Saving nose with celebrity mistress: looking for missing people

Created: 02/28/2022, 10:43 am

By: Tobias Gehre

Boxer Hermes (front) tracked down a missing person with his nose last week.

His prominent owner Christine Theiss is proud of her four-legged friend.

Markus Vilhar (with dog Buddy) and Thomas Rapp from the Malteser are also happy about the success of the search.

© Gehre

Search dogs and their owners always turn up when a person is missing.

Last week they put their skills to the test in Germering and tracked down an old man who had been lost for hours.

For the four-legged rescuers, the search is hard work.

Germering

– The search teams have been in action for hours.

Boxer Hermes gives everything to follow the smell that he memorized beforehand.

"It's like high-performance sport," explains mistress Christine Theiss.

She is familiar with that.

She was a professional athlete herself for a long time.

Theiss won 23 world championship titles in kickboxing.

The 42-year-old also made a name for herself as a moderator and ring reporter.

However, there is no celebrity advantage when searching for missing persons.

The only thing that counts here is to track down the person quickly.

On this Wednesday morning, Hermes purposefully directs his mistress to Adalbert-Stifter Straße.

It's 6 a.m., the city is just waking up when the rescuers from the dog unit finally find the 92-year-old.

The senior has been on his feet for more than twelve hours at this time.

"The man was very surprised that we were looking for him," remembers Christine Theiss, who works for the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB).

The wanted person appears unharmed.

Nevertheless, he comes to safety in a clinic.

For the rescuers, the mission is over.

For Hermes, however, the fun is only just beginning.

He has mastered his task with flying colors - and gets his favorite toy as a reward.

The four-year-old male was trained to become a so-called mantrailer dog.

This means he can memorize a scent and follow that trail over long distances.

The search for the 92-year-old in Germering was led by Thomas Rapp from the Malteser relief service in Gröbenzell as head of operations.

First, the helpers drove to the man's apartment.

There they obtained odor samples in the form of a hairbrush and a handkerchief.

However, the search dogs were not allowed to sniff it directly.

The smell is first transferred to several compresses, so to speak copied, explains Rapp.

If all dogs were allowed to sniff the same tracker, they could possibly memorize the scents of the other search dogs and then follow them.

Missing person search is teamwork.

That's why seven dog squadrons with 18 four-legged friends were in action that night - from the DLRG, the Johanniter, the BRK, the ASB, the Garching and Aschheim volunteer fire brigades and the Malteser.

In addition to the mantrailers, surface detection dogs went on the search.

They do not take in the scent, but look for human scents in larger areas - for example in the forest.

Both two-legged and four-legged rescuers do their jobs on a voluntary basis.

They are regularly on the lookout for missing people – often at night.

At least Boxer Hermes has no problem with that.

"As soon as I put the jacket on, he knows and is ready," says Christine Theiss.

By the way, the male visibly savored his great success in Germering.

After the operation, he walked around with his chest swollen with pride and his head held high, says his mistress.

A real rescuer has his pride.

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