Guests

What to Expect as a Guest

Night One

Congratulations! You have been invited out as a guest for a meet-and-greet. You will meet with Evelyn (membership director) along with the team and our K9’s. The meet-and-greet is designed to provide information on the process, what we do, and allow you to train with our members. Please use this page to gain information on what to expect, how to dress, and guidelines. At the meet-and-greet, you are considered a guest.

Titles

• Guest: a person who is invited to training (~4-6 weeks), observes training, and decides if search and rescue is right for them.
• Probationary Candidate: a person who is in early stages of training (~3 months), working towards completing preliminary requirements, and potentially determining if our team is a good fit.
• Candidate: a member who is in training, has passed all preliminary requirements, and working to complete the final requirements to become operational.
• Operational/Red Hat: a member who has completed all training and passed all evaluations to become an operational, full searching member.

What to Wear

Many guests have never been in the woods before, let alone the woods in winter. To ensure your safety, please use a three-layer system. Which includes:

1. Base Layer: tight wool or synthetic layer tight to the skin, avoid cotton, to wick away sweat.
2. Mid-Layer: fleece, down, wool, or synthetic sweatshirt/jacket to insulate.
3. Outer Shell: thick coat to block wind and water.
4. Other: 
   1. Extremeties: gloves, wool socks, hat to insulate.
   2. Warmers: hand warmers, toe warmers to heat
   3. Boots: preferably hiking boots or shoes with treats

What to Bring

Please bring a phone, flashlight (handheld, and not your phone flashlight), and water.

Physical Fitness

Please be prepared to be standing, hiking in the woods off trail, walking through brambles/thorns, crossing small creeks, and hiding in the woods at night.

Guidelines

We train very seriously since our trainings may determine life or death for a missing person and we ask you to take our training seriously too. As a precaution, we ask you to simply respect the following guidelines to protect our members, our searches, and yourself.

1. Social Media: we know this is a very exciting time, however, we ask you to not post about our training locations or post as a member (as you are a guest).
2. Sensitive Information: our operational members keep their searches private, however, if you happen to overhear information about a search, please do not repeat the information as our searches are sensitive.
3. Working with the K9’s: please ask to pet the K9’s in the parking lot, but once the dog is working, you may not speak to the dog or pet the dog, as it is a distraction. Additionally, some of our dogs will jump to indicate they have found their subject. It is very rare, but in the off-chance a dog jumps on you, do not reprimand or push them off. Again, it’s very rare, but at night, the dogs may not see their handler and may indicate to you instead. 
4. Working with the Members: please ask questions about searching, the process, and all the other interesting topics of search and rescue, however, some members will try and concentrate while their dog is working. If they ask you to hold onto your questions until the end, please respect them as they are not trying to be rude, but to focus on their dog.
5. Dog Age Restriction: we have a maximum cut-off age of 2 years old for our K9s with no exceptions. It takes 2 years to full train a search and rescue (SAR) K9, so we don’t want a K9 to become operational, then retire soon after. We also do not allow K9’s that search for other objects (such as pets, electronics, drugs, nose work, etc.). 

Congratulations on your first night and we hope this page provides helpful information to prepare our guests to be successful!