Hometown Heroes: Meet the friendly, furry faces behind Brookings County K9 Search and Rescue
Sandra Vernlund first became interested in K9 search and rescue when her father went missing.
He was found to have passed away from a heart attack behind Ace Hardware in Sioux Falls. Driven by that personal experience, her love for the outdoors and her love for dogs, Vernlund began traveling to seminars around the country to learn as much as she could about K9 search and rescue and bring it back to South Dakota.
Now, she’s been serving as the president and training director of Brookings County K9 Search and Rescue for 10 years. It’s a team of volunteers dedicated to searching for missing people.
Vernlund has been working in K9 search and rescue for about 25 years. She’s also a member of Canine Search Solutions based out of Madison, Wisconsin, which deals primarily in cold cases.
Vernlund, who’s a U.S. Army Veteran, now trains other handlers, with an emphasis on handlers more so than dogs.
“The dogs really are not that difficult to train,” Vernlund said. “We can train them. The hardest part is the handlers because they have to go through a ton of training — basic first aid, canine first aid, crime scene preservation. There’s a bunch of other courses in there.
“They have to know FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) standards as far as rubble and disaster work, tying knots, tying ropes. Sometimes you might have to lower your dog down over a cliff. You have to be able to handle stuff like that.”
Even if handlers are unlikely to encounter any one of those obstacles during a particular search, they prepare for the possibility.
Vernlund breaks the training down into roughly 80% of the onus being on handlers and 20% being on dogs. Handlers need to be able to read their dogs, knowing when they’re in scent and out of scent, if they’re chasing a raccoon when a handler might otherwise think they’re indicating that they’ve found what they’re supposed to be searching for. It’s imperative to pick up on your dog’s indication.