A newly recruited police dog is in the news for finding a missing mother and her 1-year-old on the very first day of his job.
The 2-year-old German Shepherd mix found the duo on the edge of a ravine in the United Kingdom Saturday.
Max, and his handler Police Constable Peter Lloyd, completed their police dog training in February for the Dyfed-Powys Police and were on a search and rescue mission on a Wales mountainside on their first shift together.
There was no news about the woman for the last two days, according to Inspector Jonathan Rees-Jones, and her phone was not working.
“Thanks to excellent work between teams, the woman’s car was quickly found on a mountain road,” he said in a news release Wednesday. “Although this gave officers a location to search from, there was still a vast area to cover given the amount of time she had been missing.”
The police officer and his dog were accompanied by a mountain rescue team, which consisted of a police helicopter and additional ground units that fanned out over the rough terrain.
Rees-Jones said the dog’s capabilities “really came into play” during the search. The new team reached her first and the woman waved them down from where she was trapped between a steep ravine and the mountainside, police said.
“They were safe, but cold, and appeared to have been in the area for a significant amount of time,” Rees-Jones said.
The newly trained dog’s handler Lloyd said it was Max’s reaction to the woman’s call that helped them locate the pair. “I was really pleased that during our first operational deployment as a dog team, myself and Max were able to safely locate the missing mother and baby,” he said. “Max remained focused throughout the long search and he proved invaluable.”
