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Sar Seminar - Sydney


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Good job everyone!!!!. Sounds as though everyone had a great time.

River, son of Stamp, too funny.

I have to agree, Julie and Andrew (and Steve), are awesome. SARDOG gives so much and asks for so little. The two most generous people I have ever had the pleasure to call friends. I bow before them.

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Wow, what a fantastic weekend.

Gus and River are such wonderful boys. It was such a special thing to see them working.

I am so in awe. Trust, dedication, respect, knowledge and loyalty. Every team member was so inspiring with a good dash of fun and laughter thrown in.

Wonderfully informative and a great time too.

Thankyou all so much.

I hope you have a safe trip home, I just wish I could go to the Vic workshop too.

Robyn

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Back in the land of the living again :laugh: I'm not sure that I can say anything more than what has already been said

Wow what a weekend. I wish I could have spent a week with the SAR team! What an amazing and wonderful group of people.

The dogs were awesome. River and Gus are just wonderfully behaved, smart, and absolutely adore their owners. They were dream dogs to meet and anyone who meets them must leave wanting a Lab!

If I had the money I would come down to the Vic workshop as well. It was so interesting and also fun!

Now I am just working on convincing OH that living in Vic would be a great idea :(

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I had an awesome time! The enthusiasm of the dogs just blew me away, I was so impressed! I purposedly chose to be a victim to see how the dogs reacted to the victim once they found them. Thank you guys for coming and giving us such a good weekend!

And a huge thanks to Steve who helped to clarify a lot of things on training in drive and to sidoney for giving me a lift and asking the questions I am sure many wanted to!

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Hi everyone,

Well, what a really great weekend we had with the NSW attendees - to the "Training in prey drive (K9force) and our (SARDA)Search & Rescue workshop. :laugh:

A huge thank-you must go to Steve for allowing us to use his profile and facility to run this workshop and give those who attended an overview of the capabilities of an operational search & rescue dog.

We could have gone on for days..lol.

Thank you to all who attended and Steve's training in prey drive , complimented our section of the workshop. And thank you to Steve for being the best host and accomodating the 4 Sarda members and two sardogs :(

The first day was mainly theory and small demonatrations, detailing how the dogs locate on scent and choosing the right sardog etc.

The weather was superb and the areas Steve has sourced were ideal for our demonstrations, bush. creek, caves etc. At one stage I thought that Steve was going to live up to his reputation and "walk on water"...... :cry:

Unfortunately, on the second day, on his first search with Gus, Andrew tore his calf muscle and was unable to continue, SO that put myself and River as number one sar team. For the finale, we had planned a large search with both dogs working together!

After this setback it put Steve's thinking cap on..... (and what I thought was "payback time".....) :cry:

He placed the bodies in very good areas to get both the dog's expertise and mine working together. Thank you must go to those who volunteered to body for us as they do not get to see some of the work prior to being found. This final search was full of vigour from all parties and as it was in the later part of the day, the temperature was falling and getting very difficult to define the scent source. We found all 6 victims in nearly an hour - River (aka son of stamp) never stopped working 100% until the last victim was found.

Steve is now looking forward to the Vic seminar where his thinking cap is going into overdrive regarding hiding victims ... he might fool me :) but he won't fool the dog's nose..... :wink:

The whole weekend was full of learning, discussion, laughter and cheer and I hope everyone enjoyed the time as much as we all did......we would love to start a branch of Sarda in NSW :eek:

Cheers,

Julie, Andrew, Pat and Chris and big sloppy ones from Gus and River (sos)!

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K9: Thanks every one for your kind words, I had a really great time over the weekend, though Im sure you could all see that, especially when I was setting the hides... lol...

Thank you all for coming & for your never ending enthusiasm all weekend, & thanks every one who I volunteered to be bodies, I hope you got a lot out of it...

Thanks to those who helped me with the set up, taking pics etc, really took some of the pressure off leading up to the day..

& Finally thanks to Andrew, Julie, Chris & Pat, (SARDA Team), it was a lot of fun having you around & sharing the experience with you...

**************************

The weekend I feel opened up peoples minds to the world of SAR & Training in drive, a great demonstration of just how effective a dog trained through drive can be. It would easily put rest to any comment that a dog cannot be 100% reliable.

I have stated here & many places that I have trained dogs to be 100% reliable under any distraction, & have had this argued, it was nice to be able to show people dogs (other than mine) that ARE 100% reliable, & of course extremly effective.

All this completed with a method fundamentally the same as mine... Training in drive rarely requires any corrective measures, punishment or physical corrections to achieve success, so great for the dog, great for the handler....

The technical side of SAR is really interesting too, the Navigational side, organisational side, equipment etc all play a big part in a successful SAR team.

As SARDOG has mentioned, a NSW branch would be a great success, a great deal of fun & Im sure a lot easier than one would think to set up...

I look forward to the the Next one we are having in Victoria, we have a couple of places left & this one should be just as good if not better!

Anyone with interest in dogs, training or working dogs will love this seminar...

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**Large snort of amusement**

Well I'd be doing it at 1am then!

Seriously, although it'd be fun, I really can't commit the time to coordinate something like that at this stage. I was thinking of finger pointing in a DIFFERENT direction. :laugh:

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Hey Steve,

Cannot wait till you meet my Yank. Some days when I visit him in quarantine I absolutely love everything I see in him. Some days................ he worries me, no end, LOL.

He confuses me.

I am sure/hope/pray he will be OK when released from lock up.

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I sure am.

I realise now, his puppy raiser took me literally, when I asked them not to "train" him much as I would prefer to work with raw material.

Interesting nevertheless what some may consider is basic obedience.

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K9: well you know what to do, build that drive around you as high as you can in preparation....

Building the drive will be easy, channelling it, will be the fun part.

As he only has 16 more nights in lock up, in reality I will wait, until he is home. Nowadays when I take him to the airing yards, a simply take off his lead and collar, sit in a chair, and watch him for half an hour, do flat up zoomies around the yard. After he was calmed down, we do obedience training using drive. We have a few rests between and continue again. Everything is fun.

On an interesting note, his ceasless teeth chattering (reminding me of another dog, LOL-what I call payback), has lessened as we progress.

Edited by Lablover
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