‘I saved a dog from death row - he's now a pet detective in Shropshire sniffing out lost animals and humans’

A stray dog that was saved from 'death row' has become an expert pet detective by sniffing out lost animals. 

Rico was two days away from being put down before kind-hearted Rachel Rodgers paid £150 to rescue him from a Portuguese dog pound. 

Rachel, who runs a dog training school, took Rico in and was amazed to discover his incredible sniffing skills. Within months, Rico's nose was being used to track down lost pets and animals which had escaped from their enclosures, including a runaway capybara.

Rico would be given a blanket or chew toy to smell which he would then use to locate the area where the animals had been most recently. In some cases, Rico was even given the lost animal's poo to smell in order to pick up a trail.

Rico is now used to find lost animals. Over the years, the ten-year-old Kokini dog has taken part in more than 20 pet rescues. 

Rachel, 36, from Whitchurch, is preparing to mark ten years since she gave Rico a second chance of life. 

She said: “It was December 2015 when I got him. I had just got my first house and was living on my own. I saw this picture online of this really cute black and tan dog in Portugal and they said he had two days left to live.

“I paid the fee to get him out of the pound, but they hadn’t found him a home. I ended up paying and bringing him over. 

“When I got him he was petrified of men, he would hide behind me and wee. I tried the usual training stuff but it didn’t work, so I tried this man trailing and he was really good at that. It was like hide and seek where they sniff you out. He was really good at that. It’s just for fun and enrichment for the dog, it’s natural. But Rico has ended up doing it as a job.” 

Rico’s first rescue happened while Rachel was doing a course about water voles in Wales.  

She said: “There was a family in the car park crying because they’d lost their dog and he was missing. My friend suggested Rico try and help them so we let him sniff the boot of the car to get the lost dog’s scent. We searched for about three hours and he kept going to the same location with a 7ft high fence. The dog came out hours later from the exact spot Rico had identified. Now we train other dog trainers across the world so that they can teach owners.”

Helping in the rescue of Cinnamon the capybara

One of the strangest rescues Rico took part in was when a capybara called Cinnamon escaped from Hoo Zoo and Dinosaur World in Telford last year.

Rachel said: “We got a tortoise request the other week, but the capybara was the weirdest. I had him on the capybara hunt for a few hours but I made them give him a break as he’s getting old. I was in London when Cinnamon went missing so she had been missing a few days before we went out. Obviously makes it harder as not a fresh trail of scent to follow.

“They didn’t have a scent article - what Rico uses to sniff. So he just got given capybara poo from Cinnamon's family members in the zoo. I was worried he would go to the zoo to their enclosure but he followed a trail quite a while. He went through a field with a horse and kept going to a ditch and found more poo that one of the keepers thought was capybara poo. He was searching for three hours in that same area and the zookeepers put a trap down and she was caught a day or so later."   

Rachel hopes her border terrier puppy Pebbles will carry on Rico's hard work and keep searching for lost pets when he retires.  

She said: “I’ve got Pebbles, who’s a seven month old border terrier puppy. Hopefully we’ll have her trained in six months and she’ll be ready to go out into the field and carry on Rico’s amazing work.”