Great Basin K-9 SAR Inc

A child has gone missing.

An elderly woman has wandered away from home.

A skier has been caught in an avalanche.

A young boy has been swept away in a flood.

A troubled young man has taken his life in the wilderness.

These are some of the scenarios for which Great Basin K9 SAR has supported Law Enforcement/public safety agencies in Park City, Summit County, and throughout the Intermountain West since our founding in 2009.  Our volunteers and their K9 partners have travelled thousands of miles and spent countless hours searching in difficult terrain and all weather conditions both day and night.  We have done all of this at no charge to any of the agencies and organizations that we have supported and, with your help, we are committed to continue this policy into the future.

To understand Great Basin K9 you need to understand three things; our standards, our people, and our dogs.

Our Standards:

We understand that when we embark on a search that we may be the difference between life and death for someone in our community.  Because we take this responsibility very seriously we train our K9 teams to the highest standards.  GBK9SAR is a proud member of Tri-State-K9 SAR, an association of search dog teams from across the Intermountain West (Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada). Tri-State has established a rigorous set of certification standards and all member groups have agreed not to field any dog teams that have not met these standards. Meeting these standards requires many hours of work over a year or more to get a team ready for certification testing.  Many of our teams travel to training seminars where they can learn from other experienced trainers and search experts.  Testing is rigorous and conducted in realistic terrain with performance evaluated by experienced SAR dog handlers from outside of Great Basin K9 SAR.  The primary question each evaluator asks themselves when conducting a test is, “If it were my child or relative who was lost, would I want this team searching for them?”

Our People:

Our people are all volunteers, we have no paid staff.  When they join Great Basin they bring a wide array of skills that are critical to search missions. They also bring two key qualities; a passion for service, and a love of dogs.  Our current members are from Summit, Weber, and Salt Lake Counties. They include a retired federal agent, former military combat veterans of three wars, EMTs, ski patrollers, dog trainers, and avid outdoors persons.  We train together once a week and share our skills and experiences to help each team improve.  In addition to learning to work with our K9 partners in search situations we must also all be competent in land navigation, radio communications, wilderness survival, wilderness first aid (both human and K9), crime scene and bio hazard procedures, and disaster management at the local, state and national level.

Our Dogs:

The key component of Great Basin K9 SAR is our dogs. Dogs can find people buried in six feet of snow or even in deep clandestine graves. They work off lead in wilderness terrain and, when they find someone, they come back to their handler and lead her/him to the person – just like Lassie.  They can detect the faintest odor of human remains from hundreds of yards away and help bring the deceased home so their family can find closure.  They are shepherds, retrievers, and hunting breeds. They are just like your dog at home, except….they are different.  Our working dogs are selected to have the drive to hunt and search and keep hunting and searching even when they are tired and cold and wet.  They do it to get their reward, which is usually a few minutes of play with their favorite toy. Selection of our dogs is the most critical part of preparation.  No matter how good the trainer or handler, if the dog is not right, it just won’t work.  We are very fortunate to have a great bunch of dogs at Great Basin K9 SAR.  If you would like to meet them, click here: https://greatbasink-9sar.org/k9-team-members

 If you would like to watch a video to see our dogs in action, please click here: https://youtu.be/hViKabht6QQ

How we use donations:

Rest assured, we greatly value donations and are good stewards of your hard earned dollars. Our members are 100% volunteer. We have no paid employees and do not compensate any of our members for their time. Your donations go directly toward: necessary operational equipment (~$2000/team ~ dog/human GPS units, communications radios, satellite pagers, harsh weather uniform jackets, chest rig, and more;) fuel and travel reimbursement for search responses; tuition for specialized K9 training; and annual team overhead expenses (insurance, registration fees, website, equipment repair/maintenance etc.)

Now that you know who we are and what we do, we hope that you will consider a donation to Great Basin K9 SAR during Love Utah, Give Utah.  Thank you.