To become a dog Handler you must be a member of one of the Island's Emergency Services that form the Isle of Man Search & Rescue Group (Police, Coastguard, Fire or Civil Defence). The IOM SAR Group is a member of The Mountain Rescue Council of England and Wales.
Handlers must have been a member of their service for a minimum of a year and demonstrate a high level of skill and experience in search and rescue work, including first aid, communications and navigation.
We also require a prospective handler to body for SARDA for a minimum of 6 months prior to taking on a dog. We currently have 2 qualified handlers at present.
The Committee has just been re-formed with many new faces offically joining SARDA IOM. All are unpaid volunteers as well as contributing numerous hours being dogsbodies and doing fundraising / publishing events and without them, the charity wouldn't be able to be as proactive or successful as is it.
Chairman - Dawn Webb
Vice Chairman - Phil Diment
Secretary - Sarah Nixon
Treasurer: John Callow
Police Liaison - Matt Creer
Training - Jim Macgregor
Equipment - Jon Whiting
Social Secretary - Mick Naylor
Webpage/media - Gary Wright
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Matt and Lola, graded by SARDA Wales to Full Search Dog status in 2007, Matt founded SARDA IOM in 2004 and Lola was the first dog ever to be awarded search dog status by NSARDA in the Isle of Man.
Matt and Lola have had 3 finds since grading in 07 and have received an IOM Constabulary Chief Constable's Award in relation to one of those finds.
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Jim and Star. Jim is a Geography teacher and IOM Civil Defence Training Officer. They attained Full Search dog status in Wales in March 2009.
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Also see the Dogsbodies section of the website.
Other pages: