Who We Are

K-9 is on call twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, regardless of weather conditions or circumstances. As well as responding regionally, the Team assists the Dolores Fire Protection District located at 45/47 Railroad Avenue in Dolores, CO, in local searches and emergencies as requested.

We are a non-profit, totally volunteer organization that depends on the support of the community, grants and fundraisers to maintain operations. We do not ask that our services be paid for, although we do ask for fuel reimbursement. When requested to respond, we will do so with a multitude of dogs, handlers, and navigators. 

We have a 4 wheel drive pick-up truck and a base camp trailer that holds the majority of the Team’s rescue and medical gear that is brought when needed. The Team can be self sufficient for a minimum of 5 days with no outside support when required to do so. In addition, the Team has a mobile Response Trailer that  houses some of the essential equipment and supplies, communications, and materials needed to support the Team on short or extended missions.

Each dog lives with, is owned, and is trained by the individual handler. It takes approximately 600 hours of training before the dogs become "operational". Our field training imitates real life situations such as wilderness, water, disaster, child, elderly, hikers, hunters, etc. We also train the dogs to look for articles that may have been left and anything that has human scent on it.

This type of training is necessary for all searches and especially important when we are requested by law enforcement agencies to assist in homicides and evidence searches. Most of our dogs are trained as "air scenters" to find any human scent in an area. Some of the dogs are trained to be "trailers". These trailing dogs are used to establish a direction of travel when a last known point is available. Dogs can be an effective resource when trained and used appropriately.
 

It takes approximately 1000 hours of training for the handlers, navigators, and base camp operators. Some of the skills needed to be a SAR professional include mapping, survival, medical, etc. All of the active members are First Responders and most are EMT’s.

States requesting assistance have included Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, California, Idaho and Texas. The Team has been asked to respond to wilderness, water, snow, urban, evidence, homicide, aircraft and disaster type searches. We have also been asked to help locate old cemeteries for archeologists.
 

In addition to training and missions, the Team spends many hours of fundraising and public relations. The Team has taught classes and held demonstrations for the Colorado and New Mexico statewide search and rescue conferences, national encampments, avalanche schools, nursing homes, church camps and at public and private schools.
 

On January 1, 2010  the team made the decision to move to realign the team command structure to emulate that of the Incident Command System (ICS). Six General and Command Staff positions were appointed by vote - Team Commander, Public Information Officer, Operations Section Chief, Finance Section Chief, Planning Section Chief, and Logistics Section Chief.