A new recruit joins a team of bloodhounds built for searches

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The North Dakota Highway Patrol’s newest recruit has floppy ears, four legs, and an amazing knack for finding people. Beau, a 12-week-old puppy, is joining a band of bloodhounds who are in demand for difficult cases across the upper Midwest.

They trail missing children, people with dementia, and criminal suspects. The agency uses drones and aircraft to aid searches, but bloodhounds remain an age-old, low-tech solution. “These dogs are just specifically bred to search for people,” said Trooper Steven Mayer, who handles Bleu, one of the dogs.

Bloodhounds have about 300 million scent receptors in their nose, vastly more than humans and more than other dogs, Mayer said.

Their big, floppy ears and folds of skin help gather odor for the dog to trail people, sometimes after a week or more, he said. The dogs have scented from a wall someone touched, the dirt a person stumbled in, and vomit on a car door.

Highway Patrol began using bloodhounds about 14 years ago, moving away from dual-purpose dogs to singular-purpose drug dogs and trailing dogs. The state force receives about 70 calls a year for their services, including one to Montana last year to help find a man suspected in the killing of four people at an Anaconda bar.

Beau was born in Texas but has since moved to North Dakota’s largest city, Fargo. His early training is mostly potty and kennel training and basic commands, as well as socializing him to different places, people, and environments, said Trooper Dustin Pattengale, Beau’s handler. He won’t be ready for a full or certified trail until he is about 9 months old.

North Dakota’s dogs are something of a social media sensation for the Highway Patrol. Beau’s name was picked in a Facebook vote. Recent videos depict him chewing a toy bear and another bloodhound, Lorace, gallivanting in new boots.

“Everybody loves a dog, I mean, especially these little babies, these floppy-eared ones,” said Mayer, who hopes the dogs’ visibility yields earlier calls for their assistance.

“The more word we can get out about the program and the faster we get calls on it, the easier we can get out and be available to help people,” he said.

This article and video were provided by The Associated Press.

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[Bloodhound puppy, Beau, on a leash with a handler]

Dustin Pattengale (interview): “So my new partner here, he is 11 and a half weeks old right now. He came from Texas, from a breeder down in Texas. He is a purebred blood hound and he is going to be used for our tracking.”

[Officers training bloodhound puppy, Beau]

[Bloodhound puppy, Beau, sniffing the ground]

Dustin Pattengale (interview): “He’ll be starting searching here pretty quickly here. We’ll start little trails and stuff when we’re training. He won’t be ready to do a full track or a cert track until he’s about nine months old. It’s the earliest we will be able to get him to do tracking.”

[North Dakota State Patrol building]

[Enforcement Trooper Pattengale training the bloodhound puppy, Beau, in snowy ground]

[Bloodhound puppy, Beau, sitting]

Dustin Pattengale (interview): “So a bloodhound is a hound dog, so they’re kind of bred to track. Hound dogs can be trained. Any type of hound, dog can be trained to track what you want it to. Typically they’re hunting dogs. We train them to track humans.”

[Steven Mayer, North Dakota State Trooper, walking with a bloodhound on a leash]

[Bloodhound playing with Trooper Mayer]

Steven Mayer (interview): “Bloodhounds are skilled probably a little more than other dogs. They have approximately 25% more scent receptors in their nose than the actual dog like say a German Shepherd. Humans have about 5 million, bloodhounds have about 300 million. Their brain, the part of the brain that processes odor is considerably larger than other dogs and they’re just built that way. If you look at their ears, the floppiness of their ears allows them, when their nose is on the ground, to bring the odor and pull it into their nose. The wrinkles on their face and their skin folds allows them to trap the odor, making them more efficient as a dog compared to some of the other dogs that are out there.”

[Bloodhound being held on a leash by Trooper Mayer]

[Bloodhound standing next to Trooper Mayer]

[Bloodhound being held on a leash by Trooper Mayer]

Steven Mayer (interview): “We help other agencies, including ourselves, look for missing people, missing children, dementia patients, or anybody else that actually maybe flees on the criminal side from a traffic stop or if there’s a robbery of some sort, we’ve used them for investigative purposes. If there’s been a homicide, after the fact, we’ll run the dogs to see where the person might have went to and possibly find some type of contraband or evidence that they may have dropped along the way.”

[Body camera video showing a bloodhound’s interception with law enforcement officers]

[Body camera video showing a bloodhound on a search with law enforcement officers]

Steven Mayer (interview): “Well, we started, the agency started with one dog, his name was Budro and we have now grown to four bloodhounds in the state with our recent dog, Beau, coming on last week. And our agency pushes the program. They have no problems. We’ve been down helping Omaha PD start their program with their bloodhound. They’re very, the agency’s been very giving when it comes to our time and energy and helping other people, including other states, so.”

[Trooper Mayer interacting with a bloodhound in a vehicle]

[Officers patting a bloodhound puppy, Beau]

This script was provided by The Associated Press.

The related lesson for this video will be published next Tuesday.