Maine Warden Service Cpl. Lucas Bellanceau, left, and Warden Jake Voter finish a training exercise with search and rescue K-9s Koda, in the truck, and Breezy, not shown, at Range Pond State Park in Poland on June 28. Belanceau and Voter practiced tracking and hasty search scenarios. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

In the late afternoon on May 29, Phillips residents Alexandra and Ryan Hutchinson’s worst nightmare occurred. Their two youngest children, ages 2 and 3, went missing.

An older sibling ran inside to report they’d disappeared down the driveway, whereupon Franklin County Sheriff’s deputies were called, alerting the Maine Warden Service. As darkness fell on the 12 game wardens, several dogs and county sheriff’s deputies searching the area, Warden Chad Robertson’s search and rescue K-9 Storm located the children about four hours later in a heavily-wooded area about a half-mile from their home.

“It’s always a team effort,” said Robertson, 41, of the eight handlers and their dogs involved in search and rescue. It’s a sentiment expressed by all the wardens interviewed. “We all work together,” Robertson said.

A veteran of hundreds of searches, Storm has racked up 20 “finds” in seven years with the Maine Warden Service. The 7-year-old Lab is among an elite group of search and rescue K-9s in the Warden Service, many of whom have won awards in their own right. Storm received the 2023 K-9 Conservation Case of the Year Award for a criminal trespass complaint when he tracked a hunter past multiple no trespassing signs and a game camera.

Robertson, an 11-year member of the Maine Warden Service and K-9 handler since 2016, was paired with then-9-month-old Storm in 2017.

“You go through so much together. Each handler has to have a special bond with their K-9,” said Robertson, of Pittsfield. “We’re together 24/7. It really changes your life: You have to modify how you work, your home life, your spouse has to be on board.”

Searches, which are all coordinated by the Warden Service, can last as many as three to four days and may involve multiple dogs and their handlers.

“We never know if we’re going to come home that day or how long we’ll be gone,” he said of the team’s grueling April to December schedule, which peaks in July and August due to vacation season and longer days. The most recently compiled Warden Service records reveal the K-9 team was called out approximately 175 times in 2021-22, an increase over the average of 150 times per year from 2015-20. The average number of K-9 finds is between 20 and 30 annually.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Warden Chad Robertson and K-9 Storm. Maine Warden Service

“We look for a dog who isn’t going to be a good pet,” said Game Warden Cpl. Lucas Bellanceau, 32, of Denmark, referring to the Warden Service’s desire for a dog that has “extreme motivation … an insane toy drive (for rewards) … and a no quit attitude.”

Bellanceau said the right dog also needs to demonstrate qualities that often make for a good pet, including intelligence, trainability and be environmentally stable. That last quality means the dog can’t be rattled or distracted by anything, including stairs, heights, weather, rugged terrain, rubble, vehicle traffic, loud noises and overhead activity.

As a K-9 specialist, Bellanceau’s job is to procure and train the service’s eight current canines, including his own dog Breezy, as well as train the handlers who comprise the team. Like their dogs, handlers need to be exceedingly motivated and have a “no-quit attitude,” Bellanceau said.

Dutch shepherds, Belgian malinois and German shepherds — all used traditionally in law enforcement — used to be Maine Warden Service dogs of choice, but they can be harder to find given the national demand. Today all eight of Maine’s search and rescue K-9s are Labrador retrievers, which, due to their floppy ears, make them appear less threatening and more approachable, something important in the field and when used educationally in the schools.

The dogs travel everywhere with their handlers, including flying to remote sites in small planes that utilize wheels, skis for frozen lakes and pontoons for water landings depending on the season. So they must be comfortable in all flight conditions.

All Maine Warden Service dogs undergo continuous rigorous training and must be certified in a number of search and rescue disciplines. These include tracking, evidence searches, human remains detection and hasty air scenting: using air/wind, as opposed to the ground, to follow the human scent.

“They have to be confident in navigating every type of scenario,” Bellanceau said. Many times a dog succeeds against all odds, even finding people in areas where humans had recently searched with no results.

Robertson’s Storm counts air scenting among his favorite things, during which he is unleashed and wears a GPS collar, bell and orange vest.

“Sometimes that’s easier on the dog and the handler, because he likes to go very fast in tracking. To try and follow him through the woods is a lot of me tripping and falling and breaking wood, so to let him run free and work the scent his own way is the bread and butter for the whole team,” Robertson said.

