Scout is a black Labrador-Bloodhound mix based in Minneapolis who takes her new job — and her new uniform — very seriously.
She is the state’s first dog-scenting dog, trained to find lost pets and bring them home.
Donning a vest with a patch that reads “Come Back Home, Puppies,” Scout represents an all-volunteer group called The Retrievers, who do exactly that.
“People call us when their dog goes missing, and we throw out the forces, so to speak,” Scout’s trainer, Miki Carlson, told MPR News.
“Last year, we had about 960 cases of lost dogs. This year, we’re on track for about 1,000. We basically get the case and then just take it ’til the end, ’til we find their dog.”
And Scout is training to be the newest member of the search team.
A lot of times, people won’t call The Retrievers until their pet has been missing for a while, after unsuccessfully trying to locate the dog on their own.
But once Scout is fully trained, she’ll be able to go from the lost dog’s last sighting and track its scent, ideally leading the search team to their target.
According to a GoFundMe for Scout’s training, the dog will learn commands like “take scent,” “search,” and “which way?” so she can help lead search teams to runaway dogs.
Carlson said that Scout will be able to follow a scent trail of about 13 days, meaning she could sniff out a lost pet who has been on the lam for about two weeks.
“We have needed a trailing dog so many times on Retrievers cases,” Carlson wrote on GoFundMe. “With your help, we will finally be able to use the genius of a dog's nose to help bring more lost dogs home.”
To MPR, she added: “It's just going to be a game changer for us.”
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A version of this article was originally published in The 2024 Animals Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image courtesy of Miki Carlson/The Retrievers
