Talking Search and Rescue with Donna Frady | Custom Canine Unlimited

Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's Source Podcast. AJ and Simon are not going to be able to join us this week because they are off in Kansas training with the Army. But today I am fortunately joined with Miss Donna Frady, who is a search and rescue canine handler. She has a lot of experience in the field, and I'm so excited for all of us to hear from her today.

Thank you for having me. My name's Donna Frady. I've been a canine handler for 7 years. I work with 3 different agencies, but we are a mutual aid canine unit for all of Northeast Georgia, Section 1 and GEMA. and I'm just pleased to be here. Thank you again for having me.

This is something we haven't even done an episode on before. I think we've kind of touched on search and rescue a little bit. I'm really excited to kind of get into the, the nitty gritty, if you will. So we'll just sort of start by telling us a little bit about how you first got involved with search and rescue, which I know there's quite a story there.

Yes, there is. It's kind of funny. You know, to start with. Back in, I think it was 2015-16, I had a little Shih Tzu, and I swore I would never get another dog. She was all I ever wanted. The Lord sent me this little 8-week-old Boxer Shepherd that I named Leah, and I had a 1-year-old grandson at the time. He's 9 now. The national forest butts up against our property. So I said, well, I've got this little working dog that's obviously a worker. I would just train her to follow and track my grandson in case he ever wanders off for anything. And when she was about 7 months old, one of my best friend's nieces came up missing. And They found her car where she had wrecked her car, her pocketbook, her phone, everything. They did not find her. But as far as I know, there was no canine involved in searching for her. And I couldn't help but think if mine was trained to find others, that we could have made a difference. And a year later, her remains was found. About a quarter of a mile from where her car was at. But from that moment on, the Lord put it on my heart really strongly to find missing and lost people in general, not just my grandson. And so I started looking for, uh, somewhere to train, and the Lord brought me to Custom K9 Unlimited. That's how I wound up here.

Yeah. But that has to be such a bittersweet thing really to know that you're helping, but knowing that it may not always be the result that you or the canine wants.

Yes. It is very bittersweet. Yeah. But it is very rewarding. Most civilian search and rescues is volunteer and we don't get paid for anything that we do. The trainings, the The search is anything, but the reward comes from if you're a little bitty part of finding a person alive and that, you know, they wouldn't have made it through the night or the day, um, if somebody didn't come and search. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're not lucky enough to find that live person, then maybe you can bring closure to a family that's grieving. And because it's got to be hard to not know.

Yeah.

So to bring that closure, it's, even though it's bittersweet, it's still very rewarding for a searcher.

Absolutely. I think you put it in the best words. You just don't necessarily know what you might find, but you're a part of that end result, good or bad, closure or reunification. Now when it comes to like your two canines in particular, I know you mentioned you have a Boxer Shepherd mix and you have one other, is that right?

Yes, a full-blooded Shepherd.

Okay. And then she is not only trailing, she's also in training for cadaver, right? So when it comes to working both of those dogs, are there differences you've noticed from like your— Leah, I believe, is your Boxer Shepherd mix. Her training versus now that you're a little bit more experienced with your full-blooded Shepherd?

My two canines track totally different. They are as different as night and day. Yeah, Malia, she's an excellent tracker. She always has been. Very, very subtle, laid back. You would think we were just out walking, like a walk in the park. She doesn't pull, she doesn't anything. And her indication is, could be just a head tilt. I smell it up there.

Yeah.

Heading down. And then she'll follow the track that they, they go, but she'll tell me beforehand if they're up on a hill before we get there. If you look away from her for even a split second, you can miss that. So you have to pay really close attention to her when you're tracking. Versus my canine Mae. She's like the German Shepherd. She will definitely let you know that she has found something, and anybody can read her. Yeah, she's very energetic, hyper. Leo was too when she was little, but now that she's gotten older, she's more laid back. And I trained her to walk me, which I have trained Mae to walk me too. Yeah, so neither one of them really— I don't have to run behind any of them, either one. Usually they don't jerk me down, sometimes, but most of the time not. So they're very good little girls. Awesome. In search and rescue, I don't really care that much if my canine heals right beside me. I'd rather them go out in front of me and have a mind to where they can make the decisions for themselves which way we need to go. Yeah, but at the same time, as a handler, I have to know how scent flows and other things that I could help them because scent is so crazy out there. It can jump from one hill to the other and not even touch the road in between, or this creek in between, or whatever. So you have to know As a handler, you have to know how to help your canine. But as far as them knowing what to do, there's canines, like God gave them that sense, smell, and you have to teach them the odor that they're looking for and then they'll do the rest. But it's up to the handler that really has to be trained.

