Meet Suzanne Elshult
After twenty-two years being immersed in K9 search and rescue and deployment on hundreds of missions with my three labrador retrievers I am recognized both regionally in the Pacific Northwest and beyond as a seasoned K9 handler and trainer committed to finding the lost and the missing.
More about Suzanne
I was awarded the State of Washington Search and Rescue Leadership Award in 2017 and have been recognized by Everett Mountain Rescue for my contributions as a prior board member and the Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue K9 Team as someone who was instrumental in building one of the largest and most committed K9 teams in the State of Washington. I am the Past President of Cascadia Search Dogs (CSDK9.org), an organization devoted to sponsoring high quality training for K9 teams in all disciplines of search and rescue. I have been certified with my dogs in Airscent Wilderness, Human Remains Detection, Avalanche and First Responder Disaster. I am currently deployable as a K9 handler with Mason County SAR as a human remains detection team at the forensic level. Both Kili and Keb are also certified and deploy as historical/archeology search dogs through the Canine Forensics Foundation (K9FF.org). My first search dog Bosse passed away after 16 years of service in search and rescue.
My commitment to high standards and becoming the very best I can be with my working dogs has led me to certify as a professional SAR K9 team with nationally recognized organizations such as the North American Police Work Dog Association (NAPWDA), the International Police Work Dog Association (IPWDA) and the National Search Dog Alliance (NSDA). I am a Principal Evaluator with NSDA in several disciplines including human remains detection. As a dedicated member of the K9 search and rescue community I volunteer my time helping to coach other teams, speak at conferences and at various company and community events, interview for podcasts and write articles to challenge the status quo and “bust myths.” Follow this link for an example: K-9 Cop Magazine: Lessons Learned from the OSO Landslide
As a Karen Pryor Certified Training partner my commitment to K9 positive reinforcement training is strong. My dogs and I also participate in dog sports such as agility, dock jumping, rally and obedience.
I am actively involved in the K9 SAR community all over the world through my presence on social media. K9 handlers in other countries may be familiar with me as the founder of the Facebook Group K9 Search and Rescue Community, a group with more than 5,000 members in the K9 scent detection field. I have trained with and coached SAR K9 teams in the US, Canada and Denmark.
My family’s love for the outdoors, skiing and mountaineering brought me to Seattle after completing a Master’s Degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Originally from Sweden, I still make annual sojourns to the “old country” to spend time with family, old friends and “new friends” I have made in the Scandinavian search and rescue community in recent years.
Professionally I run a coaching practice helping others find purpose and become strong leaders in their lives. After many years working as a senior executive in a variety of organizations, I went on a quest to redesign my life and find a new and meaningful way to give back to my community in the late 90s. Watching dogs working the rubble in the aftermath of 9-11 changed the trajectory of my journey as I became involved in K9 search and rescue shortly thereafter. I am filled with gratitude waking up every morning being able to live a purposeful life. I aspire to be the voice for other SAR volunteers in spreading the word about the important work we do and in inspiring others to dream big, search for and find their passion no matter what obstacles are thrown their way.
Meet Guy Mansfield
In my years as a search and rescue volunteer, I’ve deployed on missions throughout Washington State, ranging from wilderness searches, to technical rope-rescues, to disaster searches, to urban searches for missing children. I began with a focus on supporting K9 search teams and wilderness navigation, and in recent years have specialized in applying probability-based search theory to some of the most challenging searches, including those for human remains.
More about Guy
My first SAR mission was on a cold March day in 2008, when I volunteered to join a ranger team searching for a hiker missing for two days in Mount Rainier National Park. We donned heavy packs, strapped on snowshoes, and searched a grid pattern across a steep slope above the Kautz Creek Drainage. After many hours of searching, our subject was located half-buried in deep snow, dead of hypothermia. And while the outcome was sad, I realized on that day I could combine my wilderness skills and love for adventure to serve a larger purpose. So began my enduring SAR journey.
Growing up in California, I spent much of my youth climbing the granite walls of Yosemite and summiting peaks of the Sierra Nevada, with my brother as a constant companion. Our adventures expanded to explorations of the California coast, and included traversing the shoreline of Point Reyes National Park, which required wading through caves and tide pools passable only at extreme low tides. As my career moved me north, first into Oregon, then Washington, we expanded our adventures to include many of the trails and peaks in the Cascade Range. With my wife June, I’ve hiked and climbed in the French and Swiss Alps, explored remote lava tubes in Hawaii, snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and hiked in the highlands of Scotland.
