A Bit Chilly on the Hill

Freezing weather and travel chaos; essential travel only?  As the rest of the UK ground to a halt and other less hardy types cancelled their plans for the weekend, SARDA Wales carried on with plans for the December training weekend.

As I sat in my warm house on Friday evening I watched as the Facebook updates came in with people cancelling their plans to attend.  Best excuse of the weekend?  “I have to look after my friend’s pigs”!  I went bed thinking it might be a struggle getting up and about at 05:00 the next morning, and it was.

Car de-iced and off we go!

First indication this might be a less well attended event was the availability of parking spaces at the Old Schoolhouse in Rhyd Ddu, usually the Saturday morning arrivals have to park on grass verges or on the railway station car park.

With a relatively small attendance it was decided we would mostly all stick together and venture up the Rhyd Ddu path towards Snowdon (no, not all the way).  Leaving behind the trailing handlers and their dogs to go and do their own thing we set off for a nice walk.

But first we welcomed our potential new member Ruth.  Ruth has a four month old black lab so should fit in well around here and is looking forward to getting into 6 months of bodying.

We found a likely looking spot to the North of the path and set up our office for the day.  A fair bit of snow about with a few drifts in places.  Your correspondent, once he’d got his breath back, was duly deployed to a likely looking hiding spot.

Down the hill, climb the wall by the stream, cross another smaller stream, wade through the drifts.  Find a bit of cover. Camp mat out, bivvy bag open, climb inside out of the freezing rain.

All good so far……

First arrival was Max, followed closely by Gareth.  Brief play with the ball and then Gareth noticed a little injury – a tear of the dew claw.  Bleeding quite a bit and staining the snow.  Max needed TLC for the rest of the day.

Next arrival is Moss with Antony.  No Jelly Babies!  One normally looks forward to these two finding you!  Out comes the hi-visibility yellow ball. One throw of about five yards and the ball has disappeared.  We just couldn’t find it anywhere, it’s a mystery.

So first job of the day done and Barry, after another ball search, sets out to return to the office.  It’s hard to see where to step when there is snow about covering the smaller streams.  Consequently Barry was not all that surprised to find his leg going in up to the thigh.  Discovering his leg was stuck in the mud was a little bit more annoying.  The team back at the office noticed that Barry hadn’t moved for a while and concluded he was stuck.  Once they’d finished chuckling they got on the radio to see if he was OK.  In his cheery voice Barry informed them of his predicament.  Barry now has visions of having to be rescued by the team which would be bad enough but the prospect of receiving an award at the AGM dinner (a smelly stuffed dog in a cracked glass cabinet) gave him renewed energy and he finally managed to break free with help just 20 metres away.  Shame avoided.

A bit more messing about on the hill and a fair few younger dogs being introduced to each other meant we had quite a nice morning although some handlers may have been losing patience with some of the little pups.

So, day over.  De-brief.  Dinner – lasagne and apple crumble from our guest chef Tom. Great job.

Then off to the pub for the Gareth and Geraint show.  Why do tourists believe everything these two say?  Translating the Welsh names of mountains, “it means pointy mountain” was bad enough but telling them we had one member lost out on the hill who we were going to look for after a few more pints was a bit beyond the pale!

Sunday morning and we’re all of to Geraint’s place.  A bit of training in the fields and some obedience and stock testing was the order of the day.  Training was interrupted by a rather large crashing noise as a young lady failed to take an icy corner and collided with Geraint’s wall.  A fair bit of damage to the car but all the people were OK and Geraint’s wall remained intact unlike the section on the other side of the gate that was crashed into a couple of weeks before.

We did a bit of civic duty by spreading a hefty load of sand onto the road.  A bit more training then coffee and cake.

So, a fine and eventful weekend.  Could have stayed at home with the TV and Playstation but had a grand old time in the great outdoors.

Looking forward to January

Cheers and best wishes for the festive season to everybody.

BB

Doggin' in the dark!

Had a great last minute training session with Cazz and Tess last night in Parc Menai... there's some open woodland at the back of the industrial estate which proved perfect. Cazz and Tess have their full lowland assessment coming up in March, fingers crossed.. so having moved back recently to North Wales it's good to get out training with the two of them again. I've lived with Cazz and Tess a couple of times in different shared houses, so have worked with them right from the beginning of their training - Cazz was the one who brought me along to SARDA Wales 3.5 years ago, time flies when you're having fun!
So anyway, we went and did three different searches, tis completely different working at night.. obviously it doesn't change 'the game' but as a handler you have to be more aware I guess of what ground you have covered, where your dog is, the strange looks you get from late night dog walkers! Cazz said it helps with your confidence, which I can imagine... both in terms of you and your dog as a team and in yourself.
I brought my friend along who is visiting for a few days, Henne, she had always heard me talk about my doggin' days but think she really enjoyed seeing Cazz and Tess work and being a body herself... in fact there was even mention of trying to find people in the Cotswold's to train with!! Afterwards we went to pizza and pint, always a good end to an adventurous evening!