Yeah, well, that's what we were talking about before. That's the hardest part of training, right, is the handler. Definitely.

That's it. The handler is much harder to train than the K9.

That's what I'm told as well. Now, as far as like picking your two dogs, was there anything in particular that made you sort of like a light bulb went off in your head and you're like, oh, this dog really needs to work? Uh, with May, your full-blooded Shepherd, even like, oh yeah, this is a great prospect for search and rescue?

Actually, my Boxer Shepherd I picked the runt of the litter. So with K9 May, um, my German Shepherd, she was already a year old, and actually somebody else rescued her, okay, from a bad situation. And I fell in love with her, and she fell in love with Malia and didn't want to leave Malia. The person asked me if I wanted her back because that's where she wanted to be, and he wanted her to be happy. And so I've had her ever since.

So both of your dogs were kind of fated to you almost. But as far as working qualities, was there anything that you kind of like— energy levels, drive levels, interest even?

Um, if I was looking for a puppy, I would look for a high energy one that wanted to work because You know, they have to have a working drive.

Yeah.

Little couch potatoes, right? I mean, you could train them to do it and they might convert, but you want the one that's gonna be energetic and that is gonna want to do it.

Yeah.

And usually it's a puppy that wants to please you. So if you set that bond with a puppy and they'll do almost anything for you. Yeah. If you have that connected bond.

So that was one thing I was going to ask you about as well, is how close that bond really has to be between a search and rescue canine and their handler, because you're really relying on each other. The dog relying on you to read his or her cues, and you're relying on the dog for a find. So how does that bond work in training even? Before you ever get out in the woods or the field or wherever?

Well, you have to learn as a handler to totally trust your canine. And your canine has to learn to totally trust you.

Yeah.

And know that you're gonna protect it and they'll protect you. But you have to have that total, total trust. So that's a little hard. To have at the beginning because you're questioning still, you know, their moves and all that. But the more you train with them and really pay attention to the training, then you can pick out little subtle movements that they make. And if when you're training, if you video it, you can go back and see those subtle movements a little better than you can if you're just out there training. So that's what we do a lot of times is we'll just video it and then we can study it then and study the head tilts and the ear flops and the nose pops and all that.

Yeah, that's a great point.

We know what they're doing.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great point, just having that video to look back on.

We use the software Sawtopo and we have our hider set a track and then we start a track and then we put it in our pocket and don't look at it.

Okay.

So we are not trying to guide our canine to where they're supposed to be or anything. We're just letting the, the canine do its thing. And then that way later we can look back and say, okay, it was really close here, but it was way off here. So what happened to make him so way off? Was it The airflow, was it a transfer truck coming like I showed you the track while ago? There's a lot of things that can cause it to, to go off trail. Scent is the main one. So if you have your little bottle of powder that you can— so you add a decision point and you can do your powder so that you can see which way the wind blows the powder. You can tell the wind direction. So if the wind's blowing this way, you know odor's going that way. So you need to know all of that when you're helping your cane on track. But the track on the SAR Topo, it again, it's just like the video. You can go back and study it. And if you keep up with all your notes and everything of all the distractions of that track, where they were. All of that, then you'll know when you're studying it what to look for and say, okay, this caused this, this caused that, we need to work on this.

Yeah.

And it kind of helps you with your training.

Now, kind of coming off of that though, I'm curious as to what are some of the biggest challenges you face in training? Because you've done the training for both of your dogs by yourself, is that correct?

Yes. Well, not by myself. I had help with my team.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mainly you want to be with a team that trains, okay, with— and you learn from other handlers, you learn from your canine. But the hardest thing I think is actually learning to read your canine. Yeah, you've really got to spend some time out there with your canine to do that, and You can't be doing other things while you're out there, like calling on your radio or anything like that, because you're gonna miss. So even in training, you don't wanna train that way because you want to focus on what your canine's telling you. And once you do that and get it to the point where you can read them, then you're gonna be a great team. Yeah. But it takes a lot of work.

And you kind of mentioned, we talked about it before, but if you wouldn't mind sharing, like, what is that team comprised of? Like, who is that made up of whenever you're out?

