Safety while trailing
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Safety
The truth is you are in the wrong line of work if you are truly concerned for your safety. I’m joking here, but not entirely. Prior to going out into the field, be aware of any known environmental hazards.
Safety equipment. I know many people recommend wearing safety glasses, but most of them haven’t been behind a trailing dog — or I wonder what their secret is. Within 5 minutes, my safety glasses are so fogged up that I’m at more risk of running into trees and injuring myself at that point. So I do recommend that you protect yourself, but glasses pose problems for many handlers. I prefer to wear a ball cap, and as I go through heavy brush either use my free arm as a close head shield, or angle my head downward so I can just see my dog and where I’m walking while going through the eye-poking vegetation.
I do wear high visibility clothing if I’m trailing in an urban environment. And if in an urban environment, the handler should have at least one safety flanker for managing traffic.
Have the utmost control over your dog. In an urban environment, you may often need the dog to stop promptly at streets. In wilderness environments, you may need to let go of the lead at times when going down steep hills, on uneven terrain and through dense brush. In all of these cases, the dog needs to be able to stop on command and resume working when commanded to do so. In these situations I have an actual command for this: “wait.” Once I the coast is clear or I have gathered up the lead then we immediately resume. The wait command basically means to pause or freeze.
Water. Bring water for you and your dog. Make your flankers lighten the load by carrying a bottle or two. We’ll go over resting your dog in a future section but in short, give the dog frequent water breaks, cool her off and moisten those nasal passages.
Radios. You and your flanker should both have two-way radios to communicate — so if distance starts to increase between the two of you, then you are covered.
Lights. Night trailing must always have at least three light sources. This way if one goes dead, you are still covered. It is good to have a strong, long-range LED light, and a good quality headlamp. Make sure your flanker is close to you because they must keep you informed of any hazards that they might see on the GPS topo map that you may not be able to see.
First aid. Of course, always bring a first aid kit for both you and your dog.
***This text may not be used or reproduced with out the author’s permission. This text is copyrighted material.
