Dog training in Scotland

While Steve has been working hard back in Wales, Cluanie and I had a week's training in Scotland followed by two days walking.

SARDA Wales were based at the Kings House in Glen Coe and each day we watched the snowline rise or fall on the Buchaille!

Day 1 was Winter Skills. At that point the snow was high but hard; fantastic neve, so we caught the Gondola up on to Nevis Range and walked round to Aonach Nid where we were definitely not the only group out!!

Rob Johnson who is a member of the Llanberis Team and an MIC was the instructor for the day either refreshing our winterskills or introducing skills and techniques to one or two novices.

Day 2: We walked into the back of Buchaille Etive Beag where we found enough snow in a high corrie to practice snow burials. Fortunately someone had made our work a lot easier as there were some ready made snow-holes which looked like they had been used by a Winter ML group.

Cluanie emerging from snowhole

Double Trouble: Cluanie and Einch waiting for their search areas

Roly and Joy watching the mountain area

DAY 3 was spent on Search training on areas on open mountain side or in woods. We were joined by Joy and Einich from SARDA Lakes who was staying up in Ballachulish. Einich is Cluanie's sister from the same litter. 

Cluanie all dressed for helicopters and ready to go.

Cluanie and I after our helicopter ride



Cluanie finds Rob and Skye's body and lets us all know!

DAY 4 topped the week off with a ride on an HMS Gannet Navy Gannet Seaking into the mountains and then followed by a Search Exercise. Roly had set up 3 search areas. Unfortunately for the others, the way the wind was working meant that Cluanie grabbed Rob's body, Mal and was also homing in on Ray in Andy and Max's area as well as finding both of her own bodies. That's the trouble with a dog who ranges!
It was an excellent week's training and many thanks to Rob for organising it all. I then stayed on for two more days mountain-climbing.