The ultimate scent hound, the Bloodhound is said to have the best nose of all dog breeds. The powerful dog also stands over more ground than other hounds. Bigger is considered better in Bloodhounds. As a result, adult males can be as tall as 30 inches at the withers and weigh up to 150 pounds.
It might seem then, that using a Bloodhound to find a missing child would risk the child’s safety. Not so. The lost child blessed by early call-out of a man-trailing Bloodhound and handler has a vastly improved chance of rescue. On locating the child, the gentle hound will want only to be the child’s new best friend.
So friendly and nonviolent is the Bloodhound that in criminal pursuits the dog and handler must be protected by other law enforcement personnel. The dog must also be protected by the handler’s vigilance and no small amount of strength. A Bloodhound is heedless of traffic, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, or anything else when working a trail. The handler must physically stop the dog when necessary for the dog’s survival.
Puppy Training
Bloodhounds have competition in the people-finding biz these days from other breeds who for the most part search differently. If you want a man-trailing Bloodhound, you’ll need to start by locating a breeder who specifically trains and breeds for this ability. You will also need to find training help from people who understand how these dogs work. They do not behave like German Shepherds—on the search, or anywhere else, for that matter!
Bloodhounds are not obedient dogs. They are sensitive, loving, and sometimes comic. They take their trails seriously, but their ability is more inherited than trained. That is not to say they don’t need a great deal of experience on the trail, both to develop their own understanding of scent and to work out communication with their handlers. But they are not dogs to train for work off-leash. They simply can’t think about anything else when on a trail.
Training the Bloodhound puppy begins with hide-and-go-seek games. The games start with situations where the pup can see the familiar person on most of the route to the hiding place and progress through more and more challenging scenarios.
Tracking dogs may be trained with treats placed on the ground, but this is not desirable with a Bloodhound. For the more difficult scent task of trailing that Bloodhounds perform, sniffing for food on the ground could be a huge distraction. The use of treats is not necessary for a dog who would rather trail than eat! But if desired, you can have the found person give the beginning pup a few treats when the pup makes the identification.
Dogs follow human scent in different ways. Tracking means following the scent on the ground. That scent drifts, and a tracking dog may cast back and forth and check the edges of a sparsely-scented surface such as pavement. But basically the tracking task is to work the ground scent.
Air-scenting means the dog is taking scent from the body of the person nearby. Alive or deceased, the body gives off scent that is different from scent left on the ground or in the air from the person moving through an area. When the goal is to locate evidence, it may be desired that a dog keep to the ground track. To find the person in the least time and by the shortest route, air-scenting is the most efficient method. Bloodhounds as well as other dogs who search for humans will often switch to air-scenting when close enough to the person to pick up this scent information.
The Bloodhound’s specialty is a third manner of following a human scent: trailing. A person’s body gives off various substances as it moves through an area. Some of this is shed skin cells, combined with various other scents we may never identify. But the dogs are quite familiar with the scents that lead to the human, and increasing experience makes a trailing dog better and better at the task. The Bloodhound can follow scent from the air, the ground, or wherever it’s still lingering, sometimes succeeding on a search several days after the fact.
Dog and handler are a team, and without a handler who can exert managing control and read the dog’s scent find signals, a Bloodhound cannot do the job. Remember, this is an on-leash dog. It could well be argued that it’s the handler who needs the training more than the dog. From working plenty of trailing problems together, the handler gains skill while the dog gains scent experience.
The Job
Evidence of a search by a Bloodhound is usually admissible in a court case, but the testimony will not convince judge and jury unless the handler has done certain things to properly prepare. The same preparations are needed if the team is to be valued enough to get called out for such situations as lost people.
Putting in plenty of practice time keeps the team ready, and this practice must be documented. The trainer needs to record in writing as much detail as possible of all practice, training, seminars, searches, and anything else pertinent to being a well-qualified team. This record may seem tedious to keep current, but its importance cannot be overstated. Showing the log to attorneys, dog trainers, certifying organizations, law-enforcement authorities and others is a major way of demonstrating your credibility and commitment to the work.
There may be no formal requirement for the court or local agencies that you and your dog pass any specific certifications. If you do so, though, and keep these credentials current by retesting at the typical one or two year intervals, you will be taken much more seriously.
At the same time, your training will have direction and focus when you make testing part of your program. It is bound to make you better, and will give you the best chance of being called out on missions. Being credentialed and having a good reputation can make law enforcement authorities much quicker to call you in and to keep the scene secure so that you and your dog have the best chance of success.
Testing is likely to include the following elements:
1. The handler conducts a competent interview to gather needed information for an efficient search.
2. The handler properly handles a scent object and demonstrates the ability to gather scent without disturbing a crime scene.
