RESCUERS in Craven have a new recruit - a four-year-old border collie.

Belle has just passed her assessment to become a qualified Mountain Rescue Search Dog and will now be on call 24/7.

She is the fifth search and rescue dog to be trained by Stainforth man Andy Colau, who is member of both the Clapham-based Cave Rescue Organisation and the Grassington-based Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association.

He said: "Training a search dog is a huge commitment and requires focus, determination and support from family."

The training takes two to three years and is carried out under the guidance of the Search and Rescue Dog Association (SARDA). Each dog handler has to be a member of a mountain rescue team and must have team's backing.

There are 35 dog/handler teams covering an area stretching from Lands End to the northern tip of the Yorkshire Dales - and four of them are based in the Dales.

"Search dog teams can be called to search in any region of the country and are not limited to searches within their own area," said Andy, who has been training dogs for the past 35 years.

There are other teams in the Lake District, Scotland and Wales and all are volunteers who give up their time for free.

Before starting their training, the dogs must undergo an obedience test, an indication test (designed to show their willingness to alert the handler of a ‘find') and a very stringent stock test to prove that they have no interest in any form of livestock.

"Training is fun and the dogs really enjoy it," said Andy.

Once qualified, the dogs will be expected to cover vast areas of ground quickly and, in the past, have been deployed to help at the Lockerbie plane disaster and in the searches for missing York woman Claudia Lawrence and murdered schoolgirl April Jones, from Wales.

Andy explained: "The dogs use their keen sense of smell to locate human scent. The dogs are not put off by wind, rain, or cold and are very well suited to steep mountainous terrain. Mountain rescue search dogs are air-scenting - that is, they are trained to recognise human scent drifting in the air currents or blown by the wind.

"Once the dog recognises human scent, it will use its own hunting instinct to locate the source of that scent (the missing person). The dog is trained to return to its handler and indicate that it has made a ‘find’ - the usual indication is a series of barks. The dog will then lead the handler back to the missing person and the handler will inform the rescue team by radio that it has made a find and the rest of the team will be deployed to evacuate the casualty."

Every winter, each team is assessed by a panel of experts over three days in The Lake District.

"This year, there were extreme high winds and blizzards, making the going tough, but these conditions are likely to be found during real search and rescue operations," said Andy.

Next month, local handlers and their dogs will spend a week in the Cairngorms, undertaking avalanche search training and honing their winter mountain skills, and later this year, will undergo familiarisation training on the new private helicopters which will take over from the RAF Sea Kings which are being withdrawn.

"Occasionally the dogs get the chance to fly with their handler to remote places in the mountains," said Andy.

The other Dales teams are: Bill Batson and Glen (his third collie search dog) and member of the Cave Rescue Organisation; Kevin Stead and Gyp and Ben (his second and third collie search dogs) and a member of Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association; and Ian Spiers with Olly (his first collie search dog) and a member of the Swaledale Mountain Rescue Team.

Andy said: "I think that together we make a fantastic team, training hard to acquire those skills necessary when a real search and rescue operation occurs.

"However, we could not train without the help of volunteer ‘bodies’ who act as casualties hiding out on the open fell in all weathers waiting to be found by the dogs."