On Thursday 23rd April, we reported that our trainee mountain rescue air scenting search dog handler, Jess Ellsmore, and her trainee search dog Blitz, headed off to Princetown, Dartmoor, to attend the SARDA England Search Dog training weekend, which commenced on Friday 24th April, running until until Sunday 26th April.

This evening, Saturday 25th April 2015, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, received the following text update from Jess, regarding the weekend ;

“Update from SARDA weekend…Blitz has passed his indication test today and moved into stage 2.

Training area today was Holming Beam, Dartmoor.

This afternoon I was involved in a call out for a 16 year old injured whilst participating in some training for the Ten Tors Event.

Dog handlers and dogs bodies from about 8+ different MR teams carried the casualty about 1K of the hill to a waiting Land Rover.”

This move to Stage 2 training is great news for Jess and Blitz, and gets then even nearer to grading as a novice search dog team.