The K-9 handler is trained to do land navigation. They're trained to do communications with the radios. They're trained to do all of it and they can do all of it if they have to. But for our team, for our volunteer search and rescue, teams everywhere. They have the canine, the handler, and one or two flankers.

Okay.

And a flanker is somebody that is trained to go behind the canine. They're doing the land navigation, keeping up with where you are in the woods, making sure they know exactly how to get you back out of the woods. A communication flanker is doing all the radio controls back to the incident command so that a handler don't have to do any of that. They can focus totally on their K-9. And that's what makes up our team. And we don't ever send a K-9 and a handler out to just them. They always have a flanker behind. We try to at least two, but at least one.

And that, I mean, We kind of talked about the importance of keeping the team safe because if you're not safe, you can't be out there helping people if you're not taking those safety measures in the first place. So kind of talking about keeping yourself safe, that also is going to include the mental health of your team and your K-9. So when it comes to, especially now you've got May training as a cadaver dog. So when it comes to being on these searches, You know, how do you really deal with like the emotional effects? Do you deal with families? And if so, how do you kind of deal with that?

One thing that a SAR team needs to realize is that they are not law enforcement. They are not incident command. So if you find someone out there that's deceased, you treat that person with respect. No, you secure the area, you call it in, you never come in contact with the family. Okay, that's law enforcement's job. It's not regular search and rescue. That is because it's very sensitive and they want to make sure that they have all the facts before they take it to the family. So Usually we will secure the area. We will come in and help carry the person out so that we give support that way. But that's what a SART team does is we're there for a resource for the law enforcement. We're not there to take over, to talk to the family, to do anything else, but we're there to support them and give them the resource that they ask for. So when we go in, they give us an assignment of an area that they want us to cover, and we cover and search that area to the best of our ability. And we can come back and say, yes, we found the person, or we've cleared this area. We give them a percentage of how we think that we cleared it, warrant somebody else going back in to cover areas that we may have missed or something. And that's another reason why we rely on, uh, SAR tacos so much. Yeah, because we can tell where we missed that area. Well, track our whole team for safety, but incident command can also have our tracks and our map on their computer, and they can look at it and say, okay, you've missed this spot, do you mind going back and checking this out while you're out there? You don't have to come all the way out to do it. But back to your question about how we handle the family, and that is, you know, we don't. Yeah, um, because we don't want to say something or do something that's going to cause more problems than good. So we leave that strictly to the law enforcement. And again, I can't stress enough that with search and rescue, know your limitations, know what you're supposed to do and what you're not. And don't get into law enforcement's way. Let them handle what they've got to handle. And anytime that we come up on a deceased or any kind of search, we consider it criminal until it's proven not to be criminal. So we try to not contaminate that area if we know that the person's been in there because, um, anytime that you go into an area, you leave something behind and it can hinder the investigation. So search and rescue personnel has to go through criminal investigation training of how to handle a crime scene, and it's very important for them to understand, you know, that you treat every one of them as if it is until it's proven that it's not.

Man, I love that your team, you and your team understand sort of like how to help and then at what point becomes a hindrance and you know where those lines are at. That's really how you maintain a helpful status, right?

Like, that's right.

The last thing you ever want is for any agency to feel like you're getting in the way or you're trying to like take glory where there's really not any, because it's a very sensitive situation.

It is. And as far as we're concerned, we're all volunteers and we go in to help. Our motto is that we train hard so others can live. And that's the motto of a lot of other people too, but it's also ours. The main thing is to know that we're not there to take over the scene. You tell us what you want us to do and we'll do it to the best of our ability. Yeah, that's the, the message that we try to, to send out to any county that we go to because we are a mutual aid team. We go to different counties all over Northeast Georgia. We don't try to be the glory hog people, you know. I know you've probably heard of people, you know, teams that's like that. They're in it for the glory. Well, we're in it to save lives. So it doesn't matter to us who finds the person. We're there to help search for them. It could be somebody else's cadaver dogs that find them. It could be just a ground pounder that finds them. It doesn't matter as long as the bottom line is, is that they're found.

Yeah.

So that's our whole goal. It's just to find the person as fast as we can and hope that they're alive and that we can make a difference.

Yeah, absolutely. How do you kind of deal with that? Because I'm sure there comes a point where you're almost like emotionally burnt out and things like you're being called out over and over. You know, how do you handle that? I know you mentioned your faith earlier. Is that something that plays a big role in that?

