Dog-tracker Don Schwass with his own dog Piper. Photo: Supplied
After decades of searching for people lost in the wilderness, Don Schwass has found fame in recent years for his finding expertise hunting down wayward hounds.
The Richmond fish and chippie owner's skills have his phone ringing off the hook, and he has an over 85 percent chance of finding the missing mutt even if he's not on site.
Schwass' advice has seen roaming dogs reunited with their owners even after weeks of wandering, not only within in Aotearoa. Last month, Schwass helped a Queensland family successfully find their dog Turbo, five weeks after he went missing.
The best way to locate a dog is avoid searching for it, he told RNZ's Nine to Noon.
"My phone rings and you know, they get the community together to go and look for a missing dog, which works for a person, but it just doesn't apply to a dog, and it has the opposite effect, that drives them away."
In most cases a dog that has run away is in flight mode, so actively looking and calling for them is the opposite of what you should be doing, he said.
"A dog has three senses: Eyes, ears and nose. Eyes and ears are for staying away from trouble. And so, if they hear you or see you, they'll just run. And the way I do things is slightly different I appeal to the nose.
"So, every dog has a marker, the favourite person. The nose tells the eyes and ears to stand down."
Don Schwass even helped a Queensland family successfully find their dog Turbo, five weeks after he went missing. Photo: Supplied
Mustering a bunch of helpers and going out looking for a dog simply will not work, he said.
"Unless you have the right skill set, you can put 50 people in a place, it just doesn't mean you're going to find what you're looking, the right person with the right skills. I've done cases which are 18 days old and solved it in two and a half hours."
The first vital piece of information for a tracker is "point last seen", he said.
"You start from point last seen, and you try to make the same choices as that dog did at the time, and you work your way through it, and hopefully you end up in a similar area as the dog.
"When I'm running a tracking dog, of course, I'm looking for their cues as well."
He talks about missing dogs and the zombie effect.
"We all know we'd run from a zombie, so I try to get people to understand that the dog sees you as a zombie, and it's going to run, and that's that eyes, ears and nose principle."
Don Schwass helped to track down Nelson dogs Charlie and Barnie. Photo: Supplied
It was essentially flight mode, he said.
"It's just a flight mode, self-preservation, they're trying to survive. And if we don't put too much pressure on them, they'll find a safe area, and they'll have food in vicinity, they'll have water, and they generally don't move too far from it.
"A dog's normally in close or it's out to about five kilometres."
You might be close to your dog, but the dog might not be in the right mode to come to you, he said.
"You're normally high energy, you're shaking, your pulse is racing. And so, you're responding differently to what the dog knows. And it's responding in the sense, do I run or not? Generally, it starts as a stare off. And if you basically call it or take a step towards it, it'll be just gone. And the trouble is, then it moves on. So, then you got to find the place where it is next."
It was like hide and seek sometimes, with a bit of chess wrapped up all in one.
"You've got to outsmart the dog, and be the master of hide and seek too."
The idea of a lost dog is a human notion, he said, and so searching for it as you might a lost human will only make things worse.
"If you search for that dog, you could potentially lead the dog out of the area, because it'll smell you at some point, and then you might hop in a car two streets away and drive off. So, you've just taken the dog out of the area.
"But the best thing you can do go to point last seen and sit down, sit there for about an hour. And if your dog's in that area, it will appeal to its nose eventually, because the scent cone gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and your dog will come out and come to you."
The trick is to keep sitting not get up at any point and advance on the dog, he said.
And you may think you have got the best call or whistle in the world, you probably do not, he said.
"At 10 metres your dog's ears are painted on, you call it and it doesn't come because it can't hear you.
"People think they've got the best whistle in the world after 100 meters, the whistle dies out, and it actually means nothing to a dog."
Dogs do not see colour like us, so we appear as shapes, he said.
"And at 10 meters, we will look like, to a dog who doesn't see colour like we do. We just look like a figure that's flapping and jumping up and down and chasing them."
