Andy Edwards and Charlie(2)
I am currently employed by the HM Coastguard, carrying out two different roles. One as a Coastguard rescue officer where I am trained in Cliff Rescue, Search Management, Communications, Navigation, FPOS first aid, EOD, Helo landing sites and water rescue. I have carried out land searches all over the coast of Dorset and Hampshire to find a variety of missing people with most of the results having a happy ending and sadly a few not.
My second role is to carry out maintenance works on properties owned by the MCA, alongside this I am also the owner of a Building company which carries out a variety of building projects. I am also qualified as a PADI diver, Level 4 RYA rescue boat and I have also served on SAR helicopters at Portland Dorset.
I have really enjoyed the training so far on the dog team because I can see my dog is getting so much from it and that in the future we will be used to find missing people.
My dog is called Charlie he is a 20 month old labrador. As the second dog on the team called Charlie he is lovingly known as Charlie2. He started training when he was 4 months old by looking and finding his toys in the house/garden. He always showed a willingness to search so I contacted Dorset Search Dogs and was accepted as a member in October 2007. Since then we have spent a lot of time building him up for Air scent searching and I am hoping he will be assessed within the next few months to be operational, being such an active dog he gets so much from the training and really enjoys it.