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Written by Graham Dalley
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Tuesday, 11 December 2012 20:40 |
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Its now nearly 12 months since I began training my dog Holly a rescued Collie/Springer cross and what a hard twelve months it has been. She is being trained as an air scent dog to find lost people by picking up their scent on the wind. In Patterdale last January she started puppy classes with S.A.R.D.A.England(Search and Rescue Dog Association) which involved basic obedience commands like heal,sit,stay, speak,shut up. She was rubbish and was more interested in sniffing and running round in circles, which actually she was very good at.
S.A.R.D.A. have a professional dog trainer Jacky who volunteers to help us with problems and puppy training. She also teaches us, the handlers, how to train a dog. After this first weekend Holly and I both collapsed with exhaustion 3 days of continuous training takes it out of you but it does give you the grounding that you need to continue to train for the next two years.
Normal training regime entails training with other dog handlers and dogs bodies (volunteers who get cold for us) an extra evening each week and a Sunday morning. Its an extra evening because we both have to continue our normal M.R. training. Each month there is a national training weekend of three days where we are assessed and guided in our development.
Holly has grown over the last year and has gone from being a daft pup to being a daft adult who still sniffs and runs round in circles but she can also do as she is told and works like mad. She has completed all her puppy training and has passed her Registration and Stock tests and is now at the end of her Stage 1 adult dog training.
She enjoys working but finds it hard to ignore her instincts which tell her to sniff birds out and chase them (which she loves doing) but she hunts well and naturally sweeps over large areas smelling the air for human scent. Her reward for finding people, is a toy and a fight and watching me trying to catch her up.
She will make a great search dog one day but we have a long way to go before then, full of adventure and fun for both of us.
Graham Dalley D.T.L. and Trainee dog handler. |
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 December 2012 22:37 |
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A new site for training material |
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Welcome to TrainMR - Rossendale & Pendle Mountain Rescue Team's training system.
The aim of this website is to create a single repository for all training material and information useful to team members and trainees.
Training is roughly categorised to give access to blog entries for Medical, Ropes, Vehicles and Navigation. More will follow as the site grows. There's space for photos - maybe the ones that don't make it to the public site or ones that tell a story of something that happened at an event, training session or even a social.
I need help with this though. I need you all to think about content. What can we put on here that is useful to us all? Do you have any notes from a training session you have run? Keep it coming and I'll try to make sure it goes on the site. |
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Log in and look over on the left panel. The user menu gives you access to a few useful tools. You can edit your own personal details, including a nice photo for us to laugh at! |
| You can also submit articles and websites you think should go on the site. These will be moderated before they appear to everybody else. |
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Log in and look over in the right column
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Polls can be used to help us gather information which might inform future training sessions, or help work out whether prior training fulfilled its objectives.
Click on an option and then the 'Vote' button. |
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