It does for me. I wouldn't be able to handle it if I didn't have faith.

Yeah.

And if I didn't believe that God has sent me here for a reason. Yeah. And that this is my purpose. Because everybody has a purpose in life and this is mine. And I wouldn't be able to do it, especially if you find several deceased in a row. Can be very depressing. I think my first, actually my first 5 or 6 searches that I went on was all deceased. And I was like praying, Lord, is, am I ever going to be a part of one And turned out that that one has stuck with me and that has totally changed my view of how to train and what to train because this was a call out for a 2-year-old and it was pouring down rain. It was lightning calling for heavy, heavy thunderstorms all night long. The call came in like at 10:30 at night. And they had already, people had already been searching for this little boy for all day, like since 5 o'clock, I think. And nobody, he was on the side of a mountain by himself. He had wandered off. They lived at the top of the mountain and he wandered off. And everybody on that mountain thought that we were looking for a deceased young man because the call was 2-year-old toddler. Lost with nothing on but pull-up pants and his Mix-Max 2 shoes. And we were like, this weather, there is no way he could survive out there, you know, by himself. And when I arrived on scene, it was like at 12:30 at night when I arrived, and there was already like 150, 200 people there and still community people coming in to search. And the team that I was with came, they got there, they drove 3 hours to get there. And, but they got there like at 2:30 in the morning and we set up our little comms unit on the back of the truck. And within 10 minutes we had our assignments and headed in. And within 20 minutes, the K-9 wasn't mine. I didn't have mine at the time with me. Found the little boy halfway up the mountain where 3 teams of untrained people walked right past him and said he wasn't there. And that changed my way of thinking toward training. Like, I am really headstrong when it comes to training, right? But yeah, that was my first one that I was even a part of for a while.

Time.

And I know that that little boy would not have been alive if people hadn't been out there searching for him. And a trained handler knew that even though 3 teams had went past and said he wasn't there, he knew— he knew the scent flow, he knew what he was looking for, and he knew where to look for it at. And so at night, scent flows downhill like a river. And so where the, the searchers were starting at the top of the hill and was searching all along the sides, he started his K-9 at the bottom. And within 20 minutes, his K-9 done shot up the side of the mountain and found him because he knew what he was looking for and he knew what he was doing. And he knew how to help his K9 find them.

Yeah.

And so that is a big thing of, it's not just the K9 training and K9, it's the handler has got to do his part of training. And it's just so important.

Yeah. I mean, that, that tells you everything. Those people had great intentions, obviously, but bringing that K9 in with a trained handler found him much quicker than them walking over it 3 times.

Right.

But, oh man, that's— that really sticks with you.

It does. Like I said, that's the one that I show all of the people that I train, because I do trainings, and I show them all that, and I say, you know, if you stick with search and rescue long enough, you're gonna have a story of your own. To tell of what changed you and what made search and rescue part of your DNA. Because it does change you that much that it becomes part of your DNA and it becomes of who you are. And that's what drives me.

Yeah.

Man.

So I'm interested as to how your training moves into those real life scenarios, because I imagine you train in different terrains, different weather, different times of the day, you know, how does that really affect it whenever it comes to a real-life deployment and you're looking for someone?

Well, when you deploy, it is never convenient, and it's 90% of the time going to be at night because the families looked during the daytime and didn't find them. Um, so usually it's at night, you're going into terrain that you don't know. Most of the time around this neck of the woods, it's, it's steep.

Yeah.

So we go to all surrounding counties to train, and we try to pick terrains that we know or that they have been callouts to before so that we can train day and night. We do both trainings nighttime and daytime trainings, because nighttime, a train will look totally different than it does in the daytime.

Yeah.

And you can get turned around really super easy at night. That goes back to knowing land, um, knowing how to, um, look at your map and tell your, your terrain features, because we do live in the mountains and At least 85 to 90% of the time when we go out, we're gonna lose cell phone signal. Very true. And your batteries go down because of the mapping software. If you don't have a backup battery with you, if you just rely on GPS, you don't have anything. Mm-hmm. To get out there. So we try to take paper maps and compasses and know how to use them. In case our technology fails. And when you get out there, you can kind of figure out where you're at. And if you kind of marked your map along the way, um, as well as looking at your GPS, then you can follow your trail back out if you need to. But, um, as far as the training, we do train night and day, and it doesn't matter As long as it's not thundering and lightning. If it's raining, we go. If it's snowing, we go. Anything except lightning, we pull out.

