Bloodhound trainer featured on Animal Planet

Landa Coldiron of Lost Pet Detection in Shadow Hills, California, trains dogs to find missing pets. She has two Bloodhounds – "Ellie Mae" (the only Certified Trailing Bloodhound in California for pets) and "Glory" (18 months, in training, but already following scent and finding pets). She also has a Jack Russell Terrier specifically trained to find cats.

Landa´s business partner, Annalisa Berns handles and trains pet-finding dogs as well. Their "find" rate for dogs is about 83%; for cats, about 60% depending on how soon the owner reports the missing pet, and how willing they are to get involved with the search effort.

Recently ANIMAL PLANET contacted the Landa about her dogs. The network is starting a new 10-week series in October on dog breeds (plus two episodes on cat breeds), and they wanted to see her Bloodhounds in action.

On the designated day, a freelance crew from Powder House Production Co. arrived for the shoot. They filmed Landa and her dogs in play-training exercises and interviewed her about her training techniques. Then they filmed both Glory and Ellie Mae "following a trail."

Hours earlier, Landa had "laid the trail" to a "missing" cat, hidden inside a carrier in a cool place. She did this by carrying the cat (inside the carrier) across a dirt road, through a narrow opening in a wooden fence, across a vacant yard and then into the crawl space of an abandoned house.

When the cameras began to roll, Landa took a piece of gauze from a plastic sandwich bag (that she´d previously wiped over the cat) and held it out for Glory to sniff. Immediately the dog took off, her nose in the air.

A Bloodhound´s sense of smell is 220 million times that of a human, so merely the lingering scent of the animal as Landa carried it to the hiding place was enough for Glory to follow.

Trailing almost nonchalantly, she led Landa and the crew directly to the crawl space and the "missing" kitty. Praised and rewarded, Glory sat, raised a paw and "grinned" at the camera.

The same exercise was filmed with the more accomplished Ellie Mae with the same results. In the afternoon the crew shot more play time and interviewed a grateful owner whose pet dog had been located by the Bloodhounds.

Look for the ANIMAL PLANET series to begin in October. And watch for Landa, Ellie Mae and Glory in the episode on hounds.

I hope you´ll never need to contact Landa or Annalisa about a lost pet, but if you do, call (818) 442-2952.

You can learn more about her, her dogs and Search & Rescue on her website, at www.lostpetdetection.com