Specialist Search Dogs is a registered charity offering a 24-hour call out with a multi-disciplined team. Trained to the highest national standards to enable a professional search dog capability to missing person scenarios. Ready to assist the Emergency Services and Category 1 responder to Rescue or Recover.

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Specialist Search Dogs is fully equipped to attend demanding search situations in the UK and overseas. The organisation has charitable status (Scottish Charity Number SC052375) and is self-funding, allowing us to continue training development and provide the equipment and resources needed for search and recovery deployment.

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• Live person Air Scent search

• Live person Trailing / Tracking search.

• Land Cadaver victim search

• Submerged Cadaver victim search

• Air and water drone search

• Water SONAR detection equipment

• Boats & Search Technicians

 

Professional

Specialist Search Dogs are fully certified and hold professional training qualifications awarded through National Association of Specialist Dog Users (NASDU) and certified by Highfield.

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Capable

Dogs have been selected based on their working ability from some of the top international bloodlines. The dogs regularly train together and are assessed annually to ensure the team are always capable to respond.

Well Equipped 

Through collaboration with some of our partners the team is fully prepared and equipped to deal with any conditions and any search scenario.

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Our Dogs

Cadaver water search uses a dog’s sense of smell to identify the smell of human remains on or under water.

Cadaver land search (sometimes called Human Remains Detection) utilises dog’s ability to detect the presence of cadaver scent in the air. Dogs are used worldwide by law enforcement agencies and search teams to find missing people and help solve criminal cases. This will ensure they can detect human remains that may have also been buried.

All the Cadaver dogs that we use to fulfil this capability are highly trained and certified by NASDU as level 3 detection dogs. 

Tracking and Trailing are terms that are often used together but are marginally different in practice. Both are designed to follow the scent of a specific target individual.  It relies on a dog’s ability to follow human scent particles left on a path. In some cases, dogs have been shown to successfully follow tracks left by people after long periods of time and even in urban areas.

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Air scent dogs are skilled at finding any missing live human within a search area.  They will detect human scent particles that are carried in the air, so they don’t need a specific individual human scent to be effective. 

The Dogs are supported by our team of Handlers, Search Technicians, Boat Operators, Drone Pilots & dedicated supporters.