K-9 One Search Drill as seen by a Ham

(GC)ARES involvement in the K9-ONE search and rescue (SAR) drill on Saturday was “a good thing” for both GCARES and the K9-ONE group. For GCARES, this drill identified another potential service area to explore, and for the K9-ONE group, this drill gave some newer “non-(GC)ARES” K9-ONE hams an example of some very good amateur radio net operating procedures.

Following a carefully pre-planned and humorous Halloween-based scenario, several search-dog based teams were deployed over assigned geographical sectors in-and-around the Michigan Renaissance Festival property in northern Oakland County. The purpose of this gathering was to drill this all-volunteer K9-ONE SAR group in their charter mission, i.e., to search for and to locate clues toward locating missing persons in unfavorable circumstances. Each team was led by a privately-owned and specifically-trained search-dog that was then followed immediately by the dog’s handler. In turn, this handler was then followed by one or more team support personnel and then, the entire team was followed a GCARES amateur radio operator. Saturday’s several teams were named for their dogs, e.g., Team Emma, Team Emmy, Team Mo, Team Tucker, Team Pepsi and Team Tigger, etc. Each team commenced its search in a specific geographical sector at a place where the quarried individual(s) was last seen (Point Last Seen) or was last known to have been (Point Last Known). The team search dogs were to pick up the scent and the trail at the PLS or PLK, and then pursue the subject as far as possible, hopefully to the successful location of the quarry.

I was initially assigned as the radio-operator for Team Pepsi, but I was quickly reassigned to Team Emmy. Team Emmy’s namesake was beautiful two-year-old tan female bloodhound. Ken, of Ann Arbor Township Fire and Rescue and the K9 Search-Rescue Team, was Emmy’s owner and handler. Since I’d never even seen a bloodhound in my sixty-five years, and had absolutely no knowledge of any dog-based search capabilities, watching Ken work with Emmy was a thrilling experience. The search support-person on Team Emmy was “Cathy”. As we were performing our search quite geographically distant from the K9-ONE base unit, I was Ken’s radio-link for any needs he had. In our case, the initial PLS scent-clue (a shovel) had apparently been inadvertently purloined earlier by a local resident, so base-contact-by-radio assistance was required. Following that matter, Ken required base-contact-by-radio to rule-out the possibility that an empty can of MONSTER JUICE was a location clue. Team Emmy also used our radio-link to address the issue of an off-property lengthy fence in connection with the search territory.

Team Emmy was not as successful as other teams, but I learned that this is one reason for deploying more than one search team. It seemed to me that heavy rain over the previous night, and Saturday’s heavy wind, would be a very understandable negative factor in this type of dog-search. However, I very surprisingly learned that rain and wind are almost non-issues for a bloodhound. “Emmy’s” involvement here was because she had been specifically trained on following a specific scent that she had been given, while other dogs are trained as “air scent” dogs, or as “cadaver” dogs. The Michigan Renaissance Festival terrain was sufficiently varied to simulate actual search conditions.

Except for a right arm scratch that I received while crawling through a heavy thicket following Emmy, I finished the search unscathed. Our search session was followed by a de-briefing session which addressed the search experience and the search results. During mid-to-late afternoon, individual dog-owners worked with other dog-owners in very specific dog-training exercises. I was impressed to see how these various dogs were trained in their areas of expertise. I am not a dog-person, but I now have great respect for search dogs and their very distinct areas of capability. I actually watched a poodle search-dog continually “pester” its too-easy-to-give-up owner-handler until the two of them finally found the target buried under leaves and brush in heavy thicket.

The Saturday weather was perfect, the food was good, and the comraderie was exceptional. During de-briefing, K9-ONE advised that (GC)ARES was a very beneficial and a very welcome supplement to their SAR program. K9-ONE also expressed an interest in building a working relationship with (GC)ARES for use during times K9-ONE was activated in the future. For this particular exercise, GCARES worked on 145.980MHz simplex, apparently the historical K9-ONE operating frequency.


Tom Root, WB8UUJ
Flushing, MI USA