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Show On the way to the search field, the dog leader should engage in a loving dialogue with his four- legged friend. Once he arrives at his station, he determines the direction of the search ( wind, terrain) and goes with his dog to the starting point. There, he gets the dog search-keen and releases him with the encouraging command: " Dog's name"....... " Search!" Objects. While the dog and the probing crew are busy with their work, it may be possible to find some piece of equipment belonging to the buried person. This object leads to the assumption that the victim is buried in the immediate vicinity. This is usually a false conclusion, because the human body is much heavier and is carried off and buried under entirely different conditions. Indeed, objects can often be used as valuable aids in orientation; for example, when there has been a . simultaneous descent of various avalanches and it is not known whether anybody at all, or who if any, has been buried. The case of the " Samovar avalanche" in Oetztal in 1961 can be used as an illustration. There, the avalanche dog " Drux" pointed to a whole assortment of equipment in the line of fall from the burial point. In this way he indicated to his leader the exact direction of flow and the victim's point of location. It is always wrong to drop a search plan upon finding an object and to concentrate the entire search in the locality of the find. However, the location of the finr! is always marked and a few persons can be employed in thoroughly searching this spot and its vicinity. Under certain circumstances, objects in the cone of the avalanche may be found in the immediate vicinity of the victim. This applies to every pile of snow in which the victim could be located ( in the deposition zone of a flat area). Bottlenecks. It can frequently be observed that an understandable confusion is created by the detection of the first victim. Upon hearing the call " found," everybody rushes to the spot and everybody is anxious to get there and to be of help. - 60 - |