Snohomish County Search & Rescue K9 Team > Join the K9 Teams

K9 Training usually takes anywhere from 2-3 years for certification. See: Airscent and Trailing Benchmarks” and is ongoing after certification. Training involves bi-monthly official trainings, reinforcing skills at home, and participating in weekly, ‘unofficial’, workouts (practice sessions). K9 team classroom sessions are usually monthly. In addition, you belong to a SCVSAR Unit (SCVSAR has five units dispersed geographically throughout Snohomish County) and are expected to attend regular monthly unit meetings and meet general SAR training requirements (Washington Administrative Code requirements and other recommended training such as Mountaineering Oriented First Aid).

Commonly, with official trainings and weekly “workouts” (practice sessions) with your K9, unit meetings, K9 team meetings and meeting general SAR training requirements you can expect to devote a couple of evenings a week and participate in daylong official trainings on a twice monthly basis. This is in addition to responding to missions, as a regular ‘year-in, year-out’ discipline. Training frequency is especially important during the early stages of training with your dog.

In order to deploy with your dog, there are other requirements. For example, you will need to do a pack check. See: “Packcheck List for Airscent” for required and suggested equipment. We also have a fitness test. See: "Airscent" and "Mission Pack Addendum.” In the Airscent discipline you will become fully trained to support a K9 Team in the field prior to achieving full member status and becoming "Pre-Test" ready. You will be responsible for maintaining the "Airscent Member Qualification Document" throughout your initial training period prior to certification testing.

Experienced handlers will coordinate trainings and be available as a resource, but each handler is ultimately responsible for training their own K9. Prior to starting official training, K9’s must be responsive to obedience commands, ‘come’, ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘stay’, ‘leave-it’. No aggression toward other dogs or humans is acceptable. The AKC "Canine Good Citizen" certificate is also highly recommended.

Every K9 is different and there are many approaches to training specific skills. It will be up to each handler, with input from the more experienced handlers, to take responsibility for moving their K9 through the ‘stages and steps’ on the training plans. See: “Airscent, Cadaver (Human Remains Detection), and TrailingTraining Plans” We expect training to be positive in nature, cueing, and rewarding the desired behavior.