O/T A thought for 75-year old James Marr in Vermont, everyone. He's very vulnerable, living alone in a mobile home and took a walk four days ago. He's still not been found. Doesn't look as though there's any family around. All the luck in the world to the K9s searching for him.
BBM
The breeder of my old service dog did SAR in her younger days deep in Louisiana Cajun country. She was training two dogs at the same time, her older ***** and that *****'s son.
The very first time they were called out for real was for a man in his 80s whose granddaughter reported him missing. He lived in a tiny little cabin on a bayou without electricity, telephone or indoor plumbing. The granddaughter described his mental condition as senile.
The cabin was perfectly neat and tidy, nothing left out of place, no signs of violence or anything like that. So LE's theory was that he'd wandered away due to mental confusion. My friend was called out and worked her two dogs alteernately because the heat and humidity were so high that they had to take frequent breaks.
My friend started getting suspicious because the track her dogs were showing her was not showing any of the characteristics common to people with Alzheimers. In fact, after wading through way too much swamp, she realised that the track was similar to the sort of track that someone who wanted to evade detection would lay. Whenever there was a choice of paths, the track always took the choice with the most cover, highest difficulty and crossing the most water.
It took her and her two dogs close to 6 hours to work out the track. Towards the end, when her dogs were getting excited and acting like the track was really hot, she kept having the feeling someone was watching her.
Well, her male poked his head into a clump of bushes and all she could see was a wildly wagging tail, so she figured he'd found something he liked. She was just hoping that what he found was still alive.
Well, they'd found the gentleman all right. He was an old Cajun, had never gone more than 30 miles from that little cabin where he was born and he wanted to keep it that way. He was ticked off because his granddaughter wanted to put him into a care facility, so he figured he'd take off on a little fishing trip so he wouldn't be available when the social worker was supposed to come by.
He remembered perfectly well where he'd been and confirmed that the oldest parts of the track were over 90 hours old. He admired my friend's dogs and my friend was so taken with him that she told him she'd testify on his behalf if his granddaughter carried out her threat to have him declared incompetent by a judge.
She said she figured he must be fine because he was in way better condition than she was after 6 hours of slogging through swamp with mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds attacking her. Even worse, when she got home she discovered she had over 50 ticks on her. She said that he looked like he'd gone for a stroll in the park and had been eating fresh fish and all sorts of stuff he found growing.
The two dogs she worked that day were my service dog's great-grandmother and his grandfather. I also owned the littermate sister to the male dog she worked that day.
I'm hoping James Marr's story has such a happy ending.