Search and Rescue/The Dual Deployment K9

There has been, and currently exists great discussion as to the deployment of SAR dogs which have been conditioned to locate both live, as well as deceased victims. Each discipline serves an important, necessary, vital role under the umbrella of SAR, and each has specific function as well as deployment protocol.

To begin, when deploying the dog which has been conditioned to locate both live and deceased human beings, there is a conflict of direction within the dog. Attempting to separate the dog from this conflict by the use of separate commands for each aspect, though often seen as "the" answer, becomes moot once the search process begins. The dog is deployed in the same relevant environment, and basically the same protocol are followed, mind the often presence of various hardware. When the dog begins to search after being conditioned to locate either odor base, the dog then continues to search for either odor base, and will respond to the first approached.

Contrary to the popular approach, you simply can not correct the dog for locating and alerting to the presence of one odor just because the search has been initiated for the other. Doing so will prove detrimental in training/working the dog when you wish for them to reliably locate and alert on such odor, as you have, in fact, already corrected him, in essence telling the dog "this odor no longer is what we will search for", hence a major conflict in working has been instilled by the handler.

We also can not reliably and responsibly depend upon a different alert activity from the dog based upon the particular find. Understanding there are no perfect handlers, and there are no perfect dogs, it is only rational to understand that either makes mistakes.

If the handler misinterprets the dogs alert, or the dog exhibits an alert contrary to the normal alert for the odor which he has found, this may be a result of stress, anxiety, frustration, or fatigue. At this point, this alert will be taken by the handler and SAR ICS as justification to progress to the next tier of rescue in that particular location in the attempt to remove the victim.

Secondly, taking into account the aforementioned contradictions, one must address deployment issues with these particular K9 Teams.

The location of live persons as opposed to that of deceased persons are two completely separate and opposite missions undertaken by SAR Teams. The number one priority of any Search and Rescue team must be the preservation of human life. Only after all possibilities of locating all surviving victims (RESCUE) have been exhausted must the command level decision be made to begin the detection and location of the deceased (RECOVERY).


If these separations in mission responsibility and deployment protocol are not made, countless issues will plague the search effort. If there is any event which can be viewed as a mass casualty event (plane crash, train derailment, tornado, hurricane, building collapse, flooding, bombing, etc.), the assumption of and prior planning for the protocol of the search to be handled accordingly must account for the implementation and utilization of two (2) separate missions: Rescue and Recovery.

If the dog which is cross conditioned for both live and deceased persons is deployed, the percentage of possibilities for the dog to alert on the deceased are just as high as for the possibilities of the dog to alert on trapped, live victims. We do not know at the time of the cross conditioned dog's alert if this is a still living victim, or one who has perished during the event. The result of this, since only the dog knows what they have alerted on and why, is that valuable resources are now devoted to the uncovering and removal of debris in order to locate that on which the dog has alerted.

Foregoing concerns of any litigation stemming from the liability of a victim in critical condition actually expiring while we are mistakenly devoting necessary resources to remove the deceased, the greater consideration is that the moral and ethical obligations to the victim's family that we have taken on by performing SAR work will now never be met.

Though we must hold the location and respectful removal of deceased persons as a high priority, it can in no means interfere or even delay the location and rescue of those victims still alive. By doing so, we have lost the primary focus and intent of Search and Rescue - to save human lives.

The decision in such an event to change our mission priority from Rescue to a mission dedicated to Recovery is a directive given by the SAR ICS. This decision can only be made based upon a compilation of various mitigating factors, taking into account the type of event, the severity or intensity of the event, the possibilities of survivors, and the amount of time which has transpired since the onset of this particular event.

Those individuals currently operating with K9s conditioned to locate both live and deceased victims will ultimately bring peril to those who may have otherwise been located and rescued by the mission-specific team. Essentially, SAR ICS faces two (2) separate missions, which translates into the necessity of deploying two (2) separate yet equally important types of dog teams, but to deploy each only as appropriate.

The common preface of “but my dog can” is contradictory to the mission, purpose and collective goals of SAR; to preserve human life. The K9 handler who once educated, chooses to undertake a conditioning regime which promotes the ideas of training to locate both live and deceased persons are engaging in the selfish act of depriving SAR ICS with complete definition of their alerts, and most importantly, creating a working environment which proves inefficient and ineffective in the timely location and preservation of that human life.