FIPS 2024 Special Interest Group – Dogs

I’m here to see some CUTE DOGS 🐶😍

As part of attending FIPS in Sweden, we were all asked to pick a special interest group. 

In my usual fashion I left deciding this to the last possible minute, ignored my gut of avalanche doggie wrangling and went with what the least people from our BASP group  had picked .. risk management 🥱😮‍💨🫤🙄. 

Needless to say it was an unfortunate choice, the least said about it the better, no cute dogs , just an insight into the odd demented mind and the overtly confused, luckily for me it only had a few meetings 🥳🙊.. This left me one opportunity to moonlight and spend some time in the animal kingdom ☺️🤗…  

With no prior experience of what avalanche  rescue training involved, I entered the meeting heart on sleeve, photos of my recently departed dog at the ready 🥺🐶… when asked to introduce myself it felt only appropriate to say “ I’m just here to see some cute dogs”  😋🙊 ..  this went down better than expected and I was immediately made welcome … 🤗 I even got to show everybody a picture or ten of Washi (Cutest dog ever, nearly made it to 20 years old … but not quite 🥹) … look you even get to see her too 🤗😍🐶

Introductions out of the way, the meeting started with a presentation of training method by Marcel Mercier and came with the promise of a demo by in the afternoon with two black labs and a German shepherd 😯🐶🐶🐶🙂 

In typical German /Swiss style, meticulous methodology to the last, Marcel laid everything out in great detail. I won’t try and repeat any of his training methodology as such, as admittedly my main and most genuine curiosity was, if I was ever to go down the road of getting and attempting to train a new dog friend, would I have to submit this said new dog friend to the strictest diet of discipline, with little to no fun being left to be had. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there is a lot of hard work involved getting them to the stage I saw them at, and some dogs / wranglers are destined to fail …

But happily, it would appear that training is mostly to encourage a dog’s natural behaviour, search and discover, and it would appear the dog takes the lead, once a pattern of behaviour has been encouraged and established of course. 

There was no mention of not letting your dog up on the couch … or of taking the alpha role from it by force, or of any of the myriad of tortuous methods I had been exposed to in the past …  none of which worked, as Washi being a terrier clearly couldn’t have given a toss who the book said should be boss. it was her, she knew it, and she lived it to the end. And any attempt to reign in my wee pal’s natural desire to take the lead and hunt was destined to fail 🤷‍♀️ 

And yes, I got to see some cute doggies in action in the afternoon: Jock 5 year old lab with Amanda. and Ash 7 year old German shepherd with Ulrica.

 The hardest least fun part of avalanche dog training appears to be all the digging … 😯 … lots of digging 🥵

 But both dogs I saw work looked to be having a great time … There was no shouting or screaming to be heard from their wranglers …  indeed, by all accounts the least shouted the better 😯 

Rewards, cuddles, belly rubs and sausages were all that were in order once a hunt had been successful 😃😃👌😂😂

The only stipulation with avalanche rescue dogs would appear to be minimum size and avoiding those breeds who are outright individualist at heart. 

As much as Washi loved the snow and hunting for stuff in it, it would have been entirely in her nature to have gone after something she could kill rather than something she could rescue 😳😬🤭🤭

 Needless to say if I was ever to attend another FIPS I’ll be ticking the doggie wrangling box straight away 😋🤗 As to whether I will go down the path of finding and training a new friend …. I guess only time will tell but I haven’t found a reason to avoid the temptation so far 👍

Fraser Paton (BASP Member)