The Search by Paul Besley: an extract

A fall in the mountains of the Lake District changed the direction of Paul Besley’s life forever. Found and delivered to safety by a local mountain rescue team, Paul was inspired to help other hillwalkers in need and joined his local Derbyshire outfit – a far cry from his former life working in Sheffield’s steel industry. It was search dog training where Paul found his niche and he developed a incredibly strong bond with his working dog, Scout, with whom he spent many hundreds of hours in the hills on call-outs. Until the latent consequences of working in a steel mill finally caught up with Paul’s health and he is forced to face a new reality.

In this extract from his book, The Search, Paul and Scout train under canvas of an ancient Peakland forest with three dogsbodies they've recruited to help improve their search times, and Paul learns a vital lesson as to whether his or Scouts instincts are the more reliable.

I can feel both of us teeming into one mould, melding together, our bond strong. More and more I’m leaving Scout to his own devices in a search, just dropping the occasional direction to look here or there. It feels wonderful. Is wonderful. The larger training areas give us much more time together and more space for Scout to range. We’re becoming like a long-time married couple communicating without words, knowing what each will do before it happens. I’ve taken to choosing vantage points to watch him work the landscape and give me a moment to rest. With the heat turning high moors into crucibles, we’ve taken to the cool of a forest evening for training. It’s an old royal hunting forest surrounding a large chase and impressive crags. There’s ancient woodland of oak and beech, stands of commercial pine, some beautiful Scots pine. Dotted within are pockets of pasture and long forgotten platforms where charcoal burners spent long days and nights tending a burn. The forest teems with wildlife. Owls and raptors are plentiful, the sound of cuckoo and woodpecker piercing the quiet, deer gather in secluded valleys, badgers build extensive setts away from human form. There is a network of tracks and a web of footpaths and hidden trails that run like roots of the trees. Several streams and a plunge pool bring coolness. It is well frequented by local people – walkers, dogs, horse riders, mountain bikers – most staying on the tracks. It’s a regular callout for the team, mountain bikers hitting immovable objects, always the same ones, decelerating instantly, their bodies absorbing the trauma of impact, rupturing kidneys and spleens, breaking necks and backs.

Our training is going well and I’m wanting to work on the finer points of air scenting: seeing how environmental elements affect how human molecules act, and how Scout and I respond. Annette and Diane have joined Paul to increase our search times and create different scenarios within one training session. I’ve asked them to hide in specific locations early in the evening to allow their scent pools to build. I’m interested to see what happens when the day begins to cool and thermal currents reverse, pulling scent down to the valley bottom.

Annette is under brambles in the ancient part of the wood. We’d recently had a multi-team search for a dementia patient who had absconded from his care home. He’d been missing two days, the search area covering many square miles. He’d been found alive huddled deep in brambles – in an area that had already been searched by a human foot section surmising no one could enter the spiky thorns – by a search dog walking high above in the early morning, the sun lifting the scent into the path of the dog. He was 200 metres from the care home.

Diane is hiding under a bush on the blind side of a wall. It will be interesting to see how Scout responds. I wonder if we need to be a certain distance away from the wall to detect a scent dump flowing over it from Diane.

Paul is hiding in an unknown location. I’ve given him general directions: left at the first track junction, walk one hundred metres, walk into the trees on the right for one hundred metres. I don’t want to know his exact position; I want Scout to work for it.

It’s a beautiful evening, sunbeams through the trees, the golden shafts alive with motes of the forest. A light breeze drifts from high ground as I had expected, showing my learning is leading to understanding. I’m taking Scout on a long arc so we can approach Paul from downwind, and I can watch and learn what the scent is doing and how Scout responds. He’s relaxed, freewheeling down the track in low gear, investigating the dogworld’s social media posts. I like how he flicks through the comments, his mind ticking over as he scrolls, his tongue quivering at a bush, a gate post. Rex was here, and Millie, but who is that? Scout posts a comment: ‘Scout was here.’ I let him unwind his mind, soon enough he will be engaging with my world, a little time with his own friends won’t hurt.

I’ve added a bell to the red light on his working coat. Now he is ranging far he’s often out of sight, the bell tells me he is moving and in what area. When it goes quiet, he’ll be checking out a scent dump or will have found a body. Then I’ll hear the chime drifting towards me.

When he’s finished with his social media posts I slip his coat on and give him a big hug, tell him how much I love him. I get a sideways glance, his eyes going white, the tan brow dancing above. I know he thinks this is silly, but I cherish these moments. ‘Find him out.’ Off he goes.

