If you don’t own a dog, you might just want one after reading about the incredible abilities of search dogs featured in the story ‘On the scent of the lost and missing’.

If you are lost and without a PLB, your next best hope is one of the 20 certified NZ LandSAR Search Dog teams around the country.

It’s no mistake that we call dogs ‘man’s best friend’. A dog would be your mate too if one found you when you were lost and bewildered. A dog’s skill at finding people is unmatched: they have a sense of smell 40,000 times better than a human’s and a trained search dog can pick up a scent 400m yonder, three – yes, three! – days after a person has been there. 

They can search an avalanche area of 2ha in just 20 minutes. The equivalent area searched by 20 people would take several hours.

Dogs don’t get tired like people do. To them, it’s just a game and they can play for hours without giving up. Their reward for finding their target is often a game of tug-of-war with their handler.

It’s not easy to become a search dog team. A dog can take up to two years to train, with the handler  putting in a couple of hours of training every day. Once certified, the handler and dog put in around another 800 hours a year into training. It’s a phenomenal commitment and it’s all funded by the handler, who is, after all, a volunteer.

These people and their dogs deserve our gratitude, even if we never need their services.