North Country Search Dogs

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West Wardsboro, VT
North Country Search Dogs

K9 Search and Rescue team serving Vermont and New Hampshire

06/09/2026

When a 14 year old went missing last night, the search community was mobilized in Vermont and New Hampshire. A small army of searchers was in the process of converging when the subject was located by police. Searchers across both States gratefully turned round and drove home to their beds. You can’t even imagine the relief the family must have felt.

There’s no more pressing search than for a minor. The agony of a missing child is something no parent should go through. We’re so happy this one was resolved quickly.

06/03/2026

Yesterday we were called to search for a man who had gone missing the day before, leaving a track into the woods with destination unknown. Our K9 teams worked alongside friends and colleagues from different agencies, and we put in a full day of searching. Many of the volunteers had come straight from another search in New Hampshire, so credit to them for their commitment. At the end of the day, the gentleman was located by a member of the local community, much to everyone’s relief. We all sleep well at night when our subject has been located safe.

05/13/2026

With great sadness, we announce the passing of a very special search dog. K9 Olive enjoyed a long and successful search career with her handler Jennifer Vaughan. They served for many years on New England K-9 Search and Rescue before Olive retired at age 11, handing the reigns over to her younger sister Harley, who now serves on North Country Search Dogs. Olive had the most beautiful gentle and mature demeanor. She was known for her steady and strong work ethic and her ability to pace herself during long searches. Strikingly beautiful, she possessed a calm, resilient core. She responded to hundreds of searches and had some significant finds of lost people, both alive and deceased - as well as a startling discovery of physical evidence that unlocked a multi-day search, just in time to save a life.

Olive loved to search, so much so that she continued doing little search problems for fun, post-retirement, even as her body slowed and her hearing failed her. Her continued joy at making the find was staggering and heartbreaking.

Olive, you’ve been a valuable and much-loved member of New England’s SAR community and your contribution will never be forgotten.

Our thoughts are with Olive’s family. The bond between a handler and their search dog is extraordinary – and forged in countless hours of meaningful work. Jennifer and K9 Harley are grieving now, but their commitment to search work is unwavering. Their continued searching will honor Olive’s legacy.

05/05/2026

North Country Search Dogs has had a busy week. We assisted the Vermont State Police Search and Rescue team with a case that entailed a day of searching in pleasant weather and open woodland. We go out regardless of the conditions, so we know to be grateful when we have it good! Meanwhile, the human component of North Country Search Dogs spent several days improving our search planning capabilities. We attended a course run by CalTopo which highlighted the ways that search management is evolving under this revolutionary new technology. It was exciting to be in a room full of motivated and committed SAR members from Vermont New Hampshire and Maine, most of whom we know well from the years we’ve spent searching together. Many thanks to the CalTopo instructors for an amazing week - and to Stowe Mountain Rescue for facilitating this course.

04/23/2026

We contributed four K9 search teams yesterday to a search for a deceased individual in a body of water. Two of our teams worked from boats and two conducted a shoreline search. We were grateful to Rescue Inc. for their excellent boat-handling skills and for providing top-notch assistant searchers. It was a long day with some challenging conditions for our dogs – including steep terrain and proximity to swiftwater. Sadly the search remains unresolved, despite skilled efforts from Rescue Inc and the Vermont State Police.

04/13/2026

Our search season just kicked off with our third activation of the year. A gentleman in Southern Vermont failed to return from his walk which resulted in a formal search being launched, involving the Vermont State Police Search and Rescue team and several other agencies, including our own. We were en route in the early hours of the morning when the subject staged his own rescue, popping out right by the Command Post (the local fire department), tired, disoriented and an astonishing 4 miles from his home. Many a search ends this way when the subject is located before search teams even arrive – but almost never do they present themselves on the very doorstep of the Command Post. It was a remarkable outcome. We received the stand-down and gratefully drove home to try and salvage some sleep. Our subject was lucky, but we were too - we could have been searching empty woodland for days, given how far he had traveled from his residence.

This truncated search was good practice for us, being woken from sleep and getting excited dogs loaded into cars, chugging coffee and hitting the road. It knocked off the winter cobwebs and we’re ready for the next one…

01/23/2026

We kicked off 2026 with our first search of the year yesterday, assisting the Vermont State Police with a criminal case. Our dogs love to search, so it was a good day for them and the snowpack was light, so we considered ourselves lucky.

Looking back at 2025, we clocked 49 search activations, in service of the Vermont State Police Search and Rescue Team, the Vermont State Police Crime Scene Search Team, New Hampshire Fish and Game and the US Border Patrol. During the year we had 7 finds, not that finds are everything: even when our efforts don’t result in a direct find, we’re still contributing to the search effort by clearing areas and helping to determine where needs to be searched next.

Searches are huge collaborative efforts and we’re just one cog in a big, hardworking machine. We love the role that we’re able to play with our K9s and are looking forward to a long and productive year ahead.

01/17/2026

Dogs + snow = a special kind of magic… but also a massive workout for the dog!
Their movement through snow comes at a much higher metabolic cost than walking on solid ground. In deep snow, they can experience drag force of up to 300%, increasing their workload tenfold.

Its easy to underestimate how hard your dog is working. Last winter there was a haunting story in Northern VT: a Labrador collapsed from exhaustion during a backcountry day and a rescue team had to be called to carry him out after dark. His owner was blindsided, thinking that they had been having a fine old time - proof of how much our dogs push themselves, just to stay by our side.

Thankfully for our K9s, we don’t often get called to search in snowy conditions – a nice set of prints in the snow leading away from the house of a missing subject tends to negate the need for air-scent search dogs. We do continue to train though, and we play it safe with warm-ups and shorter sessions. We avoid deep snow and extreme cold, checking for snow/ice balls between their pads and, when necessary, incorporating supportive care like chiropractic and massage.

Dogs make everything more fun, but keeping them safe means knowing when to bring them… and when to leave them home.

12/25/2025

Happy Holidays from all of us at North Country Seach Dogs!

10/31/2025

North Country Search Dogs returned to the Canadian border earlier this week for the third attempt to locate a woman who died while attempting to cross the border in the winter months. It was important to locate this individual to deliver closure to her family and we would have gone out as many times as necessary. We worked closely with the US Border Patrol and the Vermont State Police Search and Rescue Team and it was rewarding to be able to bring closure to this case. It takes years of focused training and a lot of dedication from both canine and handler to get to the point where we can deliver a result like this.

Address

PO Box 371
West Wardsboro, VT
05360

Website

http://northcountrysearchdogs.org/

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