Okay.

Until it passes.

Yeah. Gotta keep your dog safe first. And your handler. And your team.

Gotta keep— the team's safety comes first.

Yeah, absolutely. Do you collaborate with them in training, um, or even with other search and rescue Anytime we can. Yeah.

Yes. We've recently started training a little bit with some law enforcement and fire department that has a K9. We haven't gotten that chance up until recent, but I'm hoping that it keeps going and that it keeps growing because now we have this organization called Friends of S.A.R., and we've started our trainings under it that we've opened up to any K9 handler. And we don't train your K9. We provide a place for you to come and train with other handlers. Yeah. And we help each other. So we learn from each other. We set up whatever you need for your K9. We'll set up that scenario for you.

Yeah.

And you do the same for us so that we can help each other. And there's organizations like that all over, but there's not one close by here. Okay. Um, so when I was looking for one, the closest one was like an hour and a half away. So either you went to Atlanta or you went to Spartanburg. I'm on the team in Spartanburg, um, because of that. Because, you know, there was no place around here to train with other canine handlers. So Friends of SAR is offering that for any handler that wants to come and train with us. Yeah.

And now as far as Friends of SAR, it's your team, your group comprised of your handlers, your canines, your flankers included in that Friends of SAR?

Because Friends of SAR is set up to support search and rescue, volunteer search and rescue teams anywhere in Northeast Georgia. So anybody from any team can come be a part. They can come and help with fundraisers to help support it. They can come and help train with us. Uh, we have classroom trainings too that we offer that if they want to learn like the man tracking, the basics on man tracking, or how to read a map and compass, if we have somebody that's wanting to learn it. Just even if they already know it, they're wanting to just enhance their, their experience with it and enhance their knowledge. So we offer the man tracking, we offer the map and compass, the map reading and compass. We offer basic SAR Topo or CAL Topo training where we just do the basics. Of our software so that they can, you know, use it too. We're wanting to start a wilderness first aid training. I've got to go and get my certification on that first so that I can teach it, but once I get that, we're going to offer that as well. So all of this will be to the public and to other volunteer SAR teams. And even the police and fire department, if they want to come and train with us, we're open arms to them. Any canine handler that wants to come and train, that's fine. The classes is for anybody that wants to know anything about searching because so many times you go to a search and if they don't find them, then the community gets involved. So we want to help train the community. How to help and not be a hindrance when they do come. So it's open to the public, but it's also— the canine part is more for canine handlers, but the rest of it is open to the public.

Yeah. And the goal is to have your own facility eventually?

Eventually, yes. We want to have some land that we can set up with agility courses and stuff like that. Princess Aura is just starting out. So it's not even, I would say not even 6 months old yet, but it is 8 months. We just started it in January. So we're, we're a long way from where we want to be, but we'll get there.

Steps ahead from where you were. Yes. So I love that kind of stepping into that gap that wasn't there whenever you and maybe other members of your organization started looking for training help because they knew they wanted to step in and help insert risk.

You? Well, I've known several K9 handlers that has said the same thing that I did. They can't find nobody close by to train with, to just come and just train. And they wound up going to either Atlanta or to Spartanburg too. And that drive gets really long after a while. And so we really want to set up this facility so that they could come and just train and get better at their skill. Yeah. You know, we train right now, we train twice a week. We train once Monday nights and Wednesday mornings with a group. Then every canine handler trains the rest of the time by theirself, but 2 times a week right now.

And that kind of helps them too, though, problem solve. And even see where they can advance in certain areas and start pushing themselves, challenging themselves and their canine.

Right. It would be a great help if we had like agility course or a building to that we could do our classroom stuff in. Right now we have to rent a room. Um, Pike County is very good about letting us use their facilities that they have. They're awesome. Um, yes. Um, so I'm also on several, like I said, 3 other, you know, 3 teams plus Friends of SAR. So you can tell that it's like in my DNA, what I do. But, um, it's not only mine, it's the rest of the teams too, because they are very passionate about what they do.

Yeah. And I feel like you really have to be in that line of work though for what you're gonna experience, you know.

Most canine handlers are— they have that purpose. Most of them are purpose-driven, and if you've got that purpose behind you, you'll go to no ends for the training. Yeah, um, we do a lot of training with North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina has a training every year where they invite multi-state search and rescue teams. And they all come together from all over and they meet at that one place and train together. So they learn from each other. And I think that's awesome.

