The whole team membership wishes to extend its best wishes to SARDA Handler Alison Nicholson and her Search Dog Floss, on their retirement from operational SARDA duties in August this year.
Alison, a long serving operational member of Bowland Pennine MRT, spent 4 to 5 years exercise ‘bodying’ for SARDA before taking the plunge and training Floss as an air scenting mountain rescue search dog.
Mountain Rescue Search Dog Floss graded as a Novice Search Dog in January 2009, which meant she could attend operational searches with Alison.
Full Search Dog grading followed in October 2010 for Alison and Floss.
By Alison’s reckoning she and Floss have attended well over 100x operational searches, from Cornwall to the Lake District, North Wales to the mid Pennines, all as a fully graded SARDA England Search Dog Team.
Alison and Floss over their years as an operational search dog team, have assisted Bolton MRT on a great many of our search incidents, readily helping whenever we asked for their support.
With Floss’s increasing age (10) Alison, a school teacher from Leyland, decided to ‘retire’ Floss from active duties, and such took place in August this year, after a long and successful search dog career.
Alison is married to former Mountain Rescue Trailing Search Dog Handler Iain Nicholson, also a member of Bowland Pennine MRT, who retired his Trailing search Dog Mij, three years ago, also aged ten at the time.
Floss, aged ten now joins Mij, aged thirteen, in happy search dog joint retirement, still enjoying the countryside, hills and mountains with Alison and Iain.
