Real-Life Lassies

When an Idaho woman was reported missing and possibly suicidal earlier this year a specially trained "air-scenting" dog found her on a remote hillside and brought help in time to save her life.

The rescue occurred near Bell Mountain in Blaine County just after nightfall. Searchers had located the woman's abandoned truck, but had been unable to find her when the Intermountain Search and Rescue Dog Team was called to the scene.

Three dogs and their handlers began working the area, moving methodically up and down the valley where the truck was found. In evening, as the air cools in the mountains it settles and falls into the valleys. The breeze brings with it the smells of whatever rests on the slopes above.

The woman, who had wounded herself in a suicide attempt, was 300 yards up a steep hillside and not visible from the road. But her scent had cooled and run into the valley where the first air-scenting dog picked it up.

"The dog alerted and went to the victim," said Bob Langendoen, coordinator of the dog team. "When he came back with a stick his handler went with him up the hill and the victim was recovered."

Most people think of bloodhounds or other tracking dogs when search and rescue dogs are mentioned. Tracking dogs need a point source from where the scent begins. You give the dog a snoutful of the missing person's clothing, take him to the last place the person was seen, and let him go to work. The tracking dog will start at that track and follow it from track to track to track.

Langendoen's dogs work differently. Instead of following a track, they work a systematic grid pattern in their searches until they find a human scent. They don't need a scent article and they don't need a starting point.

"We simply work across a given area until we get in the path of a human scent. The dog then hones in on it like radar and goes to the strongest point," Langendoen explained. When the dog finds a victim in the field it is trained to pick up a stick and return at full speed to its handler. Together the dog and handler then return to the victim and radio for assistance, if needed.

"It's a lot like Lassie," Langendoen admitted.

Canine membership in the Intermountain Search and Rescue Dog Team, like other air-scenting dogs across the U.S., is not limited by breed. Dogs now on the Sun Valley-based team include German Shepherd, Malamute, Labrador, Rottweiler, and Airedale Terrier.

Langendoen, who operates an outdoors supply store in Hailey, Idaho, started the Intermountain Search and Rescue Dog Team with his wife, dog trainer Sue Lavoie, shortly after they moved to Idaho from New Jersey four years ago. Both had been active with a prominent air-scenting dog team there and brought their dogs and expertise with them when they moved west.

 To date, only the German Shepherds handled by Langendoen and Lavoie are fully trained, but two others on the Intermountain team have attained "limited operational" status. Five other dog-and-handler pairs are still in training to become operational for searches.

Training air-scent dogs begins as a game of hide-and-seek, with the dog searching for its owner hiding a few hundred yards away, and progresses to the point where the dog will locate and respond to any human scent in the field.

"It's something that's built up over time," Langendoen pointed out. Up to two years of steady training are usually required to get a dog operational for searches. Handlers must be trained as well. They learn dog obedience skills, first aid, rescue techniques, emergency communications, and how to handle their dogs on a search.

"The handler has to know how to cover an area properly, depending on how the wind is blowing and what the convective and conductive currents are. Out in the field they're a 50-50 team," he explained.

Over the past four years the Idaho air-scenting dogs have helped locate missing hunters and fishermen, searched for a downed pilot after his jet crashed, and assisted in recovering many accident victims. But their searches, no matter how well planned and executed, are not always successful.

The Intermountain dog team was among the hundreds of volunteers who searched the Challis, Idaho, area this fall for signs of a missing 9-year-old girl. For day after day the dogs and handlers combed the places where the little girl might have wandered, seeking a scent that would offer some clue to her whereabouts, but none was found. And none has yet been found.

"If she was around the point where she was last seen we feel we would have found her," said Langendoen.