Bloodhounds hone scent skills

Famed for their ability to sniff out a scent, bloodhounds are used all over the world to track escaped prisoners, missing people and lost children.

Here in the Great Southern, scent-discerning dogs have been doing just that under the Australian Search Dog Institute, based in Denmark.

The group's 10 members and 15 dogs spend every Sunday learning the art of scent discrimination under dog trainer Sam Blythe.

Mrs Blythe, ASDI member Jodi Johnson and their bloodhounds Phoebe and Tyni have been working together for the past four years, bonded by their shared passion for helping people with their pooches.

Mrs Blythe said the trauma of someone going missing was "almost absolute" for loved ones.

"Whether it is a child, young person with possible drug or mental health issues or older person with dementia, when someone goes missing it is very distressing," she said.

"It can be like a miniature death except you do not have a body."

Over the past year, Phoebe and Tyni have put their estimated 250 million olfactory cells - about 40 times more than a human nose has - to good use.

Tyni found an 18-month-old girl hiding in an unlit barbecue in Albany after her frantic mother spent 15 minutes searching for her, while Phoebe found a missing man among a crowd of thousands in less than five minutes at last year's Easter markets in Denmark.

"A woman approached us for help after her husband, who was an older man with dementia, had become separated from her and she could not find him for two hours," Mrs Blythe said.

"She was carrying his jacket and Phoebe had one whiff and three minutes later she had found him."

Phoebe's five-month-old pup Heidi is a rookie tracker, and all three have been honing their scent skills under visiting American and Russian experts this week.

International Bloodhound Training Institute president Kevin Kocher has 20 years experience handling bloodhounds including as a Pentagon police officer, while Andrey Fedorkov and Alexey Baranovskiy will teach the role dogs play tracking drugs and bombs for border security and customs.