K9 canines are an essential component of any police force since they can do some jobs that human officers are unable to. Dogs, for example, are able to locate missing persons and suspects due to their keen sense of scent.
Though there are many heartwarming tales of canines being utilized to find missing children, one police dog recently went the other way around, locating a missing child’s origins and assisting him in returning home.
In Monroe, North Carolina, the Union County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that they received a 911 call from a neighbor who saw a young child wandering down the street by themselves.
Although the boy was non-verbal and autistic, deputies had trouble figuring out who he was or where he resided when they arrived at the scene.
In an attempt to reunite the missing youngster with his family, the police employed a novel method to find his residence: utilizing Remi, a K9 bloodhound, to follow the boy’s trail back to its source.
Remi’s handler, Deputy B. Belk, used a piece of sterile gauze to gather scent from the boy’s neck and forearms before giving it to Remi, who acted swiftly. Amazingly, the canine guide guided them the remaining half a mile and returned them to the child’s house.
The boy was “quickly reunited with his loving family,” the department said, after he had left the house in a “secretive manner that would not have alerted his parents.” Deputies concluded there had been no criminal activity.
Although they have been employed for many years to track down missing persons, bloodhound dogs are hardly ever utilized in “reverse” like this. But the new strategy was so successful that the department adopted it.
I’ve been here for a good ten or twelve years. Lieutenant Public Information Officer James Maye told CNN, “I’ve never heard anything like this being done,” characterizing it as “out of the norm.”
“These guys don’t typically train on it, but they will start incorporating it into their training going forward.”
Remi reportedly joined the UCSO in September 2023 as a “floppy-eared, 14-week-old” puppy, according to a Facebook post. It is evident that he has developed into a highly valued department member who assists underprivileged children.
We appreciate K9 Remi’s intelligence in helping this boy go home! This may be a very useful new tool for law enforcement to assist those who are nonverbal in returning home.
