K9 Search Dogs Reuniting lost pets with loved ones

Sam Clark, who lives near Okehampton, has owned bloodhounds since the early 1990s and has always loved harnessing their incredible ability to track scents, using her fantastic dogs to find missing people.

She found she was receiving more and more frantic phone calls from people who had heard about her bloodhounds, wondering if they could find dogs which had gone missing and she decided to train a bloodhound to track dogs, as opposed to people. K9 Search Dogs, a tiny charity, was started in 2012 and since that time has been involved in reuniting hundreds of lost pets with their owners.

K9 Search Dogs now has three of Sam’s dogs involved in the charity plus a fourth in training, and two bloodhounds based in Somerset, covering areas further away from West Devon.

Amazingly Sam gets phone calls every day asking for help and goes out usually at least twice a week on rescue missions.

‘You always get more call outs in the summer holidays, when people come down to Dartmoor for a week and lose their dogs on the moors - and then of course bonfire night is a nightmare,’ she said ruefully. ‘We had a classic one this year - a lady had gone to a firework party with her three-year-old child and a puppy, and let the three-year-old hold the puppy’s lead! You can imagine what happened!

‘The other big issue is people rescuing dogs from places like Romania. They come over here, basically as feral or street dogs, get let out of the van or whatever they are travelling in and scarper before their new owner’s even had time to get them into the house! I reckon we are getting calls every week like this.’

Sam explained that in these cases, while her bloodhounds can usually find the dog, actually catching a terrified animal can be as much a challenge as locating it in the first place.

One of the biggest problems encountered by Sam and her fellow volunteers when being asked to find a lost pet, particularly from a family which has more than dog, is being able to give the bloodhounds a scent article which is unique to just the missing one. She advises all dog owners, particularly if they have several pets, to make scent pad from gauze and rub it all over the dog, capturing some fur, seal it in a ziplock bag and keep it in the freezer. That way, if the dog goes missing, her bloodhounds will have a real head start in being able to track its scent.

Another problem is finding enough friendly dogs to take part in training sessions.

‘What we are desperately short of is people with friendly dogs to “get lost” for us. It’s really good for the hounds to search for dogs they don’t know. All we ask is for them to walk for half an hour following a route we give them, and we get the hound to find them,’ said Sam.

These training sessions usually take place in the Sourton area as it’s relatively near to where she is based, but she is happy to travel further afield in order to train the hounds in different areas and with new subjects.

She will also take the hounds into urban environments for training. Whether in a town or in the country, it takes hours of work to get them to follow the particular aroma they are aiming to find, rather than the confusing overlaying smells of rabbits, pheasants and other small mammals – or discarded food wrappers and traffic scents.

The hounds track on a long lead and Sam said they absolutely love working, getting excited way before they are actually out on the hunt.

K9 Search Dogs relies entirely on donations and the goodwill of volunteers. Sam will do car boot sales and demonstrations at shows to raise money, there is a Paypal donate button on the charity’s website and she is registered with West Devon’s Sea Moor Lotto, which has provided financial support.

‘Having enough money to pay the petrol of my volunteers is the main thing, and insurance. We all give our time for free, and we don’t charge for call outs,’ said Sam.

Any dog lover that has been through the agony of losing their much loved pet, even if it’s only for an hour or so, will be able to identify the typical testimonial that Sam and her band of volunteers have received:

‘Oh my God, I thought I’d never see her again. You are so wonderful. Thank you.’

For more information visit www.k9searchdog.orgor contact 07721 597926/01566 783233.

Jane Honey