Use your dog to find Family and Friends, especially disabled and special needs loved ones
This articles explains how-to use your own family dog to find a lost or missing loved ones. I hope this article and book will be helpful in finding missing persons and special needs children or adults who may of wandered away from home or an outdoor event. Our country has an incredible amount of missing person cases, each day more and more people disappear. We all need to help people be found and every little effort may one day save a person's life. Thank you for visiting my Family Disaster Dogs site, reading this article and sharing so others may learn.
Intro
Did you know all dogs are Family Disaster Dogs ? I created this site and wrote the first book after having worked as a professional dog groomer, dog trainer and breeder for 30 years, along with volunteering with my bloodhounds and shepherds for Search and Rescue for 15 years, I trained in all aspects of emergency response, and trained many other dog handler teams during that time.
I realized one day that pet dogs can help their family in emergencies and disasters. Dogs do not need to be a certain breed or trained as skillfully to find a person or other pet that wanders from home or gets lost while camping. Every dog tries to follow whoever leaves the area, if the dog does not appear to try to follow they are still very much aware of the person or other pet leaving the room, house, camp or area.
So it makes perfect sense to me and most people I mention this bit of logic to, that our own dogs can find us if we get lost. That yes, the dog wants to go with us every time we leave the house but we shut the door and lock them in. So if a toddler happens to wander out of the house and is missing I always suggest to allow the family dog out of the house (on leash or off) and follow the dog who will naturally try to follow the person who left before the dog.
Dogs naturally follow pack members. We only need to take advantage of this natural instinct and ask the dog to find the missing pack member. Including other household pets and dog or cat friends. So if your cat or other dog goes missing, use the other dog to find them or a friend's dog that the animals know.
Small dogs, giant dogs, young dogs and old dogs....can locate missing loved ones like search and rescue dogs do. They can also help you evacuate, fetch survival items if your trapped and go get help upon command.
Let’s look at a few of the ways a pet dog can help locate a disabled child or adult in an emergency.
Keep in mind that a dog always know where people are in the house or yard. They find you for food and play or to go for a walk. Dogs pay very close attention to where each family member is and what is happening. We, humans, seldom notice the dog doing its job of watching over us.
The Family Pack
Your own dog is one of the most valuable assets to have available for finding a known person who wanders off while hiking or camping and goes missing. If an earthquake, flood or storm separates members of the household, most likely the family dogs will be with one of the persons or nearby attempting to reach the family pack.
As part of the pack the dog depends on us surviving too. Dogs live with us as family members and as part of the pack, they live to please us. They are always by our side and follow us around waiting to give us a helpful paw when the time comes or just to be near.
This natural pack instinct in the dog is very easy to take advantage of to find a missing pack member, such as our child or elderly parent who are missing or trapped unable to reach us or to get help.
When a favorite family member leaves the room the dog often follows, when the person settles to stay in one place, the dog often lays at the person’s feet waiting for what will come next. The dog is always nearby, willing and ready to participate in what we are doing so let’s take advantage of the dogs’ natural desire to help us.
If you watch your dog, you will notice that the dog realizes when a child is missing from the family pack. Also, think about how many dogs cry and have separation anxiety when a favorite family member leaves them. Does your dog get upset when you leave them alone in the house or car? Separation anxiety results from our dogs wishing to go with us. The anxiety is from the dog wanting to stay with its pack and not be left behind.
This proves the dog is very much aware of each person in the family and where that person is. When one leave, if they do not come back to join the dog or family pack the dog will look for them. It’s the nature of the dog.
If we allow the dog to go find the person, the dog will do just that !
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You can use this to your advantage if a family member is ever lost by simply asking the family dog to take you to the missing person.
Here's How
How-to Ask a Dog to Find a Lost Child
- First, put your dog on a leash so they do not run into traffic because the dog will be excited that you finally asked for its help.
Remember dogs find us every day when they are hungry. The dog already knows how to find people, we as dog owners only need to learn how to ask the dog to help us.
- Next, show the dog an article of clothing from the missing person that only that person touched, let the dog smell the object and then ask the dog to find the person, encourage the dog to go forward and look.
- Follow the dog even if it does not look like the dog knows what they are doing or where they are going because scent particles float everywhere we cannot see but the dog can smell.
Just follow the dog to the person, let the dog do the work, do not make any suggestions or guide the dog because it will only confuse the dog.
Trust your Dog
- At first you may wonder if the dog is really looking for the person.
- Do not stop working the dog on the trail or give up on the dog.
Working search and rescue dogs often look like they are just going for a walk, they may go slow smelling here and there like nothing is important as they work the many hundreds of scent particles that mingle together with the lost person’s scent.
These scent particles are everywhere and blown by the wind, affected by the natural environment. Only a dog knows how to understand and puzzle though. We humans do not have that nose work skill. We are not equipped to use our sense of smell to discriminate scent particles like animals do.
Trust your dog.
The dog is always right.
The nose knows.
Practice makes Perfect
Practice by playing hide and seek with your dog and family members, especially special needs children.
Here’s a few ways to play and learn together with the family dog. If you have more than one dog, it’s easier to do this one dog at a time or the dogs may be more focused on each other than finding the person.
1. Hold the dog
2. Have a family member hide behind a open door or piece of furniture indoors
3. Let the dog go and tell the dog to “find them” use the person’s name
4. Follow the dog to find the person
5. Encourage the dog as they look for the person
6. Everyone make a big happy fuss over the dog finding the person
7. Lots of praise and happiness
8. Repeat with the person hiding in different places
Hiding spot suggestions
Indoors
Under blankets on the floor or bed
Behind open doors
Behind furniture
Under big cardboard boxes
Lay on the floor in another room
Outdoors
Do not let the person who hides go too far to hide at first. Gradual, over days and weeks, add distance to how far away they go to hide. Start off only hiding within easy sight of the dog and person holding the dog. Keep this game simple for the dog so they grasp the idea to find the person when asked.
Trust your dog, in a real emergency the dog will use its natural drive and instinct to reunite with the missing pack member when asked.
Keep in mind, you are not training the dog to find the person, the dog already knows how to do that. You are going to teach the dog a word you will use to ask them to do what is natural for them and the use the word is what you are actually practicing.
Otherwise the dog does not know what the word means or what you ask and you do not have a way to tell the dog to act on its natural instinct.
Here's my children's book that tells the whole family a fun way to train a dog to find family and go to another person by name.
Believe it or not our dogs do know our names because they hear everyone else call us by the name.
Summary
With very little time spent and a whole lot of fun practice you will see how easy this is to do and then you will feel reassured that if your child or loved ones ever go missing or get lost you can start searching while waiting for the police who often will not respond to a missing person case until 24 hours has passed to give time for the person to return on their own.
In my books and on my website, I explain how easy it is to teach the average family dog how to come to our rescue like search dogs do and how to use your own dog to help you evacuate during emergencies and disasters.
Visit www.familydisasterdogs.com to learn more about me and how your dog can rescue you!
Here's a page full of DIY dog training lessons I wrote for everyone to do in the comfort of home.
