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In Brief

Sugaring Time Again; Former President Writes Autobiography; Alum Signs with Baseball Team; News from the Nursing and Business Administration Departments and more.

Making Their Mark

Learn about how our community members engage in writing, presentations and exhibitions.

Past as Prologue

Explore Haystack, a portal to the history of Colby-Sawyer College.

Colby-Sawyer Courier

Keep up with campus news from students' perspectives through the Colby-Sawyer Courier.

Solidus

This new literary magazine features creative writing in many genres by current students and alumni, faculty and staff, and a few friends and partners.

Q&Alumni

Find out what Colby-Sawyer alumni have been up to since graduation.

Currents: lost and found

Search and Rescue Team Finds Colby-Sawyer a Great Place to Train

With students gone and the college generally deserted during its two-week holiday shut-down, an observer could be forgiven for thinking something serious was going on at Colby-Sawyer when spotting members of the New England K-9 Search & Rescue team on campus.

Founded in 1981, the all-volunteer New England K-9 Search & Rescue team exists to provide trained search-and-rescue personnel and canines to the law enforcement agencies of Vermont and New Hampshire - free of charge - and assist them in locating the lost and missing. In an average year, the group conducts about 60 searches a year for lost people.

On the road within 15 minutes of a call from a law enforcement agency, the team's dogs are trained to find victims, living or not, in any imaginable situation. These vital skills, which must shine in stressful situations where lives are on the line, require practice and reinforcement. For the last five years or so, the quiet Colby-Sawyer of December has provided an outstanding location for this training.

Digging and Sniffing to Save Lives

“Each weekend over the holiday break, we worked snow burial training in the Ivey parking lot by digging people-size caves in the big plowed piles of snow,” says President and Operational Leader Nancy Lyon, who joined the team in 1988. “Then a person climbed in the hole with a radio and a large tarp to stay dry. A small piece of plywood was put over the cave entry and then they were 'buried.' The dogs searched all the snow piles until they smelled the “avalanche” victim, whom they then tried to dig out.”

After a morning spent outdoors, the dogs were brought inside the college library, which Lyons says offers special challenges for building search training. The library, comprised of two large former barns, has many nooks and crannies, and is open to as many as five levels. The human handlers hid “victims” throughout the building, including under desks, in cupboards, large trash barrels or even locked in the restroom.

“We want the dogs to search systematically and then tell us where people are hidden,” says Lyon. “The library is an exceptionally challenging building for training purposes because it is so open, which creates all kinds of complicated air flow that often makes it hard for the dogs to figure out exactly where a person is hiding. We also use training aids in containers that smell like human remains, which we will hide and have the dogs find.”

One example of a successful search by the team was the recovery this November of a missing 39-year-old Pembroke man with medical issues who spent 20 hours in the woods. He was found suffering from hypothermia, and it's believed he would not have survived another night alone.

“Our job is to find people who are lost, missing or disoriented, whether living or deceased, so having the campus environment to train in is a wonderful opportunity for us,” says Lyon.

-Kate Seamans