“Bloodhounds tracked down a missing three-year-old boy with autism in just 30 minutes after the toddler's hiding spot baffled rescue crews for over two hours.

Aedric Hughes unlocked a door at his home and wandered into a nearby wooded area in Pace, Florida, on Sunday morning.

His grandmother, who was babysitting the boy while his mother was at work, contacted police when she noticed he was gone.

The Santa Rosa County Sheriff's office brought in search crews and combed the woods for two hours without any luck.

Deputies then turned to a team of bloodhounds. It took the dogs under half an hour to sniff out the toddler, who was hiding in dense brush about 200 yards from his home.

https://mol.im/a/7477213

Just down the road from me. Bloodhounds are amazing. We have a great sheriff.

quote:

... hiding in dense brush about 200 yards from .. home ...

For those with a loved one with autism, degenerative brain function, or mental illness, the idea they will wander or even fearfully flee, then "hide", crouched behind a neighbor's hedge or in the back seat of an unlocked car, is always gnawing in the back of the mind. 24/7 care is physically exhausting as well as mentally exhausting.

Glad the hounds were called in. And definitely do not second-guess the delay. Escalation of response among professionals is always well-thought out. Reach, throw, row, go.

I suspect that if dogs realized how poor our sense of smell was, they’d pity us as we pity blind folks.

What a great sheriff and to celebrate finding the youngster:

As someone who used to own a bloodhound, this doesn’t surprise me at all.
The nose on those dogs is nothing short of PHENOMENAL.

Coming in the top 3 of their attributes is their ability to dig.
My yard looked like B-52s ran an arclight mission on it!

Good dogs. Give them a steak.

Great news for the boy and his family!

I am on the ski patrol at a ski area in NE PA and about six or seven years ago or so we invited a local Search & Rescue team to one of our fall refresher's to demonstrate (and review protocols, etc. in case we ever needed to call them in for help) how they use their dogs to find 'lost' people.

A fellow patroller hid himself about 500 yards up the mountain, off of the trail in heavy brush and crawled inside a drainage culvert.

The dogs were given his scent and then released. Their search pattern, essentially un-aided by their handler's, was absolutley amazing to watch.

They zig-zagged their way up the mountain, and as they got closer to their 'quarry' the width of their search pattern narrowed.

I cannot recall the exact time it took them to locate the person, but it probably was not more than five or minutes.

Amazing!

That's the feel good story of the day for sure. We own a blue tick and a redbone and they are not common in CA always telling people what they are. The blue is a handful. Both girls are super loving. Just like the ol red video above, A Blue and a Red


Related note, here’s a story about some Texas hounds that are being bred to chase rhino poachers in South Africa

https://www.nationalgeographic...vZANMJPjJbfPFhAmr947

They may have a great sense of smell, but my favorite bloodhound attribute is their bark. My childhood friend’s father used to run them at night after raccoons, back in the Blue Ridge of SW Virginia. I loved their bawling bark when they had a coon on the run. It makes me nostalgic.

I was blessed with several on my K-9 unit in Jackson Co. It was amazing the details I would learn from them on a track. Often in training I could debrief the runner assistant and verify he’d tried to open a door, jimmy a window, or climb a tree and back down. At the time the bloodhound would sniff up a tree, around a particular window, or on a doorknob. While I am a German Shepherd fan, nothing beats a bloodhound on a track, especially a cold track.

That’s just awesome! I have three Bloodhounds and they are a handful sometimes, but make great pets. Yes,those noses are just short of amazing. Real good when it comes to food. Glad that baby was found though.