Yeobo

Tino found her hiding in the woods.

Yeobo

Tino and I got a call to help a dog lost in Arlington.  She got out when someone visited the pet sitter, and the door was left open.  She is a greyhound/deerhound mix named Yeobo.  She is tall and skinny, about 85 pounds. She is five years old, a rescue from Korea.  She had escaped a couple of times from a previous home, years ago, and she had been hit by a train during her second escape.  She completely recovered from that accident, and she is capable of running very fast these days.  She escaped near train tracks, which were right across the street, and also near large forested areas. She was missing about 7 blocks from home, but there was no walkable route to home, only a very busy street with no sidewalks or shoulders. She ran into the darkness around midnight, and hadn’t been seen since.

Tino and I arrived at about 4 PM Friday.  The owner of Yeobo gave us a jacket that Yeobo had worn five days prior to escaping.  I took it to the car to present to Tino.  I like to give him the scent item in the car because once I get his vest on and get him out of the car, he is pretty crazy.  When I present scent items in the car, he takes his time sniffing them, really analyzing the scent.  He smelled the jacket all over.  I returned the jacket to the owner and said we would be starting soon.  I noticed that a landscaping crew was working through the apartment complex, and they were blowing the area all around our starting point, possibly blowing away the scent.  I hoped it wouldn’t ruin our start.  I had to wrestle with Tino to get his vest on because he was so amped up.

Once we got out of the car, he took off on the scent trail right away.  He took me out of the apartment complex and to the grounds of the church next door.  He seemed to have a strong scent.  The conditions were favorable, moist and cool, with recent light rains.  Tino worked all through the church grounds along a meandering trail, and he took me to the back of the property, to the woods and wetland behind a shipping container.  Tino took me into the woods along a short trail where people had been dumping yard waste.  A slow creek was lined with blooming skunk cabbage.  I thought I saw a deer, about 30 feet into the woods.  Then I heard tags jingling, and realized it must be Yeobo.  Tino was very excited.

I told Tino what a good dog he was, and I didn’t let him advance towards Yeobo because I didn’t want her to get spooked and run.  Yeobo lives with a dog that looks very much like Tino. She watched us for a while.  I called Yeobo’s owner, and told her that we had found the lost dog.  I asked her to bring Yeobo’s favorite dog, to lure her out, hopefully.  I pulled Tino back to the grass of the church property, to give Yeobo some space.  I played fetch with a stick with Tino, to reward him, but also to maybe lure Yeobo out of the woods. She likes dogs.

When the owner arrived with Yeobo’s favorite dog, she couldn’t see Yeobo.  I told her it would be okay to go into the woods a little to see if Yeobo could catch the scent of her pack-mate. I instructed her to not call Yeobo’s name, but just to talk in a soft voice.  They didn’t see Yeobo, and also the mud was so deep and thick that it sucked the shoes right of Yeobo’s owner.  After digging her shoes out of the mud, she came back out to the grass.  I had her play with her other dog for a while to see if Yeobo would come out.

After about 20 minutes, I decided to try the drone.  Although it was a dense forest, most of the trees were alders, and their leaves hadn’t come in yet.  I thought we could see down into the trees from above.  This was only the second time I had used the drone on a case, so I was still learning about the best ways to use it.  I could see maybe 25% of the forest floor from above, and I didn’t see Yeobo.

Next, I wanted to see if I could walk Yeobo’s pack-mate into the forest to try to lure her out.  This dog liked me okay.  She looked a lot like Tino’s mom, about the same size.  She wouldn’t leave her mom, though, and I couldn’t get her to come into the forest with me.  I decided to try taking Tino in to the woods, to see if he could attract Yeobo.

About ten steps into the woods, I lost a shoe in the mud.  I had to reach into the mud and pull it out with my hand.  From that point on, I proceeded at a pace of about 1 step every 20 seconds.  Tino was having no trouble getting around, and was impatient with me.  I made progress by stepping forward, transferring my weight to the forward foot, and then working my trailing foot out of the mud by wiggling my foot side to side and then back and forth, until the mud released my shoe.  In a way, it was good that we were moving slow, so we wouldn’t startle Yeobo, but there was no way I could try to use Tino to track the scent, moving at that pace.  Anyway, he would have just pulled me right out of my shoes if I asked him to search.

It took us a long time, maybe an hour, to get to the other side of the swampy woods.  We didn’t see the lost dog.  We came out in someone’s yard, and made our way to the gravel road.  I talked to a homeowner, who said he would watch for the dog.

I flew the drone over the woods one more time and made a recording.  I reviewed the footage and didn’t see any sign of her, but I could easily have flown over her without being able to see her under the trees.  I set a wildlife camera at the entrance to the woods.  The owner asked about setting a trap.  I had a trap in the car, but Yeobo was too tall for it.  The trap we would need is 10 feet long and 6 feet tall, and it requires a truck to transport.  I told her we could set that trap, but not that night.  I gave her some tasks to work on, to maximize the chances of finding Yeobo, and Tino and I went home for the day.

The wildlife camera didn’t catch Yeobo until noon on Saturday.  She came out to investigate the smell of Vienna sausage in front of the camera.  I didn’t see the pictures until 3 PM, and then I sent them to Yeobo’s owner.  Yeobo was appearing right at the exact spot that Tino led me to.  She was coming out of her secret hiding spot in the woods.  Yeobo’s owner stayed in the churchyard, with other volunteers, just hanging out and talking softly.  She put more food in front of the camera. Importantly, she was building up a pool of her scent in the area, which may have worked its way into the woods.  As they were talking and waiting, Yeobo eventually came out of the woods and came right to her owner, happy and wiggling, glad to be safe. Yeobo hopped right in the car, ready to go home.

Could Yeobo have been found without Tino? I don’t know. Maybe, eventually. It’s also possible she could have gotten into more trouble if Tino hadn’t located her quickly. Before Tino located her, Yeobo’s family and volunteers had to look everywhere. There was a reported possible sighting four miles away. They had to walk the edges of the train tracks looking for her body. Searchers could have peered into the woods all day without ever seeing Yeobo. I only caught a glimpse of her, and heard her tags, because Tino led me to that point. It’s possible she would have come out of the woods eventually. She might even have made her way home somehow. I couldn’t say for certain what would have happened if Tino hadn’t searched for her, but I do know, if my dog was missing, I would want to have Tino on the mission.

I know I say this a lot, but I am just inordinately proud of Valentino. I would be madly in love with him if all he did all day was sit on the couch and look at me with his puppy eyes. Tino would be the center of my world even if all we did was go to the beach and play. I have at least 20,000 pictures and videos of Tino on my phone. I’m sure I’m biased, but I think he is a magnificent, beautiful creature. That he can perform the miracle of finding a lost dog by scent is just one more reason I love him. Of course, I want to brag about how great he is and how much I love him, but I also want people to understand that search dogs, qualified, competent, proven search dogs, are a critical asset for the community. I wish dogs would not go missing, but accidents do happen. Tino and other dogs like him stand ready to jump into action when needed.