Over the years, I’ve always enjoyed teaching and writing. I’ve presented at national and international SAR conferences, have published in the Journal of Search and Rescue, and have authored over a dozen scientific papers and technical business articles. My academic career began with a Ph.D. from the Department of Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health Sciences University, followed by research at the University of Washington and the University of Illinois Medical School. I never imagined in those days, that I would be able to apply my analytical and statistical skills to improving the methods we use to search for and find the missing and the lost.
I’ve served as both a “boots on the ground” searcher and in search command staff for Everett Mountain Rescue, Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue, and King County Search and Rescue. I’ve worked closely with sheriffs and SAR coordinators in many Washington State counties, as well as rangers in Mount Rainier National Park and North Cascades National Park. While I’ve been honored to receive awards, recognitions, and thanks from these organizations, my personal reward comes from helping others, from finding the missing, and from finding better ways to search for those who are lost.
I’ve served as Operations Section Chief and Planning Section Chief on some of the largest searches in northwest Washington State. I am a founder and Director of the Washington State SAR Planning Unit, formed in 2018 to provide search planning expertise throughout the state. In that capacity, I’ve worked closely with law enforcement to plan and manage large-scale searches for human remains in criminal cases. And in those long hours of planning and those weary hours on search sites, I’m motivated by the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “It’s every man’s business, to see justice done.”
Meet Keb
K9 “Keb” entered my life in 2010, a few years before my first search and rescue dog Bosse retired. She was named Kebnekaise – Keb for short – after the highest mountain north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. My husband Scott and I, along with our daughter Linnea and fiancée submitted its glaciated peak shortly before we picked up puppy Keb.
More about Keb
Keb was carefully selected for her working lines and while building drive had been a constant project with Bosse, it was a non-issue with Keb, who was always “full speed ahead.” It was my job to channel all that energy to help her become a solid search dog. She was quite a handful from the get-go and quickly earned a nickname: The Kebinator. I initially trained Keb as a wilderness airscent dog – trained to find lost people that are alive. Our K9 team required all our dogs to develop a “trained indication” – a way to communicate to us in no uncertain terms when they have made a “find.” Our airscent dogs work off leash and I foolishly let Keb pick a behavior which seemed to come naturally for her – a “jump indication.” In her case (and to my enduring dismay), this evolved into a full-body slam, as Keb started her take-off five feet or more from me and would impact my body as a small furry missile.
Keb turns out to have a high drive with a “turn-off” button making her a nice member of the family as well. While she has a strong independent streak – which comes in handy as a search and rescue dog must have confidence and be able to work and problem-solve on its own – she is a gentle soul and a great listener often acknowledging me when I am talking out loud with little woofs, nudges or lingering licks.
To train a search and rescue dog you must have a reward that your dog values above everything else. For Keb that turned out to be a blue and orange magical ball: Her Most Favorite Toy in the World. (photo of me and Keb with ball)
As Keb matured she started training for both human remains detection and avalanche rescue and by 2014 she received her first human remains detection national certification which enabled her to deploy and make three finds on the largest disaster in the history of the State of Washington, the OSO landslide which eradicated a whole community and took forty-three lives. This tragic event led to our relentless commitment to finding the dead and the missing in the PNW and honing her scent detection skills to a level I would have never believed possible.
In the years since OSO we have searched for human remains in rugged wilderness and urban settings ranging from lost hikers, mushroom pickers and hunters, lost children, subjects with dementia, and murder victims.
Over the years I have tried to imagine what Keb’s world is like. She basically
her nose. For her, all humans exist more as different odors than visual images. Her olfactory system is a finely tuned piece of biology. She has several hundred million scent receptors lining the caverns of her nose, compared to my skimpy six million. Her olfactory bulbs make up a big part of her brain – a vomeronasal organ sitting above the roof in the mouth. Bottom line: she can smell of stuff we humans cannot even start to imagine.
My first search dog Bosse lived until he was three weeks shy of sixteen. He dedicated his whole life to SAR and was my true blue dog who allowed me to make all the mistakes I needed to become a better handler, though truthfully my dogs have all been so different that my approach to training has had to adapt (I have also learned a lot and evolved as a handler and trainer).
As of this writing in 2021 K9 Keb is still actively deploying as a human remains detection dog and is certified at the Crime Scene level with the International Police Working Dog Association (IPWDA)
In late 2018 puppy, Kili joined our family. He is a single discipline dog certified with the National Search Dog Alliance (NSDA) with a special focus on working clandestine graves and cold cases.
My dogs have allowed me to become a better version of myself. I am their spiritual guardian and they mine. Forever grateful!