Two boys who became lost in a remote stretch of rural Manatee County were found safe Tuesday after a bloodhound picked up their scent and led deputies straight to them in thick brush. The dog, K9 Cane, needed only about 10 minutes to close the gap once he got on the trail.
According to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, deputies on the ground and the agency's aviation unit had already been searching for the boys when Cane and his handler joined the effort. The sheriff's office says the bloodhound picked up the boys' scent and tracked them through the brush, reaching them in roughly 10 minutes. Both boys were located and recovered safely, the agency said.
The sheriff's office post credited Cane, his handler and the other deputies involved with getting the boys home safely, and noted that the dog was visibly excited after finding them. In its own description of the find, the agency put it simply: “When the search gets tough, sometimes it takes a nose like K9 Cane's to get the job done!”
A Bloodhound's Nose Does the Heavy Lifting
In a separate search, K9 Cane and Deputy Bush located a missing 74-year-old man in dense brush about a mile from his home, just over 24 hours after he had been reported missing, according to WFLA.
Similar tracking work has paid off elsewhere in the country. In New Jersey, a Gloucester County Sheriff's Department bloodhound named Shiloh helped find three boys who had gone missing while riding their bikes through the woods, as reported by 1011now.com. Officers in that case collected the boys' bed sheets to give Shiloh a scent article before the dog went to work, and the search party ultimately walked about a mile through a creek before finding them.
Volunteer Search Teams Round Out Local Efforts
Beyond sheriff's office K9s, Manatee County also has an all-volunteer search and rescue group that assists in finding missing people. Manatee Search and Rescue, founded in 1999, helps locate missing individuals, according to Your Observer. The group also has K9 operations.
It remains unclear exactly how the two boys ended up lost in the remote area or how long they had been missing before deputies and Cane found them, details that have not been disclosed in the sheriff's office's account. For now, the agency's message has centered on gratitude for the dog and the deputies who got the boys home.
