Search and Rescuedogs in the Netherlands
	Ben de Lange

Er is ook een Nederlandse versie.

This site is not maintained anymore.

There are several groups active with search and rescue dogs in the Netherlands.
Most of them train for missing persons and disaster work but also some do tracking and water work.
The use of rescue dogs has become more widespread lately but the authorities are in general quite slow in requesting the help of dog teams.
Most of the times it is more then 24 hours after a person is missed that the dog teams are called.
Since the Rescue dog teams are all volunteer organizations there is no cost for the requesting party.

Recently the government takes a more active role. This was triggered by the Turkish earthquakes where no "official" Dutch sardog team was active.
There were however 2 private Dutch teams and one Belgian-Dutch Sar team. In 2000 there was a fireworksexplosion in the city of Enschede (18 people killed) where no civil sardogs were deployed.
Now an Urban Search And Rescue team is created of 150 people that is operational and has been sent to Haiti in 2010.
This team is setup according the UN INSARAG guidelines and consists of rescue workers search dog handlers and medical personnel.
The national police will provide dogs and handlers for this team. Unfortunately there are no plans at the moment to use civil SAR-dogs in this team.

On December 19 2004  the first official Dutch test for Urban search and Rescue dogs have been held.
Three  of the six teams succeeded for the test and will be called by the national police in case of a disaster, gasexplosion or alike.
It is the first step towards more use of volunteer rescue dogs by the police.

Recently 9 searchdog groups have come to an agreement for mutual help. In case of bigger searches all teams work together and several times there have been searches with 30-40 dog teams.

	Disaster work		Area search		Tracking Trailing
	Avalanche training		Water search		Pictures from a search
	SAR-dog art		SAR Puppy		Recent training
	Interesting links		Literature		History
	New searchdog Chanouk		International excercise Poland		New dog Tirza born October 7, 2011

 e-mail: ben@sardogs.nl

Copyright © Ben de Lange
Pictures may be used if you tell where you found them. On request I will send higher resolution pictures.
Most recent revision March 1, 2018