This morning our trainee mountain rescue air scenting search dog handler Jess Ellsmore and her trainee air scenting search dog Blitz, carried out some essential search dog training in the Lyons Den and Cartridge Hill areas, fringing Darwen Moor.

Assisting Jess and Blitz, in the role of exercise casualties to find (commonly referred to as ‘Dogsbodies’) was colleague Bolton MRT Call Out list member Diane Blakeley, Jess’s friend from her college Joe Lingard and Lucy Smith.

Joe Lingard is the grandson of John Smith, the farmer at New Barn Farm, Tockholes, who farms this area, and kindly let Jess and Blitz exercise on his land.

John Smith and his family have been great friends of the Bolton MRT for a considerable time now, and always readily assist us on search and rescue incidents upon his land holdings and local training exercises.

Lucy Smith will be better known to a few of our older readers and our longer serving team members as Lucy Merrett, who was an operational Bolton MRT team member in circa 1985 until circa 1990, and was back in the Bolton area, visiting Diane alongside some of her former team colleagues from way back in the 1980s.

Also present today was our Team President Bob Hutchinson.