A stray dog that was saved from being euthanized has become an expert pet detective, displaying an uncanny knack for sniffing out lost animals.

Rico was just days away from being put down when kind-hearted Rachel Rodgers, who runs a dog training school, paid almost $200 to rescue him from the Portuguese dog pound.

“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,” the Englishwoman told SWNS news agency. “I paid the fee to get him out of the pound, but they hadn’t found him a home (so) I ended up paying and bringing him over.”

She took him home and was amazed to discover the incredible sniffing and tracking skills of this small domestic Kokoni.

“He was really good at that. It was like hide and seek where they sniff you out.”

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, the 10-year-old pup was even given an animal’s poop to learn its smell in order to pick up a trail.

Rico is now a pro at locating lost animals—and over the years, he’s taken part in more than 20 pet rescues. 36-year-old Rachel from Whitchurch, Shropshire, in England, is preparing to mark ten years since she gave Rico a second chance of life in December 2015.

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

DOGGIE GENIUSES: Dogs in UK Are First to Be Trained to Sniff Out Bowel Cancer–After Nailing Parkinson’s and COVID

“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—and the dog came out hours later from the exact spot Rico had identified.”

Rachel, the co-founder and instructor at The Canine School of Trailings, said there was “no feeling like it”, after Rico tracked down a missing dog. “I’ve never been so proud.”

Now the twosome is even training other dog trainers across the world so that they can teach pet owners.

One of the strangest rescues Rico took part in was when a capybara called Cinnamon escaped from a zoo last year.

MORE HERO DOGS:
• Tiny Bomb-Sniffing Jack Russell is a National Hero, Sporting a Presidential Medal
• 18 Month-old Bloodhound Wins 2024 Hero Dog Awards for Saving Lives And Solving Crimes

“We got a tortoise request the other week, but the capybara was the weirdest.

“I was in London when Cinnamon went missing and she had been missing a few days before we went out. Obviously makes it harder without a fresh trail of scent to follow.”

They didn’t have any scent article, which Rico could use to track the animal, so the zoo brought in capybara fecal droppings from Cinnamon’s family.

“I was worried he would go to the zoo to their enclosure but he followed a trail quite a while.”

He lead the search team through a field with a horse and kept going to a ditch and found more scat there, which one of the keepers believed was from a capybara.

POOCH GETS SECOND CHANCE: Dog That Flunked Out of Police Academy Becomes a Hero in Earthquake Response

“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 says she hopes her 7-month-old border terrier Pebbles will carry on Rico’s “amazing work” and keep searching for lost pets after he retires in the next year or so.

HELP DOG OWNERS FIND THEIR CALLING – Share This on Social Media…