Sniffer dogs have long been used to help find drugs, bombs and cadavers.
But now an animal trainer has harnessed the phenomenal canine sense of smell to find missing pets and reunite them with their doting owners.
It’s not only pets that Diane McIntosh’s team of dogs have traced. They also found a lemur that escaped from a zoo and tracked a duiker in a nature reserve for a wildlife vet.
Missing cattle, tortoises, hedgehogs and rabbits have been reunited with their owners. Even a cellphone that went missing at a gym was traced.
Once a corporate executive, McIntosh gave up her desk job for life on a farm with what has grown to be a team of 10 specialist tracking dogs.
She and her husband James started the Johannesburg-based business five years ago.
“We have done just over 2,286 searches and our success rate is 92%,” Diane said.
“It’s not about the money as much as it is about finding lost animals and making people happy. So many times we have been able to just calm people down, give them some good advice and they have managed to find their animal on their own.”
One of their clients, Gcinisizwe Noyakaza, wept with joy when he was reunited with his beloved cat Savannah after four anxious days.
Noyokaza and his wife Catherine Robar adopted Savannah and Sahara, born in the same litter, from the Cat Family Foundation. A few weeks ago during heavy rains Savannah disappeared. At the time Robar was in Ethiopia for work.
“It was completely unusual,” Robar told the Sunday Times. “Savannah’s completely devoted to her sister. Gcinisizwe was completely distraught when she went missing.”
Robar said her husband had pounded the streets and distributed pictures and notices, without success.
“We didn’t know what to do, and so when someone referred us to Healthy Hound, I jumped.
“They immediately began the search, but because it had been raining such a lot the dog kept losing the scent. We were heartbroken. But the crew came out three more times and just kept on tracking her, looking for fresh scents. Eventually they found her hiding out at a giant church premises at the end of our street.
“Our animals are our life, so I cannot explain how appreciative we are to have our cat back home. Gcinisizwe was so relieved, he just wept. It had been a terribly stressful four days. We were starting to think she’d been hit by a car and was dead. It’s hard to express how happy we are,” said Robar.
McIntosh first developed her interest in search missions when she was 16 and her brother went missing in Magaliesberg with a group of handicapped children. She was allowed to join the professional search crew and witnessed how the band of lost boys was tracked and rescued.
Throughout her career she continued working with animals, offering training on the side, doing therapy work and volunteering at South African Search & Rescue. By the time Covid hit, she was burnt out, resigned from her job and started Healthy Hound — inspired by a friend’s request to help her find a missing cat.
“I cashed in my provident fund and bought Zizou, a one-year-old anti-poaching dog experienced with reptiles, narcotics, firearms, vape detection and pet cadavers. She intimidated the hell out of me at first,” McIntosh said.
The business grew, she moved to Magaliesberg and along the way acquired husband James, his daughter Charlotte and a team of dogs, including two veterans who have since retired.
The couple have taken self-defence classes, so they feel more confident searching in potentially dangerous areas, and have acquired such equipment as a long ladder, harnesses, off-road motorbikes, bicycles and protective gear to broaden their scope of operation.
We’ve had some very sad stories – like searching for days only to find that a missing dog had run into a burning house to get her owner
— James McIntosh
Not all tracking has had a happy end.
“We’ve had some very sad stories — like searching for days only to find that a missing dog had run into a burning house to get her owner,” said James.
“For that one, we went above and beyond and even built a coffin for the dog. But mostly it’s just really happy endings and reunited families.
“We’re used to dealing with really emotional people, so we go wherever we’re called. We’ve searched on Table Mountain, in Durban and in the Kruger Park. Every search is a learning curve and not only are we the first in the world to offer a lot of our stuff, but Africa is different to the rest of the world. So we adapt.”
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