Fargo, ND – The North Dakota Highway Patrol’s newest recruit has floppy ears, four legs and an amazing talent for finding people.
Beau, a 12-week-old pup, joins a group of hounds needed for tough cases throughout the upper Midwest.
They track down missing children, people with dementia and criminal suspects. The agency uses drones and aircraft to assist in searches, but police dogs remain an outdated, low-tech solution.
“These dogs are bred specifically to hunt for humans,” said Trooper Steven Meyer, who is in care of one of the dogs, Blue.
Danny Jones, executive director of the American Police Canine Association, said hunting dogs are used from Maine to Florida to Texas to Arizona to California. Drones and helicopters can get ahead of the dog, but a bloodhound is hard to beat.
“To actually get a bearing and start moving in a direction, you would need a dog on the ground to start that path, and that’s the difference between technology and having a dog like a hound on the ground,” Jones said.
Mayer said hounds have about 300 million scent receptors in their noses, far more than humans and more than other dogs.
Their large, floppy ears and folds of skin help collect scent for the dog to track people, sometimes a week or more later, he said. A wall someone touched reeked of dogs, and someone tripped in the dirt and vomited on a car door.
The Highway Patrol began using hounds about 14 years ago, moving away from dual-purpose dogs to single-purpose drug dogs and tail dogs. The state force receives about 70 calls a year for its services, including one to Montana last year To help find man Suspect in murder Four people in Anaconda bar.
A pair of handlers and dogs traveled 10 hours to help. They got fairly close to the suspect, who was at the location the dogs were pointing at, Meyer said. Other requests came from South Dakota and Utah.
Bo was born in Texas but has since moved to Fargo, the largest city in North Dakota. Trooper Dustin Pattingale, Beau’s handler, said his early training was mostly potty training, dog grooming and basic commands, as well as socializing him to different places, people and environments. He won’t be ready for a full or approved course until he is approximately 9 months old.
“The basic training is just introducing him to the aromatics and then ramping up the training to where it goes further and covers different trails and different types of environment,” Pattengale said.
Bloodhounds have great drive, love and attention, but they can be stubborn, dissolute and mischievous, and are not a dog for apartment living, Mayer said.
His partner, Blue, is a large, friendly dog with one eye, which he lost the other after being injured while playing with another beagle. Meyer said his delayed abilities are not hampered.
Boo is a growing puppy, his long ears wet from dragging on the ground as he explored a blanket of snow, sniffing constantly. He loves beef liver.
“He’s a very active little puppy. He’s very relaxed most of the time, most days, but he’s excited. He loves to work. He loves to smell,” Pattengale said.
In addition to searches, North Dakota assisted agencies in other ways. Last year, Mayer went to Omaha, Nebraska, for a week to help the city’s police department train its first hunting dog, Willow.
Omaha used to call the closest hounds from the Chicago area to conduct searches, Omaha Police Sgt. Scott Warner said. The value was clear and Willow arrived early last year.
He hopes Willow will become an asset to the region. Omaha plans to have multiple dogs and trainers one day, he said.
Willow has tracked missing people, including an elderly man on Christmas Eve, through pitch darkness, steep hills, mud and water.
Finding mentors for training is crucial, Warner said. Much of the police dog community is word of mouth, he said.
“I had no idea North Dakota had a police dog program. There’s no directory I could look at that would tell me where the dogs were,” Warner said.
Mayer and his wife have traveled the world helping train dogs, taking trips to Hungary, Italy, South Africa and Wales, with plans later this year to go to Slovenia and Austria. They don’t charge anything.
Dealers are a special breed of people, Meyer said.
“They’ll drop everything at the drop of a hat, they’ll leave their family and friends, they’ll leave Easter dinner to look for a stranger they’ve never met,” he said.
North Dakota dogs are creating a social media sensation for the Highway Patrol. Beau’s name was chosen in a vote on Facebook. Recent videos depict him chewing on a teddy bear and another bloodhound, named Loras, walking around in new shoes.
“Everyone loves dogs, especially these little kids, with the floppy ears,” said Mayer, who hopes seeing the dogs will lead to early calls for their help.
“The more news we can get out about the program and the sooner we can get calls on it, the easier it will be for us to get out there and be available to help people,” he said.