The experience of acting as a training help or “body” for search and rescue teams is an all round positive one. Joining a group of strangers on an otherwise empty mountain range to help them train their invaluable search dogs is smashing.

Social and usually tennis ball obsessed dogs all run around together during down time. Taking part in funny banter between consultant dog trainers and a cold lunch on a warm hillside is brilliant fun. It is an honour to be a little part of this group of people that, alongside their dogs, give up time and often huge parts of their own lives to help others.

Many of the search and rescue dog training teams have been across the world. Groups enter dangerous areas of natural disaster to play their part in saving lives. By employing their dogs natural keen senses to locate the lost and wounded these people and their trained canine partners make a contribution.

The role of a “body” is to sit as still as possible in a corner of the hillside. The volunteer waits while the search and rescue dog finds and recognizes the scent then leads his handler to its source. Dependent on the individual dogs training stage this should be over a timescale of a couple of minutes or many hours. Training periods take place over a full day or weekend with participants usually camping or sleeping in brief accommodation.

If you are interested in this sort of volunteering the very first thing to do is get in contact with your local search and rescue team. They will be in a position to help and counsel on how you can get embroiled. If you've got a young dog that you want to train as a search and rescue dog they also should be able to offer information on whether your dog is acceptable.

For further information about search and rescue dog training plus all of the other facets of reward based dog training, please feel free to visit The Dog Trick Academy community internet site.

German Shepherds are not only wonderful family pets and companions they are also extremely popular and common working dogs. Known for their strength, loyalty and intelligence German Shepherds can be trained to work in a variety of environments; from being movie and television stars to police, rescue and sniffer dogs, German Shepherds can often be found working to protect, save and entertain us.

With that in mind I’d like to highlight the famous and not so famous working dogs on a regular basis as well as provide any information for those interested in training or working with German Shepherds when they are used in any of these capacities.

To start with I was reading a report on MSNBC – Europe earlier about two dogs – Amy a Shepherd and Uno a Labrador Retriever who have been trained to sniff out live animals and plants or the remains of them.

According to the report they have been trained to focus on 16 specific smells including such things as feathers, reptiles, bone and ivory. You can read more about these clever dogs here