… the dogs and people who work together in search and rescue? In
Scent of the Missing, Susannah Charleson describes her
experiences working with Puzzle, a Golden Retriever she trained
to do search and rescue. In addition to talking about the
difficult process of training a very intelligent but strong-
willed dog, she gives examples of several searches in which they
participated, some successful and some not. Although Susannah
Charleson had raised and trained dogs for other work before
getting Puzzle, she learned that both the dog and the training
had special challenges. The process of training a dog to search
for missing people is intellectually, emotionally, and
physically challenging for both humans and dogs. People may go
missing through mistakes, as victims of crimes, or due to
disasters. The area that needs to be searched may be dangerous
or difficult to get through. Also, each dog has a different
personality and skills, so search-and-rescue dogs may have
specialties such as working in urban areas or on w