Helen Howe explains how this is done. Between then, Helen and Cluania have had several successful finds. However, it is impossible to train a search dog without the invaluable help of a team of people called 'dogsbodies' and Helen Mark then meets up with Emmer Litt who has been volunteering herself as a 'body' for over four years. At each training event, Emmer spends her time hiding out in the hills that she loves with a good book and a flask of tea waiting to be 'found' by the dogs in training. Without the help of people like Emmer it is impossible to train a search dog because they need someone to search for and so Helen joins trainee handler, Rob Johnson, and his dog Skye as they set off in the hunt for Emmer who is now hidden somewhere under Snowdonia's autumn sunshine in the foothills of Cader Idris.

Finally, Helen joins handler Iain Nicholson and his dog, Mij, who is a trailing dog. Together they demonstrate for Helen how Mij works in a scent specific way by following the actual scent of the person that is missing. Iain and Mij work from the place that the missing person was last seen and have been extremely successful in locating people in more lowland and urban areas as well as helping out with the Mountain Rescue Teams of the Lake District.

Being part of SARDA is extremely important to the handlers and dogs that are involved but their continued presence on the British landscape is just as vital to the people that they help to rescue each year.

Presenter: Helen Mark Producer: Helen Chetwynd.