What Makes Canine Search and Rescue Successful? Insights into Environmental, Management, and Personality Factors

• Authors: Silvia Silvestri, Gabriele Brecchia, Olimpia Barbato, Alda Quattrone, Marco Valsecchi and Laura Menchetti

• Publication date: 19 February 2026

• Original source: Animals

Why it matters:
The study supports treating canine effectiveness as variable rather than assigning a fixed POD to every dog team. Temperature, wind, humidity, team experience, coverage and handler assessment may all need consideration when tasking or interpreting an unsuccessful search.

Transferability:
Relevant to wilderness and missing-person dog searches internationally, but local terrain, weather, certification standards and canine specialisms require adaptation.

Limitations:
Only 32 teams undertook one simulated wooded-area search. Several reported associations may be unstable because of the small sample and multiple variables. Associations do not establish causation, and the trial does not validate operational POD values. Handler ratings also showed possible self-report bias.

Training sections informed:

• Resource selection and tasking

• POD assessment

• Search Operations and progress monitoring

• Reassessment following an unsuccessful dog search

• Canine-team briefing and debriefing

• Environmental and welfare considerations

Training decision: Amend — clarify that canine capability and expected detection performance are conditional on environment, team characteristics and observed search behaviour, rather than fixed resource attributes.