ON CALL WITH THE CANINE CAVALRY
Every year, dozens of walkers go missing in England’s largest national park. Happily, a highly skilled team is at hand to sniff them out. Meet the mountain rescue search dogs…
Tales of the four-legged rescuers patrolling England’s mountains
High above Cumbria’s Ullswater Valley, Border collie Bracken zigzags across a snow-covered scree, his high-visibility vest bright against the white sky. Nose to the air, he bounds behind a boulder and lets out a series of short, sharp barks. He has found a body. Bracken’s handler Elly Whiteford rushes to the scene. This time, no one’s life hangs in the balance. The ‘body’ is a volunteer who is hiding here as part of a training exercise. The dogs – and their handlers – are learning how they might be able to help in one of many search and rescue missions undertaken each year in the Lake District, England’s largest national park.
Bracken and Elly belong to the Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs Association (LDMRSDA), a voluntary group of ten to 20 handlers and their canine companions who are called out by local rescue teams across Cumbria (and occasionally further afield) when walkers and climbers go missing. Most dogs are hunting or herding breeds such as Border collies, Labradors and English shepherds, all with an acute sense of smell to enable them to sniff out bodies in the most difficult of conditions. “Dogs have amazing abilities we have almost no concept of,” says Elly, who works for the Environment Agency. “They have 300 million scent receptors; humans have just six million. It’s a totally different world for them.”
A PERILOUS PLACE
The Lake District may be beautiful, but it can also be hazardous. Each year, rescue teams receive hundreds of callouts to help injured and stranded hikers and climbers. In 30-40 of these incidents, search dogs are called out to assist looking for them. Danger spots include Piers Gill on Scafell Pike, Striding Edge on Helvellyn and Sharp Edge on Blencathra. “Even the most experienced walkers can get into trouble,” says LDMRSDA training officer Andy Peacock, who works for the fire service. “Conditions can change pretty quickly. It might be clear when you’re in the valley, but by the time you reach the summit, the rain can be hammering down or there can be snow and ice… When night falls, it gets so black you can’t see the path beneath your feet. You can easily get caught out by the weather, make a navigational error or just fall and get a sprain or fracture.”
Andy, who has been a member of the organisation for 13 years, remembers a particularly serious incident in 2013, when, while attending LDMRSDA’S winter training course in the Cairngorms, an avalanche was reported to have buried three people at the nearby Chalamain Gap. “Knowing we were training in the area, the local rescue team asked us to assist. My collie Corrie and