It is a freezing January morning. So cold that your skin tingles and feels like it’s on fire. But the dogs are so, so eager. Not just eager, but gagging to be on the move. This is going to be so much fun… dog-think.
What’s not to like about finding an injured human high on a desolate hill, running down the hill to drag your handler back to the spot, and get rewarded with a chewy toy when the job’s done? You couldn’t dream up a job like this. Pure bliss… ends dog-think.
While this thought process is surging through every dog’s synapses a gaggle of dog handlers is standing around, stamping feet, and blowing into their cupped hands in an attempt to stay warm in this bone-chilling temperature.
They share jokes about last night’s boozy outings, the football match result, or what was so pathetic about last evening’s telly to keep their mind’s off the stone-cold temperature.
We are close to the border between England and Scotland, next to Hadrian’s Wall, the stone barrier between two warring kingdoms, where Caledonian barbarians and Romans clashed head-on back in 122CE, when no holds were barred and no prisoners were taken.
In the midst of the rugged terrain, only a few metres from where we are gathered is Vindolanda, the well preserved remains of an ancient Roman fort. One of the many that are located at strategic positions along the 73-mile-long coast-to-coast Roman frontier.
You can’t help but feel the atmosphere in places like this. It is a region drenched in ancient Anglo-Scots history, a history that means nothing to the dogs of course. They don’t dwell on the past or future. They only exist in the ‘present’, and right now they want to get going, up those hills.
Just then, a party of grim-faced volunteers ‘bodies’ march towards us. Covered head-to-foot in thick, warm, quilted jackets, gloves, hats, waterproof pants and mountain boots. Some carry winter-season sleeping bags to protect against the biting-cold. Their job today is to climb the hill, find a hidden, inaccessible spot, lie down, and wait to be found by any one of the mountain rescue dogs on this training exercise.
Solemnly, the ‘bodies’ troop up the hillside to hide in the most obscure nooks and crannies they can find. The dogs, of course, continued to gag and pull to be let free to sniff out these unfortunate casualties.
About half-an-hour later the consensus is that “They (the bodies) should all be settled in now”. The dogs are totally focussed on the hills. Their eyes, unwavering, fixed on the hilltops, are sharp and bright with anticipation, ears are rotated forward to take in any sound, tongues lol and noses sniff the air taking in each and every odour. Dogs use their right nostril primarily to detect novel, threatening, or arousing stimuli, such as adrenaline, which is what humans secrete when they’re under duress. If the smell turns out to be a familiar or non-aversive odour such as food, they shift to using the left nostril, processing each individual odour and passing that information to the relevant hemisphere of their brain. In this case, the dogs’ right nostrils are hard at work.
The handlers slip the dogs’ leads and the game is on. One-by-one, each dog leaps the stone walls and like mini guided missiles, weave their way left and right, up and across the hills. Through clumps of fern and bracken they go in a delighted frenzy of fur.
To the untrained observer, this all looks very random, but the dogs are following a well-proven zone system to search for prone, unresponsive or distressed humans. Imagine each individual body emitting a scent in the form of an invisible cone of odour that spreads through the atmosphere. The dogs detect this scent and using their super sense of smell, weave back and forth within the cone, each weave and twist becoming more and more focussed until they reach the source, successfully homing in on the target.
Merlin is first to catch a scent. Straight up the hill, a weave to the right then left, right again, stop still, head up, ears up, eyes straight ahead, he’s found something, and bang, the first target is acquired. Merlin’s first reaction is to charge back down the hillside to find his handler and ‘speak’ (bark) a verbal alert to him. He then does a quick 180 and returns to the location of the injured person, constantly looking back to make sure the handler is keeping up. Once there, he settles down right next to the body until help arrives.
Within the space of 40 minutes, every dog has found a casualty and one-by-one they repeat Merlin’s example until each body is safely in the hands of the North of Tyne Mountain Rescue Team’s dedicated volunteers.
The canine heroes are part of Northumberland’s Mountain Rescue Teams (North of Tyne MRT and Northumberland national Parks MRT) working the Northumbria Police region, covering Tyne and Wear, and Northumberland. They cover an area that includes The Cheviot Hills, that straddle the Anglo-Scottish border, the Roman Wall and the North Pennines, which is the northernmost section of the Pennine range of hills running north–south through northern England.
“Dogs are ideal for finding an unresponsive person in a remote area,” explains training coordinator Peter Thompson.
“They work on ‘air scent’ and prioritise people who are lying down or unresponsive, and once qualified, the dogs will work all over the UK.”
Surprisingly, there are only 36 dogs in the UK today who are qualified, so they are thin on the ground, and very much in demand for rescue search.
We are blessed with a temperate climate here in the UK, but one thing is for certain: it's unpredictable, especially now that the climate is rapidly changing.
Weather has a knack for taking the unwary off-guard, and a lot of people don’t realise how dangerous it is to venture unprepared into the idyllic British countryside. The great outdoors is a fantastic environment, ready and waiting to be explored by one and all. However there are far too many occasions when people venture forth with little experience, equipped with inadequate gear, and find themselves in big trouble. Especially when the weather turns unexpectedly.
Witnessing today’s training has been an eye-opener, and is testament to the sheer hard work and dedication freely given by dogs and volunteers alike, in providing a valuable but undervalued service. It is also testament to an ancient and powerful partnership between human and canine. One that has proven itself throughout the ages, and is still a strong and working bond that remains unbroken.
Check out the short video below...