🐾 Avy Dog Hide & Seek 🐾 Avy dog in training, Deon, with his handler Leslie and assisted by patroller Julianne, spent the day practicing avalanche drills here at Keystone! While this may look like a fun game of hide and seek, make no mistake that these drills serve an important purpose: training the dog for out-of-area rescues as well as the rare chance of an avalanche in bounds at the resort. Playing on Deon’s prey drive - the natural instinct to hunt, chase and capture prey - Leslie and Julianne use a bumper tug toy to encourage the idea of pulling a victim out of an avalanche burial. Drills are scaled up in difficulty to allow Deon to transition his training and skills from line-of-sight drills to using his nose to detect human scent. Before Deon can be validated by Colorado Rapid Avalanche Deployment (C-RAD) he must pass a variety of internal and external aptitude tests. #keystonecolorado #keystoneresort #avydogs