TORRINGTON – Goshen County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue held an event at Pioneer Park on Saturday, May 15, to meet the public, demonstrate their training and raise awareness for the organization as a community resource.
Assistant Training Officer Art Lowther said the team’s K-9 unit has been active around 11 years. More recently, the organization introduced ground operations and about a year ago started a mounted team.
“A lot of times, people see the type of training that we conduct, and we participate in and they have questions, so meet and greets give us the opportunity to answer those questions,” Lowther said. “It’s also fun for us. It lets us get out and interact with the public and get out the gear to demonstrate a few things.”
“The basic foundation is ground operations,” he explained.
According to Lowther, everyone involved with search and rescue is a member of the ground operations team.
From there, members have the opportunity to branch out into other areas, such as K-9, mounted or drone.
A prominent demonstration involved the K-9 team.
Several small drains were set up in a line on the grass. Placed in one drain was the scent of human remains. Handlers walked their dogs past each drain, prompting them to check each drain.
When the scent was found, most dogs would stop and lay down.
Jerry Numon, search and rescue co-director, certified K-9 handler and trainer, said the dogs are taught to sit, sit and bark, down, down and bark, stand or stand and bark upon detection of human remains.
“We say that K-9 is about 10% of the overall search and rescue, but that’s what gets us called out. They want the dogs first,” Numon said.
Numon said one of his dogs has been on five homicide investigations and has found remains that had been 13 feet below ground for 14 years. Numon demonstrated advanced human remains detection with this dog, and later demonstrated tracking with another.
Having started in Colorado, Numon said he has been working with search and rescue since 2004. He helps train the county’s dogs and certifies at the basic training level. For anything beyond the basic level, the team travels elsewhere for certification.
Tenille Grosz, who has been a member of search and rescue since last October, and her dog, Winston, will travel to Cody this summer to do mountain and water training, according to Numon.
According to Tenille’s husband, Travis, Winston was bought to be a pet, but Tenille thought it was important for him to have a job.
The two started out training him to hunt for elk and deer sheds. Travis said Numon saw a video on Facebook of Winston hunting for sheds and contacted them about testing Winston for search and rescue.
“So then, we decided to do that instead,” said Travis.
“Now, all he wants to do is work,” Tenille said.
While the dogs work, “flankers” watch the dogs, looking for evidence on the ground and communicate with incident command (IC).
Often times, flankers are on foot, but being on horseback can be more efficient. Flanking is the focus of the mounted team.
“We want the public to realize that the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue is out there. It’s a public service that’s available if we need it,” Lowther said.
Lowther said each month the organization holds a business meeting and training. Also, every month is an all-day training event.
“Right now, we’re pushing approximately 25 active members with close to 30 on our roster,” he said.
This is the organization’s second public meet and greet – the first one being in August of 2020. They also participate in Third Thursdays.
Right now, a focus for the group is recruiting for and raising awareness of the equine team.
Lowther said people who might be interested can contact the Sheriff’s department to be directed to the right people.
