American Search & Rescue Dog Sport Seminar

Are you interested in a new exciting activity to do with your dog?

Your dog can be taught to trail family members!

Trailing can be a fun and more sophisticated game of hide and seek with your family and could be used in a real emergency.

• In many communities, limited police resources mean that they are not able to respond to lost person calls as in a timely manner.
• In many communities, volunteer SAR teams do not have the human and canine skills readily available to assist.
• In the case of a large scale emergency situation, outside help may not be available but your own dog will likely be present and can be trained to help.

This seminar can help!

Your dog can be a custom family SAR dog ready and able to find relatives with dementia, autistic elopement or just plain lost. For those with close ties to a social community, religious community, neighborhood, etc. your dog can also be made ready and able to find members in your affiliation.

Are you already doing scent work with your dog but need help with blood tracking starting through problem solving?

• Interested in (actual) large game recovery?
• Is your dog going too fast?
• Is your dog struggling on the longer aged tracks?
• Do you know how to prepare your dog for heavy rain while track ages?
• Want to prepare your dog for the JGV (https://www.jgv-usa.org/) and/or United Blood Trackers (https://www.unitedbloodtrackers.org/) tests?

This seminar can help!

Day 1: Experienced competitor/trainers will give presentations on all the aspects of sport search and rescue. Including how to achieve the optimal level of handler focus for obedience elements while also having subject loyalty and independent search.

Days 2 and 3: Participants will choose a single scent discipline to work and will separate into groups covering tracking, mantrailing, or area search. Dog teams will have hands-on personalized instruction and all participants will be taught how to further develop dogs after the seminar.

This seminar is recognized by the American Rettungshunde Sport Association (ARSA) and will cover obedience, dexterity, tracking, mantrailing, and area search work.

Event Trainers:

Elizabeth LaPointe: Liz has been active in K9 SAR for nearly 15 years certifying dogs in tracking, trailing, rubble search, live-find search and human remains detection.  She is a certified Training without Conflict trainer (Ivan Balabanov).  She is a current member of Canine Alert Search Teams; one of the 2 International Rescue Dog Organization (IRO) members in the United States; a prior founding member of Search Dog Organization of North America; the current co-training director of Massachusetts Canine Response Team (MACRT) and the founder of Canine Search Initiative.  She is currently working 4 certified K9s focused on human remains detection. She has assisted in the organization and running of 3 IRO-RH trials and has titled 3 different K9s in the RH program in live find, rubble, and tracking.

Melissa Stagnaro: Melissa has a background in competitive obedience, protection sports, and tracking. She has titled at championship or the advanced level in multiple dog sports with diverse breeds specifically multiple protection sports, tracking, area search, rubble, freestyle, conformation, dock jumping and has titled/tested/worked in blood tracking, weights pull, agility, nose work, versatile gun dog tests, shed antler hunting, rally obedience, and animal acting. She taught competitive obedience for over 15 years, has been active in dog sports for the last 30 years, and man trailing for the last 5 years. She has attended 2,300 hours of man trailing education for law enforcement, civilians, and sport enthusiasts. She had the first IPO-R beginner man trailing nose work pass in the U.S. with her Dutch Shepherd, has certified her young German Shorthaired Pointer through the GAK9 program, when it was the only game in town, titled a lurcher in competitive tracking, and started two rehomed coonhounds for SAR man trailing.