Specially trained bloodhounds could help the State save tens of thousands of euro during missing person searches, one of the world’s top search dog trainers has said.

Retired US deputy sheriff Terry Davis was speaking in Cork yesterday on the last day of his first visit to Ireland to deliver training for the voluntary Irish Search Dogs organisation.

Mr Davis spent almost 30 years working in law enforcement in Loudoun County, Virginia. He worked search dogs on dozens of cases relating to missing persons, homicide, rape, and drugs.

One of his most memorable cases was using a bloodhound, when almost all hope had faded, to locate the body of a missing two-year-old who had fallen in to a creek.

A member of the National Police Bloodhound Association, he now delivers trail dog training to police forces around the world — including the elite Swiss and German police dog handling units.

He said it took some time to convince US authorities of the value of search dogs.

"But it is now widely accepted in the US that if you can get a bloodhound out there early, you can save resources real quick," he said. "They may solve the problem real quick but if they can’t, they can give you a direction of travel to focus resources."

Irish Search Dogs chairman Glen Barton said: "We are trying to train our dogs, and ourselves, to the highest standard and we called Terry in because of his time and experience. The US leads the world in this area of working bloodhounds."

Irish Search Dogs works with four types of search dog — trailing bloodhounds, air scenting, water dogs for finding people in rivers, and cadaver dogs for locating remains.

It is the only group in Ireland which uses full bred bloodhounds for trailing — their dogs include Achilles, Max, Byron, and Lilly.

Mr Barton said they hope to convince the Irish authorities of the value of bloodhounds in assisting in missing person searches.

"The attitude here is often to call the dogs in when everything else has failed. We would hope to convince the authorities of the valuable resource we are and to give us the early call."

It has been proved that when our bloodhounds are called in early, they can assist by determining the direction of travel of the missing person, therefore narrowing down the search area for resources such as Coastguard, Civil Defence, and various search & rescue teams, and ultimately speeding up the whole search exercise.

"They are particularly useful in situations where CCTV is not available, where gardaí don’t have a ‘place last scene’ location, or a mobile phone location."

He cited an example from West Cork recently where a local Garda who was aware of their work called them soon after a car was found abandoned near a river.

A bloodhound got a scent from the car, trailed the scent for several hundred metres along the river bank, and identified where the person entered the river.

It allowed gardaí to eliminate vast swathes of forestry and concentrate their search downstream.

It resulted in the recovery of a body from the river within three hours — preventing a grieving family from an agonising wait.

Last week dog handlers Mick McCarthy, Paul Ramsell and Glen Barton travelled to Holland to take part in a water search dog seminar which was hosted by Signi Zoekhonden. Just like Irish Search Dogs the Dutch search team are fully voluntary providing a professional service whilst they primarily use Belgian Malinois to help search for missing people on both land and water, and are renowned in many parts of the world for their commitment and dedication for responding to searches in Holland as well international disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami's in The Philippines, Japan, China and Haiti to mention a few.

The seminar comprised of both theoretical and practical work as well as a real life search for a missing 46 year old male in the north of the country during which the use of dogs, sonar and divers were incorporated.

Dog handlers from Holland, Iraq and Ireland gave tremendous feedback on the interagency seminar forming international relationships during which air-scenting, disaster, cadaver and trailing topics were shared.

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