KEY POINTS:
Matai is only 15 months old, but already she is showing a great gift for finding people with her nose.
At the weekend, the Labrador/springer spaniel cross accurately tracked the scent of a person who had walked through a forest several hours before - a feat an expert said older, more experienced search dogs might struggle to do.
Matai was one of about a dozen dogs honing their skills at a four-day LandSAR search dog training camp in the Bay of Plenty. Her owner and handler, Sue Chesterfield, hopes that by the end of the year Matai will be certified for involvement in land searches.
LandSAR is a volunteer organisation of civilian searchers who work alongside police but it has only one operational search dog in the country.
Search dog trainer and assessor Iain Watson owns that dog, a German Shepherd named Kaiser, and said in the last few years the retirement of other dogs had created an even greater shortage of LandSAR search dogs than usual."There's never enough."
He said the dogs were invaluable for finding lost people because they could cover areas faster than humans, and were especially useful for finding unconscious victims.
"That's one of the places where we really need dogs, where people can't call back."
And civilian search dogs tended to be specialists in finding people in the bush, whereas police dogs did not necessarily have bush skills.
Mr Watson said any breed of dog could become a search dog, but they needed to have good "prey drive" - that is, be willing to chase anything - and a dedicated handler who could survive in the bush and dedicate long hours to helping them hone their instincts to track human scent on the ground or in the air.
"It's a lot of effort to get a dog operational," he said.
Matai is Sue Chesterfield's second dog, chosen from a litter of nine descended from proven search dogs.
"I looked for the right one for the job," the retired nurse said.
The 62-year-old said search dogs could be as valuable for finding people as for eliminating areas in land searches by indicating to their handlers that no one was there.
LandSAR runs two or three training camps a year for the dogs, and one assessment camp where they are tested for certification.
Mr Watson, a former policeman, said LandSAR was always looking for people with bush skills and preferably a search and rescue background who wanted to train their dog to become a search dog. As volunteers, the owners mostly paid for the dogs' upkeep.
