Distinctly Montana Magazine

Distinctly Montana Magazine Fall 2018

Distinctly Montana Magazine

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W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 83 e term "SAR dog" encapsulates a whole world of specialties. Tracking dogs follow a human scent along the ground. ese dogs use articles of clothing with the victim's scent on it to understand what they're looking for. Air-scenting dogs follow airborne human scent, and don't always utilize a starting point like clothing articles. ese are the dogs who locate vic- tims buried under an avalanche, or cadaver dogs searching on land or water. To put it into numbers, humans have about six million olfactory receptors. Dogs can have up to 300 million. We cannot fathom what it would be like to possess such an extraordinary sense of smell. Depending on the breed, dogs can have 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute sense of smell than us, which is how the SAR dogs do their job, tracking what would be imperceptible scents through the air, on undergrowth, and even over water. SAR DOGS ACROSS MONTANA While the Get Lost bumper sticker might be cute, it really is easy to get lost in Montana. e state is home to over three million acres of wilderness, with rugged mountains, dense forests, hun- dreds of waterways, and countless oppor- tunities to get turned around right out of your backyard. Any time day or night the call might come from a law enforcement agency or the county SAR organization, looking for help locating people with all levels of backcountry experience. Calls might come in for a missing backpacker, a child who wandered out of the campsite on a family trip, or victims of an over- turned boat. SAR teams throughout Montana are called out for land, water, and snow rescue, resulting in up to 30 calls a year for True North Search Dogs, and record visitation at ski resorts across the state cre- SAM HEIGH Mike Bailly and K9 Yukon descending from a helicopter

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