Ready, Set, Race!

Lace up your running shoes—the Ocala Marathon is back and will take you through some of the most scenic routes in Ocala’s horse country. This year’s event is set for January 15 and is the fifth race in the Big Hammock Race Series–Season 2, presented by Prime Mortgage Group. The BHRS is a series of eight races throughout Marion County, allowing runners and walkers of all levels to achieve prizes and perks as they move through the challenge to complete as many races as possible. The Ocala Marathon also includes a half marathon and 5K for runners who aren’t quite ready to tackle the full marathon. We’ll race you to registration! Additional race information can be found at bighammockraceseries.com.

Nose To The Ground

Bloodhounds use finetuned skill sets to track and locate missing persons.

› By Cynthia McFarland › Photos Courtesy of Find-M’Friends

It was 1:30 in the morning when Linda Boles got the call. An elderly man with dementia was missing. Within minutes, Boles and her dog, Winchester, aka “Winn,” arrived at the missing man’s home. Boles, a bloodhound trainer and founder of Find-M’ Friends, Inc. based in Crystal River, Florida, volunteers with the Citrus County Sheriff Department using her scent-discriminating bloodhounds to track and locate missing persons.

Almost a year earlier, the man’s wife had requested a human scent preservation kit, knowing his dementia put him at high risk for going missing.

“Law enforcement already had boots on the ground, including a German Shepherd, and a helicopter in the air but couldn’t find the man,” Boles recalls. “I let my dog smell the kit, and within five minutes, she had found him; he was hiding in bushes behind a building in the neighborhood.”

Head Start

Boles has worked tirelessly to encourage families with children, elderly and those with conditions such as Alzheimer’s and dementia to utilize the scent kits her organization provides free of charge. Each kit contains a sterile pad used to collect odor by rubbing it on your body. The pad is then sealed in the kit’s jar and a tamper tape placed across the lid.

“Each person has their own individual scent, which is as unique as their fingerprints,” Boles explains. “Your odor comes off the top of your head almost like a chimney, and then falls to the ground, but like smoke coming out of a chimney, if it’s windy, that scent can drift across an area. Having a scent kit does two things: It saves time and allows the dog to work off a pure scent.”

Using a scent kit is like wearing a seat belt, she adds.

“You wear the seat belt ‘just in case.’ You can collect your scent—or your child’s or elderly parent’s—just in case they ever go missing. We have partnered with the Citrus County Sheriff Department on the child ID kits (fingerprints, DNA, photos), which can help identify a body, but the scent kit allows a dog to trail them from their last known location and hopefully bring them home before something happens.”

Trained To Track

After Boles fell in love with bloodhounds a number of years ago, it only felt natural to use the dogs in a way that would help others. She started volunteering with the Citrus County Sheriff Department, but searches have taken her far from home.

“We’ve searched in Levy County, North Florida, Alabama and Tennessee,” says Boles, who now purchases and trains several dogs a year to become certified working dogs, which her organization then donates to law enforcement.

Boles buys her puppies from a reliable breeder in Alabama who raises bloodhounds from lineages known for their tracking abilities.

“This breeder is amazing. By the time we get them at just 8 weeks old, they are already on a lead and following puppy trails,” she notes. “They’re desensitized to gunfire and are fearless; they run toward noise instead of away from it.”

From this early beginning, it’s then about honing the dogs’ innate desire to track.

“Their ability to follow a scent is God-given, so you just have to work on it,” says Boles.

She uses “track layers,” assistants who walk into an area and leave a “hot track” for the puppy to follow. Initially, the person hides only 20 to 50 yards away from the starting point. As soon as the puppy locates the hidden person, the young dog is lavishly rewarded with play, love and treats.

“We praise and play with them extensively at the end of every successful search,” Boles notes. “That’s the reward they work for, and they love it.”

From these early lessons, the training continues with longer and more complicated scent trails. By the time dogs are a year old, they are good at following six-hour-old tracks. The more they mature and work with an experienced handler, the better they become. Boles prefers female dogs, as she thinks they are less distracted, but adds that it really comes down to the individual and their training.

Trained bloodhounds will follow one individual smell that has been presented, so that even in a crowd of people, they will find that one person.

“My father had Alzheimer’s, and this struck a chord with me,” says Boles. “These dogs are so valuable at finding missing people, whether they’re a child, elderly or a criminal. It especially touches my heart to be able to give back to the community and help the vulnerable—the young and the elderly.”

Also known as the St. Hubert hound or Sleuth Hound, bloodhounds are famed for their tenacious ability to follow scent over great distances. Originally bred to hunt deer and wild boar, they were later specifically trained to track humans by scent. Their large, drooping ears help prevent scent particles and cells from scattering while the dog is scenting.

Shawl: the folds of wrinkled skin under the dog’s lips and neck, which help catch stray scent particles in the air

4 billion: number of olfactory cells in a bloodhound

12 million: number of olfactory cells in a human

80 to 110 pounds: average weight

23 to 27 inches: average height