Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association
A member of the American Rescue Dog Association
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Emergency Contact
To activate the team to find a missing person, please contact your local law enforcement agency. More info can be found in Unit Capabilities.
Please note: We can only respond to requests for our services from applicable local, state and/or federal responsible agencies.
We do not look for missing pets. If your pet is missing, you can find more information here.
How to Help
VSRDA relies on donations and support from the community for it's continued operations.
For more information about how to support VSRDA you can check out our donation and volunteer pages.
CFC #34331
The team is relies on our community for land to train on. We obtain permits to train in a variety of locations, but we are always looking for new locations.
About VSRDA
Established in 1977, the Virginia Search and Rescue Dog Association (VSRDA) is the Southeast’s oldest air-scenting canine search and rescue organization. VSRDA is vailable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at no cost to the requesting agency. VSRDA is a member of the American Rescue Dog Association (ARDA), the Commonwealth of Virginia Search and Rescue Council (VASARCO), and the National Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR), and is a sanctioned and deployable resource by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM)
About VSRDA
Unit Capabilities
VSRDA has team members and canines in a variety of specialties. We have both air-scenting and trailing live find canines, as well as human remains detection canines specializing in both wilderness and water recovery. We also have team members who are members of Virginia Task Force 1, and have dogs who are certified US&R disaster canines.
Unit Capabilities
Water Recovery
In 1979, founding member Alice Stanley co-authored a research paper on the use of air-scenting dogs for locating drowning victims who are either partially or fully submerged in the water. This pioneering work was the beginning of not only VSRDA’s passion for water recovery work, but also set the stage for teams across the country to begin investigating how to utilize canine resources to assist in the recovery of drowned subjects.
Water Recovery
