NCSARDA Who

• NCSARDA members come from all walks of life. Some do double duty as paramedics, fire fighters or rescue squad members. All of our members must be searchers before they are dog handlers. This requires a significant personal and professional commitment and years of training in land navigation, search theory and methodology, lost person behavior, incident command, visual tracking, and first aid or wilderness medicine. Many of our members achieve SARTECH certifications from the National Association for Search and Rescue and are wilderness first responders. Dog handlers undergo extensive training in scent theory, search dog procedures, canine first aid and more.

Contributing to Educational Programs

NCSARDA’s professional volunteers devote hundreds of hours a year to training, certifications and actual searches. Handler teams travel an average 6000 to 8000 miles a year on the road for SAR related work. Many searches require handlers to be absent from jobs and family life for several days at a time.