Matt Cooke
Matt has a degree in International Disaster Engineering and Management (Hons) with experience in NHS Emergency Planning and Security Management. It was during a field skills survival module during the second year of his degree that he witnessed, first hand, the value of Search Dog teams.
"As part of an exercise, I had to gather information from a key witness and use several search teams to find a missing person somewhere within a huge mountainous area. I was able to narrow down the search slightly but was still left with a huge area which needed covering in a very short space of time. Technically we could only use human searchers, but knowing that one of my assessors had a search dog, I invited his dog for a ride along and a 'walkies'. Once we were at our area, it was literally a case of following the dogs nose! I was suitably impressed and passed that element of the course with flying colours."
Matt joined Dorset Search and Rescue (DorSAR) with the ultimate aim of creating a search dog team based in Dorset. He began training Charlie at approximately 12 weeks old, starting off with simple, fun games that any puppy would enjoy i.e. find the smelly socks, then progressed to more specialised search training both independently and with Lowland Search Dogs (LSD) - Southern, based in Hampshire.
Matt somehow manages to get through a pair of trousers, snagging them on barbed wire, on almost every operational search!
Dorset Search Dogs was co-founded by Matt, in February 2006, in order to be a valuable resource for the local and neighbouring communities.