Body Emmer

Happy dayze!

A fantastic weekend just gone! 

It was our November assessment weekend, we had four dogs up for assessment:

1. Simon and Poppy, lowland novice

2. Sally and Spin, full mountain

3. Jim and Star, novice mountain

4. Helen and Cluanie, novice mountain

As a team it has been decided that for successful grading a dog and handler team are required to pass 4 out of 5 areas over the weekend. We have a long weekend from Thursday night until Sunday afternoon - allowing 2 areas a day, with the joker card played on a Sunday if needed. It was a tense but happy weekend with working and playing hard throughout.... weather held out fantastically as did the handlers nerves, all passed which is fantastic. Of course there were moments of worry and each handler had something that tested them - however, if it was easy everyone would do it right?! 

The weekend for me started on Thursday night meeting everyone that could make it at pizza and a pint in Llanberis - highly recommended! We tracked from there over to the centre in Caethro, lit a fire, opened a few beers and caught up with everyone's news from the past month. The next day was a bright an early start, bacon and egg butties at 7am, briefing at 8am and then on to our areas for the days training. My first day was spent at cwm ffynnon... I had a great craggy hiding spot in the centre of an area set up for Jim and Helen, the views were fab and I was nicely hidden... not that you can hide from your smell... both dogs found me, as a body you are very relieved! Second day, I was bodying for Simon's final area in afon Nant, near Nant Peris - I was a little jaded so a lowland area with little hill walking was much appreciated! After Simon successfully completed his final area, Rob asked if i'd do some little dog training with himself and Sky with Roly kindly looking on with advice and tales of old! Sky did some great 'C' searches and with a little running I'd started to wake up! We headed from there over to cwn dyli to watch Sally's final area of her full mountain grading... I have to say for someone with a nasty flu bug, you couldn't tell from a distance watching... where strength was lacking determination took over and it was fantastic to watch a dog and handler at the top of their game. I've bodied for Spin since she was a pup and to see her make the top grade was probably a highlight of the weekend... 8's and 9's across the board - the team did well! Can you believe that after all that excitement I actually went to bed at 20:00 hours and didn't stir till 07:00 the next day... 11 hours sleep and full of beans I was ready to go again. Third and final day was spent in cwm dyli left, bodying for Jim's final area... question Beech asked 'you feeling fit today?' my answer '11 hours sleep - you bet ya!' Ok, maybe i didn't think that quite through... I tracked from the view point to the top of the pipeline, I think i'd only just recovered by the time Jim got to me... he of course was fine and seemed to skip on higher once he left me... you don't realise how fit these guys are! Given the choice of backtracking back to the viewpoint and up heartbreak hill, i decided to carry on from my spot over to Pen y pass and go the road way back down - which was much fun and love a little solo walking mission! Once back at the view point I was delighted to hear both Jim and Helen had passed their areas and thus we had a full house of success over the weekend! We went back to the centre at Caethro for tea and medals... even better it was RAF and Sue's birthday so cake was involved too! Everyone left tired but happy... I think that was one of my favourite weekends to date!

Cwm dyli after Jim and Helen passed their novice mountain assessment with all bodies and assessors

SARDA is a family that I am proud and happy to be a part of... especially at times like these!

Until next month, body Emmer signing out!

Snow on the mountains

I took Skye for a walk up the Miners Track on Snowdon this morning and took these photos of the snow on Snowdon. It all looks very pretty and is perhaps a promise of winter to come? With more snow forecast tomorrow night axes and crampons might well need to be on the gear list for the mountains this weekend!

Posted by Rob Johnson.

Dog Days?

Dog Days

So, it’s been a long tiring week, banging my head on the walls of my office in the city and looking out of the window at the building site across the road.  Sometimes the bureaucracy and daft processes just get you down and you see no logical reason for doing things the way you have to.  These are the Dog Days – a stagnant period with a dull lack of progress.

Then comes the weekend and a whole different style of Dog Days!  As our friend Emmer suggests in an earlier post, these are the Doggin’ Days (see Emmer’s post if this requires explanation).  The perfect antidote to the Dog Days at work…..

We have clarity on our purpose; to get dogs and handlers trained to the high standards required for providing a vital search and rescue service done entirely by volunteers.

We have a set of procedures and stages that are proven to work and allow us to monitor progress towards our purpose.

We have a great group of committed people all working to that common purpose.

We have the character and credibility to inspire trust in each other.

We take time to reflect and acknowledge there is always room for improvement.

