Today is special day for the Iron County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team.  It’s a day to recognize America’s four-legged companion.  Today is National K9 Veterans Day.  If you have our 2023 ICSSAR Calendar, you would have noticed we dedicated the month to our K9 companions.  The dog pictured is Griff, a valuable member of the team. 

The US Army began the “War Dog” program on March 13, 1942, which is why the service and sacrifice of working dogs is recognized on March 13^th.  

Our Search and Rescue K9 handlers and dogs go through rigorous training for various types of missions.  It typically takes 600 hours of training to have a dog certified as a SAR dog, but the training doesn’t end there.  Our K9 team participates in hundreds of hours of training a year.  Our dogs are primarily trained in wilderness ground sent searches, wilderness air sent searches (when ground sent may have faded due to weather conditions), urban searches and cadaver searches.  However, SAR dogs can be trained to conduct other complex searches to include avalanche searches and water searches.  SAR dogs are very obedient and trained to focus on the task at hand.  This is crucial due to the fact that search efforts often include teams of people, vehicles and possibly air support. 

At the current time the ICSSAR K9 Team has 6 trained SAR dogs and 3 dogs in training.

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