Sniffer Dogs

My heart hurts for the people of Haiti. The earthquake that hit their country has left so many people injured and homeless.

The good news is that dogs will help. Search and rescue dogs from all over the world are coming to Haiti. These dogs are known as sniffer dogs.

Sniffer dogs are trained to help humans. A search and rescue team is made up of a dog and his handler.

How do sniffer dogs find people? Dogs have a special sense of smell. They use their sniffing ability to find people. The team walks around each fallen building. When the sniffer dog catches the right smell, the dog leads their handler to the trapped human.

Sniffer dogs get the job done quickly. A single dog team is better than 20 to 30 trained human searchers when looking for a missing person.

Would like to know more about sniffer dogs? Just go to http://www.fbi.gov/kids/dogs/search.htm. You can also check this great book out from your library: Meet the Search and Rescue Dogs by Christi Judah.