So, it’s been a long tiring weekend, doing something useful in the country and looking around without windows at the spectacular scenery in Snowdonia.  Feeling uplifted because we’ve got some very useful work done and marked some significant progress.  Now back to those Dog Days… staring out of the window and looking forward to next time.

See you in November folks!

Tester from dogsbody Emmer....

Dear all,
Please excuse me while i have a go at this blogging malarkey... you'd think I'd be more ofay (not sure how you spell that, Barry says my spelling is terrible) spending all day on a computer but this is my first ever blog post! Hopefully the first of many, I hope to entertain you all with comical stories of the dogging world. Maybe I should explain that first, 'dogging' is the term we use for going training with the dogs... SARDAing doesn't quite have the same ring to it!
We had a great weekend just gone, I was bodying for the Lowland dogs on Saturday and little dogs on Sunday... Just realised how much lingo we use! So Lowland dogs, please correct me if I'm wrong anyone out there but as a body I see it is used for the lowland areas, i.e. urban searches, forest paths, open lowland area... and the little dogs are in there first stages of training - learning what the 'game' is about. So on Saturday I found myself at Dudley Park near Waunfawr in a variety of places, the most comical probably being half way up a tree. It's fantastic watching the dogs search for you up a tree as they can't see you they have this confused expression on their faces as they've found the source of the strongest scent but no-one is there, after a couple of times circling me, they went back to their handler and then all was revealed - you just gotta look up dogs!! Is quite hard playing ball up a tree though! Sunday was great fun we were about a mile up the Rhyd Ddu path up to Snowdon, running round and screaming like a loony with the little dogs. There was three dogs training; Scout, Guinness and Max - Max had come over from the Isle of Mann to train. All left, more excited, a bit further on in their training but tired than when they had started. I knew exactly how they felt on the tiredness front, 'twas a great weekend but you need a month to recover before the next one!!
So that was the first blog... testing, testing, one, two, three!
Body Emmer

SARDA Assessment Form - Categories (the alternative view)

Tidying up some paperwork recently, we found this alternative take on the Assessment form, written by a previous dog handler, quite a few years ago....

1. Initial search strategy:

1. Talks with God
2. Talks with Angels
3. Talks to himself and dog
4. Argues with dog
5. Loses argument with dog

 

2. Ranging:

1. Leaps mountains in a single bound
2. Leaps areas in a single bound
3. Will range as required
4. Runs in front of handler
5. Walks behind handler

 

3. Directional control and natural quartering:

1. Dog able to fly
2. Dog navigates by stars or map and compass
3. Will go anywhere handler indicates
4. Won't leave handlers side
5. Won't leave handlers vehicle

 

4. Quality of dog's find:

1. Is faster than a greyhound
2. Is as fast as a greyhound
3. Would you believe a slow greyhound
4. Doesn't recognise rabbits
5. Scared of rabbits

 

5. Reading of strike and find:

1. Gives casualties condition from dogs indication
2. Number and names of casualty from indication
3. Recognises and responds to dogs find
4. Ignores dogs indication
5. Punishes dog for barking frantically

 

6. Indication and willingness to take handler to body:

1. Stronger than a locomotive
2. As strong as a locomotive
3. Stronger than a Snowdon Mountain Railway locomotive
4. Almost as strong as a Hornby locomotive
5. Electrocutes itself when chewing Hornby sets

 

7. Coverage of Search Area:

1. Better than an Eagle
2. Better than a Hawk
3. As good as a Hawk
4. Worse than a Budgie
5. Chases Budgie around it's cage

 

8. General Reading of Dog's actions and Handlers Response:

1. Walks on water
2. Keeps head above water
3. Washes with water
4. Drinks water
5. Passes water in emergencies

 

9. Does Maintenance and Performance:

1. More powerful than a shire horse
2. As powerful as a horse
3. Almost as powerful as a horse
4. Chases horses
5. Chases own tail

 

Jim Davies

 

Former SARDA Wales dog handler Jim Davies qualified Max and Jack as Mountain Search dogs, before retiring Jack due to injury.

Fundraising Star

Josh with Search Dog Fly

Thanks to a fantastic effort by Josh Roberts who completed the Cader Idris mountain race and raised £140 for SARDA Wales. Josh and his family are great supporters of SARDA Wales as his aunt, Angela has also taken part in fundraising activities and his grandfather, Elfyn, regularly helps out with the training events and call outs. 

Just Giving Now Online

We have now set up a Just Giving web page so that anyone who would like to make a donation can do so quickly and easily online. You can choose any amount to suit you and can choose between one off donations or regular monthly donations. Have a look here: http://www.justgiving.com/sardawales

New SARDA Blog

This is the new SARDA Wales Blog. Here we will be able to post our latest news and keep you upto date with everything the team has been upto.