We assist, as part of the search and rescue (SAR) community in New Mexico, in locating missing persons. We respond to search missions 24 hours a day/7 days a week. The State Police initiates all SAR missions in NM. MCC is then called out, often along with several other SAR teams, through the Incident Command System.

We deploy on search missions in all kinds of weather, over all kinds of terrain, and, more often than not, in the middle of the night. We are focused primarily on wilderness missions, but our team also has experienced handlers and canines in urban disaster SAR. To meet the challenges of missions, our team must be diverse in nature and we have tracking/trailing, scent-specific airscent dogs, and scent-generic air scent trained dogs. While we spend the majority of our mission time looking for live subjects, we also have cadaver locating dogs, who assist in recovery situations. (The dog types are explained in the search dogs section.)

To prepare for the rigors of missions, for both the humans and canines, we devote a considerable amount of time and dedication to training. Training is varied and challenging. We train twice per week in the field, regardless of the weather, with occasional classroom sessions. Classroom sessions are devoted to education of newer members and to review for the more experienced members on important aspects of SAR, such as communications, wilderness medicine, and navigation.

Our minimal deployment size in the field is the canine's handler, the canine, and a support specialist. Although we are volunteers, MCC's size means that we can often deploy 4 or more of these teams on a mission. And, although we never venture into the field alone for safety reasons, we believe that every person needs to be self-sufficient in the field with a full spectrum of SAR skills.

To get to know our follow searchers on missions, we also, whenever possible, participate in mock searches and joint trainings with other SAR teams. To further pursue our education in SAR, we also attend SAR conferences and events across the country, with and without our dogs.

Team members who are handlers train their own dogs; all team members assist in the training of MCC dogs.

What we don't do

MCC does not train other people's dogs for SAR or other activities. We also do not adopt dogs into the team.