Train Your Dog to Find Missing Family and Pets

All Dogs Love Finding People They Know! 

Our dogs love to find us and they do that every day. 

When a dog wants to go outside, they find you to let you know. 

When a dog wants to play he’ll get his toy and find you to play fetch. 

When a dog is hungry, they find the person who feeds them. 

Our dogs consider other household pets and livestock part of the family. Herding dogs find sheep and livestock over many miles. Much of the training is using natural instincts. 

So why not teach our pet dogs to find family members, including other animals they know? In case a loved one goes missing or is lost then all you have to do is ask your family dog where the person is and follow the dog. 

Pictured below is my dog Washee and I training. We are getting ready to follow a person scent trail to locate where the person is hiding. I do not know where the person is hidden, all I have is the person’s scent article to give Washee to smell and remember the scent we want to find. 

Washee led me through a homeless camp and behind a power company to find the person in the second picture. As you can see from Washee’s happy face she loves this fun game of hide and seek! 

The way I train dogs to search for missing persons is based on how a dog naturally behaves. 

Every time someone in the house leaves our dogs want to go with them because they do not want to lose the person. Dogs do not want to let us out of their sight because we are part of the family pack. Especially a person they are most fond of and the person who feeds them him. 

Even people who play with our dogs at a dog park and neighbors the dog knows are part of the dog’s social network. 

The Family Disaster Dogs books and easy lessons on this site explain how to use the family dogs to search for missing people and pets like mantrailing, tracking and search dogs do. 

These books help not only families train their dogs but also K9 Search and Rescue teams worldwide. 

Check out  my author website  to have a look at the books. The site is a work in progress and will have a blog and newsletter for book updates. I plan to keep adding lessons and dog info here at Family Disaster Dogs too. If you would like new posts in your email, sign-up by refreshing this page and waiting for the pop up window.

Thanks for stopping by and stay safe out there in the heat, floods and wildfires. 

Pictured are my two bloodhounds brothers, Sammy and Gus.