Absolutely. That's one of the biggest things I think we really push here is you can learn something from a handler who's only had a canine for a year, just like he can learn something from you and you may have had a canine for 10 years.

That's right.

You never know when you're gonna have the opportunity to learn. And I think that's why those group trainings are so important across the board in general for handlers, but especially for search and rescue.

Plus it's the support team too. Yeah. You know, because it is very demanding, like you were talking about a while ago. It's very demanding on you because you still have your jobs, you still have your life and everything that you're juggling around this. To. So it is very stressful, especially I think more on cadaver because that can drain you. If you like the 5 in a row, and I was thinking, you know, like, am I ever going to be a part of finding somebody alive? But it can get to you, but you have to have some kind of support, which have a support group. Of my group, but I also have my relationship with the Lord that I fall back on. I don't see how anybody makes it without it. I really don't, because it makes that big a difference.

I mean, especially with me being trained in cadaver, you know, when she gets called out, which is fully trained, pretty much know what you're looking for. So going through those mental steps to prepare yourself. What does that look like? Is that something you have to go through training for specifically?

I don't think so. I've just started her cadaver training, so I'm not very far into it yet. But I think from my experience from just searches, and there is a lot of need for cadaver in our area, and there's not very many local, within a couple of hours, K-9s that are cadaver canines. Yeah. So unfortunately, it's more than what I would like, but that's why we train so hard, because we want to change those statistics. And we go by a book called Lost Person Behavior, and it's written specifically for search and rescue Okay, and they've done like thousands and thousands of surveys on different searches all over the place. Yeah, and it can tell you kind of where to look. Like if a dementia, um, person's missing, it tells you what to look for. It tells you kind of what they're— they normally do. Okay, so it tells you the characteristics and all of this, but we fall back on that a good it for our training. It said that out of all of these thousands of searches, there's 33% found alive, 33% found deceased, and 33% not found at all. Wow. So I took that to heart when I read that.

Yeah.

And studied that book. And the main goal of Civilian Search and Rescue Volunteers is to change that to where the live find is more than the deceased and, and not found at all.

Absolutely.

So that's our main goal, is to find more lives and save more lives.

Man, I, I can just tell talking to you before this and talking to you now how much passion you have for this, and I think that's something that's not everyone has, you know, even, I mean, I feel like handlers are a different breed. I've told you that before, the passion that handlers have for what they do. But even talking to you and seeing how much search and rescue has really become a part of you, not just something you do on the side to help out, but some is a part of who you are.

It is.

And I think that's definitely amazing. Like, I just, wow. You know, for someone who might be looking at getting into search and rescue, is there any advice you would give them, guidance you'd give them to getting involved?

First, you have to really do some soul searching to see if it's truly what you want, because, and I'm talking more toward search and rescue than K-9. I mean, it's all in one, but K9 handlers is like you said, a different breed. And most of them have purpose and they're, they're very dedicated. But sometimes in search and rescue, it sounds glamorous and it sounds cool to say I'm on the search team, search by SAR team and all of this. So you have to, to really do some soul searching and what is your purpose? What is your reason for doing it? And if you can't come up with the, I want to help people, I'm here to save lives scenario there, then you're probably in the wrong line. You're probably not going to make it because it's a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of dedication. It takes getting up from your supper table when your call comes in and not eating.

you.

It's okay, I'm in bed and I get a call and it's pouring down rain. Do I get up and go or do I just lay here? You know, if you're dedicated, you're going to get up and go.

It could be the difference between a live fire and a deceased fire.

It could be. And your fresh set of eyes might be the one that finds them. You never know. Because if searchers has been out there for a while, you get tired. And your eyes get tired and you might miss something.

Yeah.

Where a second wave of searchers may come in and see what you didn't see. So even with just plain search and rescue, the ground pounders, they go through a lot of training. They go through the same training that we put our flankers through. They have to go through man tracking. They have to go through the map and compass. They go through survival skills in case they get trapped out there in a storm and have to stay the night and hunker down because it's too dangerous to come out. We put them through all kinds of training. We want to be the best that we can be. So that would be what I would say to somebody that's thinking about this line of work. It's very, very rewarding. Doesn't pay anything because we're volunteers. Yeah. So you put forth all of this training effort, you put forth all of the money and time that it takes to do it and to buy your gear and to pay for your gas to go on callouts and everything comes out of your pocket. So you have to weigh that when you're starting to think about, okay, do I really want to do this? Is it worth it? Is it not worth it? In my eyes, somebody's life is worth it. All of it. Yeah, the day— that night that we— the 2-year-old was found, I saw over 200 people on that mountain break down and cry. Everybody on that mountain was crying because we truly thought we were going to find deceased, that he was crisscross applesauce up against the tree and not making a sound. He was in shock, he was dehydrated, he was hypothermic, but he was alive.

