Why dogs?
When a person is missing in a rural or mountain environment a dog team will be much more efiicient at finding them than a search team made up of people only. If the missing person is ill, injured or vulnerable this added speed and efficiency can make the difference between life and death. Dog teams can also operate effecively in thick cloud or darkness where people struggle.

The Dogs
We train two main types of search dog.

Air Scenting Dogs
: These dogs search areas looking for human scent particles. They do not discriminate scent ie they do not look for specific people but will look for anyone that is in the area. Once they find a person they will return to their handler, indicate with a bark or by jumping up and take their handler back to the body and get a game.

Trailing Dogs:These dogs do discriminate scent. They are given an article of the missing persons clothing and will then hunt for a trail that matches that scent. They will indicate the trail to the handler and then they will follow the trail to the missing person. Once they find the person they will indicate the find to the handler and they get a game.

The video below shows how our air scenting dogs work:


The People
We are all volunteers who enjoy working with dogs and are committed to Search and Rescue. Many of our handlers are members of Mountain Rescue or Coastguard Teams.

Dogsbodies: It is impossible to train a search dog if they have no one to search for! SARDA Wales is very lucky to have a great team of people we call dogsbodies. They turn up at every training session to lie in fields, under caravans or under boulders until the dogs find them. If you think this is something you would enjoy click here.

The Call Outs
We get called out to about 70-90 jobs a year where the dogs have been requested by the Police or by Mountain Rescue teams to help search for missing people.

To train a search dog takes about 3 years from new puppy to qualified Search Dog. You can read more about how we train our air scenting and our trailing search dogs on the training page here.

Press & Media
If you would like to feature SARDA Wales in a news story or article then get in touch with our Press Officer at: media@sardawales.org.uk

Donate online by following this link.



PO Box 10, Betws y Coed. LL24 9AH