Skye heads out Land Rover Training

This month Skye managed to tag along on a Llanberis team Land Rover Training Day. I was helping to run the driver training for the team and Skye spent the day in the back of the Land Rover with occasional runs behind!

Skye - the story so far

I have set up this Blog to record Skye as she grows up and (hopefully) trains as a search dog. She was born in January of 2009 and is a Border Collie. I bought her from a working sheepdog centre near Worcester when she was 6 weeks old. The photos show her as a bundle of fluff playing in our living room at about 8 weeks, in March asleep in her crate and in May ripping up the heather in our garden! A strong play drive is an important part of the training as that is what will motivate her to find people.

Most of SARDA dog handlers are a Full Member of a Mountain Rescue Team.
Once your application has been passed by the Committee you are required to body for six months. In this time you are monitored to ensure that you have the time and the commitment needed to train a dog. The bodying period also allows you to experience what a real casualty may go through and also the way different dogs find you in relation to the wind and where you are hiding.

I have recently completed this period and become a Trainee handler and I am now preparing Skye for an acceptance and stock test. This involves an obedience test without sheep and then a further test in a field of sheep to make sure that she will ignore them.

Training is divided into stages which have to be passed before going on to the next one. It takes roughly 2 – 3 yrs to get a dog on the Call Out list and all members of the Association are involved in the training of each dog – bodies, qualified dog handlers and assessors. As a trainee I am on the Call Out list in order to navigate for a qualified dog handler to gain experience and get used to being woken up at 3am to search a cold wet hillside!