Yeah.

But that scene, it just did something to me. You know, everybody that is in search and rescue will have their time if they stay in it and they put forth all of the training effort that it takes. They will have that one time that changes them, and it'll make every bit of money, time, effort, the headaches, everything worthwhile.

So would you say then, like, that's arguably the most rewarding, like, when you find that person alive?

Yes. Even if I never find anybody else, everything that I've ever done towards search and rescue was worth it when that little boy was found. And in the past and future, which I'm hoping that I do find more.

Yeah, right.

But if I didn't, that would made it worth everything.

Wow, that's dedication, you know.

That's what it takes. Yeah, you know, if you're not, then there's, there's no need in you being there, really. I mean, you can come out and search, but you're not going to have your heart in it, and you're not going to search to the best of your ability if your heart's not there.

So you really, you know, when you get that call, you put everything aside, everything going on in your personal life, professional life, everything, because you have one goal now.

You drop what you're doing and you go. Just like a fireman, they have that same goal. They get that call, they drop what they're doing and they go. I know they're on call, but they drop what they're doing. They might be eating supper or something. They drop what they're doing, right? Split second and go because they're dedicated to the cause and what they're doing. And search and rescue is the same thing. You gotta have that same dedication.

So moving forward, you know, you've mentioned Friends of SAR. What are your goals with Friends of SAR? Are there ways that, you know, other handlers or trainers even, or just people who want to be involved with your organization, your nonprofit? How can they help? How could we find you? How can we help your organization?

We have a Facebook page that we have that we've just started. We have a donation, a link on that. We would appreciate any kind of help that we can get because everything that we do costs. Yeah, there's nothing cheap about search and rescue. There's nothing cheap about K-9s. And we do have a call-out K-9 unit. Through Friends of SARC, where we go out to mutual aid. Any kind of help financially we could get, if anybody could come out and help us raise money at fundraisers or have any ideas of how we can raise money, if they could, you know, get in touch with us to let us know, or any way they could help. We're desperately seeking a volunteer grant writer so that we can get and apply for grants to help us with our goals. We also need volunteers because we need people to come out and sit in the woods for us. Will you come out and sit in the woods and let a canine come find you so we can practice and we can train and get better at what we do?

Absolutely.

So just last night I had someone that I said window shopping. I said, you know, start here and, and make loops, laps around buildings and stuff like that, and then go down here to the store down here and go in and go window shopping and let us come find you. Yeah, so it might be something as simple as that, or, you know, like I said, go out into the woods and sit and watch for deer and find you a deer trail while you're sitting out there or something. Let us come find you. Um, But that's very important because hiders are super hard to find. Yeah. Um, but that helps save lives.

It does.

And I know that they might just look like, well, I'm just being a rabbit out here and I'm just running around and just playing with a canine, but that's not true. Because every time that we have somebody that comes out and helps us, that gets us that much closer to being the best we can be. Yeah, and we need that, but we need— as far as FOSS and our organization there, we need other things too. Like, we need equipment, we need better radios, we need all kinds of things. The SARTACO account, you know, I think it's like, I don't know, $350 or something like that a year for a 501(c)(3). Company, um, but that's an expense that we need to keep our team safe, right? So we need that. My canine that's training for the cadaver is also going to be cadaver for water as well as land. So we need somebody that's willing to come out in a boat and help us train. So there's so much that volunteers could help us do. And we would appreciate any help that we can possibly get. Yeah.

Well, for those that are listening, we're going to have their Facebook account linked below, and then we'll also have their email to contact them if you'd like to reach out and volunteer your time, resources, or donate to this organization that does so much in the background. Thank you so much for joining me today. I know we had a little technology issue, but But thank you so much for joining me today. I have just loved learning from you and hearing how passionate you really are about this.

But thank you so much for having me.

Thank you everyone for tuning into this week's episode. Don't forget Tuesdays we have our shorts that go up and then we'll see you back on Friday for another long form.