Bellanceau’s Breezy has a propensity for human remains detection. A search for a person missing well over a year in Waterford had been suspended due to winter weather. The following year, in an expanded search area, Breezy located a tibia fragment; the rest of the remains had been scattered by animals.

“That family spent over a year not knowing where their loved one had gone, and Breezy was able to locate the tibia, and then the rest of the remains as well. It brought the family closure,” Bellanceau said.

K-9 Warden Breezy, a search and rescue dog with the Maine Warden Service, jumps with excitement as his handler, Cpl. Lucas Bellanceau, tosses a ball June 28 during a training exercise at Range Pond State Park in Poland. Breezy stayed on track during the exercise and the ball was her reward for a job well done. “She absolutely loves her ball,” said Bellanceau. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

SPECIAL DOGS, SPECIAL TRAINING

Acquired at a cost of $7,000 to $10,000 per dog from detection dog sellers, breeders, retriever field trial trainers and others, prospective Maine Warden Service K-9s need to be about one year old with minimal formal training in disciplined detection work, Bellanceau said.

“That’s because what we do is very unique compared to other detector dogs in the country. We are the primary law enforcement agency for search and rescue in Maine. Our dogs are certified in many things, but unlike other programs, there is no bite work.”

Following an initial 14-week training regimen for a new pup and handler, continuous training occurs two to three days a month on tracking, obedience, and air scenting to keep skills sharp. Then at the end of each month, dogs focus on human remains detection, sometimes with Maine State Police.

“Training is a revolving door of strengthening one skillset and learning another. We are always trying to balance things out and keep it well-rounded,” Bellanceau said.

Key to the training of Maine search and rescue dogs is that they be friendly to the missing people they find, Robertson explained. When someone is located, it’s the dog’s job to sit and bark continuously to alert the rest of the team. “Many missing persons have some form of mental illness which may involve autism, dementia or suicidal tendencies. When we find someone, we want them not to be afraid of the dog.”

For Warden Jason “Jake” Voter and K-9 Koda of Cornville, the relationship is indelible.

“I’ve always been a dog person, having hunting dogs all my life,” said Voter, 48, a father of four. When he got Koda in 2021, the dog was “wound for sound.”

The only yellow Lab on the team, Koda was with Voter close to eight months before he was calm enough to be in the house. “They can be a lot to live with, which is exactly what we’re looking for. We want a dog that does not see environmental barriers. Their abilities go way beyond ours as wardens.”

In 2022, Koda found an autistic nonverbal 11-year-old girl who had wandered deep into a swamp. “He went well outside the area — the perimeter of a bog — where I was supposed to be searching,” Voter said. “He air scented from quite a distance. If he hadn’t cut her off, it probably would have been days before we would have begun to search that piece of woods.”

SAVING LIVES IN THE NAME OF OTHERS

Warden Preston Pomerleau and K-9 Gordon. Maine Warden Service

K-9 Gordon holds a special place in Warden Preston Pomerleau’s heart: The dog is named for Maine game warden pilot Daryl R. Gordon, who died in the line of duty on Clear Lake in a plane crash on March 24, 2011. Pomerleau, 42, was a close friend of Gordon’s and was actually fishing on Clear Lake the day his colleague perished.

“We had a tight bond,” reflected Pomerleau, of Ashland. “We’re all family.”

When 9-month-old K-9 Gordon was acquired by the Warden Service 2020, his name was Trek, which sounded like the command to track. It was a perfect opportunity to change it in honor of a revered teammate.

Recipient of the 2023 Search and Rescue of the Year Award, Gordon located a disoriented teenage hiker who’d gotten lost in the middle of the night in western Maine’s Grafton Notch. Following a plane ride to the area, Pomerleau and Gordon hiked a mile up the mountain just to get to the hiker’s campsite before beginning the search.

“We eventually found his jacket and one boot,” Pomerleau said. “When people are in panic mode, they tend to get hot, shedding their clothes.”

Though the area had already been covered by grid searchers — people walking in a line to scour an area — K-9 Gordon persisted, locating the hiker who was down to his underwear and hypothermic.

“When we’re getting tired, when we’re wet, or too hot or cold, when it’s dark, the dogs are just getting going,” Pomerleau said. “For them it’s no quit.”

He added, “We have to do things that are not ordinary on an ordinary day. Our dogs have a much higher work ethic. They don’t give up.”