3. The handler starts dog on the trail effectively.
4. The dog works consistently and restarts quickly whenever necessary at the handler’s direction.
5. The dog and handler work trails effectively in rural, suburban, and urban settings.
6. The dog has the ability to work trails aged several hours and up to a mile long.
7. The dog gives a clear indication of a find and the handler identifies the find.
8. The handler can read the dog’s indication that there is no find.
9. The dog is steady in the face of aggression from a suspect and is not aggressive toward anyone in the area.
10. The team demonstrates the ability to work in an area contaminated by the presence of people, animals, equipment and other distractions.
11. The team successfully trails over a variety of surfaces, including pavement, grass, dirt, gravel, wooded areas, streams, etc.
12. The team demonstrates the ability to work around or through obstacles including walls, fences, vehicles, water, etc.
13. The team successfully locates a person hiding in a tree or vehicle or other location, on or off the ground.
14. The dog can find and the handler can recognize the find of articles left by the person anywhere near the trail.
15. Dog and handler have the ability to follow the trail of the target person when other people’s trails cross it, branch out from it, or otherwise contaminate it.
16. The handler demonstrates a good understanding of how dogs work scent trails, including scent pooling due to various features of weather and terrain.
17. The handler maintains a training log, arranges recertification on schedule, shows up on time with the correct equipment in good condition, has appropriate health clearances for dog and human, has physical fitness records, and wears the appropriate uniform.
Support Work
A search team requires coordination among the various personnel required to work the case. The handler needs to get training to be an asset on the scene and never a liability to either a missing person or to the court case to convict a criminal who made that person go missing. The search must be properly managed, either by a volunteer or a law-enforcement professional.
Those with the authority to call in a man-trailing team can do certain things to make success more likely:
1. Call in the dog team quickly. Bloodhounds have followed trails several days old, but the best chance of finding the person is in hours, not days.
2. Minimize traffic to the area. This means, for example, waiting until the dog has searched a vehicle before humans do so.
3. Do not touch the potential scent articles or let anyone else touch them. If they are not evidence in a criminal investigation, preserve the scent by sealing in a plastic bag. When appropriate, the handler collects scent for the dog to work without disturbing evidence. This can be done by laying a gauze pad over the object for 15 to 20 minutes, then picking it up without touching the object, and sealing the gauze into a plastic bag. This pad, kept free of other scent, can be used to give the dog the scent, and to give it again as needed.
4. Take good interviews with involved parties that will give the handler the best information for searching.
5. Turn off all vehicle engines. The fumes from a running engine can make man-trailing impossible.
6. Protect the dog and handler from attack by a suspect.
7. A dog is always in training, and needs completion of the trail. Give the dog a chance to indicate the person when found.
Do You Want a Bloodhound?
If chasing down escaped convicts or fleeing suspects sounds exciting, or you want the thrill of finding a lost child with your trusty dog, bringing a Bloodhound into your family may be sounding really good about now. There are a few things you should know.
Besides their giant size and lack of interest in obedience, Bloodhounds have a high death rate from gastric torsion (bloat). Their average life span is around eight years.
Bloodhounds are friendly and sweet, not guard dogs. This, of course, is not a bad personality for a family dog. It would be a huge point in favor of this type of dog for a great many handlers who want to do searching work.
A loose Bloodhound will not have any sense about staying out from in front of moving cars. Allowing a Bloodhound to roam can quickly result in a deceased Bloodhound. The owner will need to be involved in the dog’s exercise, because these dogs need a great deal of it. Serious pursuit of man-trailing work will provide that, but hanging out in the backyard or taking the dog for daily walks will not.
Nail trimming is important for healthy foot structure in Bloodhounds, but the dogs don’t understand this. For some reason, they really hate having their nails trimmed, and they are big enough to let you know how much they hate it.
Bloodhounds slobber. The deep, hanging flews perfectly complement the folds of soft, loose skin on the head and the extremely long ears. The occipital peak at the top of the skull and the solemn look to the eyes from the lower lids dragged down by heavy skin gives the dog an extremely lovable look. But you need to know that the drool is profuse. A big shake of that beautiful head can sling it across the room!
So Bloodhounds are messy around the house. They don’t seem to be used as much now as they have been in the past for man-trailing, perhaps because of the increasingly sophisticated cross-training for law enforcement dogs. This certainly does not prevent a good man-trailing Bloodhound and handler from finding plenty of work.
When it comes to searching for lost people, the ability to find them is what counts. There’s plenty of work to go around, especially for volunteers. Let’s hope to see more handlers get busy training with their Bloodhounds, using an ability so needed in today’s world.