The ground is dry, the early sounds of autumn crunching under his paws sending blackbirds into the forest canopy, darkening in the fading light, the day just a few metres high. We have the breeze at our back to see how Scout responds as we pass Annette. She is a superb dogsbody, almost impossible to see even when close, and like Paul, Annette and Scout love each other and their play time. Diane is new, they’ve both got to get used to each other, learn the ways, and that’s good because Scout will rarely know the people he is sent to find. I’m zigzagging through a strip of trees to ensure I cross Annette’s scent cone. Scout’s nose snaps back into the drifting breeze and begins drilling the air a metre above the ground, working to a patch of bramble, fallen trees, mounds of rotting wood. He tries to find a way in, the thorns making him tentative, his desire to find keeps him probing. I stand downwind and encourage him to encircle the clump. He sticks his nose into a tiny void in the nest, then a little further, then his head disappears. The tail begins wagging happiness. He steps back, examines the spot, looks at me, barks. ‘Show me.’ The nose points at the black hole, he does not attempt to reenter. He isn’t stupid. It takes a while for my eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness, arranging light and shade into order, a camouflage tarp slowly materialises. It’s Annette. It’s a great hide and a super find. The scent cone has crept through the undergrowth snagging on branches and leaf, trailing long wisps on the day’s settling breath. We move on. Diane is not far away, behind a wall on our right. Scout ambles along as I direct him left and right of the dusty path, the wind still behind us. At Diane’s spot he continues as if nothing has happened, until he gets to the corner of the wall when his nose snaps back and he begins following the wall back to a spot where he concentrates hard on the ground, then above, then a little away from the wall, scribing a cube in the space. He hasn’t looked at me, kept his nose sampling, sharp snorts lifting leaf off the ground. Back to the wall, tracing the joints, steps back and looks at it. He knows there is human scent. It could be a scent dump from earlier in the day, a person leaning on the wall to look at the lush green pasture beyond. ‘Find him out.’ He barks. I help him out, tap the top of the wall. I still don’t know whether Diane is here, but scent is. Another tap on the wall. ‘Find him out.’ He jumps on top, head looking down the other side. Bark. ‘Good boy!’ There is Diane, close into the wall, like someone finding protection from the weather. It’s a good find. One he had to think through, with a little help. This isn’t a problem – we work as a team, the more we experience different scenarios the more we will instinctively understand what to do. We follow thin trails down the valley, human or animal, probably both.

The air is dense around my legs, degrees lighter round my head, a miasma rising and falling with the thermal exchange of the closing day. Scout, free of his working coat, explores streams, takes on water, happy and relaxed.

At the bottom of the forest, we reset. The coat on, a kiss and a hug, that teenager’s scowl, then the command. We work into the scent being pulled down to us. All the people who have walked the dog, all the mountain bikers, the kids who’ve been making dens, the deer stepping back into trees, the rabbit held in the buzzard’s claw, they are all there, molecules of life drifting into Scout’s nose.

I reckon less than half hour before we reach Paul. But we don’t.

When we get to the position I expect Paul to be, Scout passes by. I’ve been moving him from one side of the track to the other, looking for the scent cone, I would have guaranteed that Scout would have a strike, we are after all moving into the breeze. I direct Scout to the location, he finds nothing. We do a full 360-degree pass. Nothing. Paul is not here and hasn’t been. My directions must have been unclear, maybe Paul has gone on the opposite side of the track. We go back to our set-up point and reset. It’s hard work on the forest floor in this section. The aftermath of commercial pine logging has left the floor strewn with brash and trunks, everything barring a few green spaces covered in bramble. I move from one green patch to the next, stumbling through a tangle of thorns, my hands full of tiny spikes, the palms pricking with red blood.

After thirty minutes Scout lifts his head and pecks the air, his shape dissolves into the foliage, his bell sparkling in the falling dusk. Scout appears to tell me, does his little dance and only stops barking when I tell him to show me. He’s quickly off, I’m having trouble keeping up, my clumsy legs getting tied up in strong briars. He comes back several times, his frustration louder each time. When finally, I reach the spot there is nothing. He’s stood in a small clearing, tale swishing like mad, eyes firmly on the pocket for his toy. Beyond is a small stream and beyond that head-high bracken. Peeking above the bracken the roots of a large fallen tree and beyond that the darkness of the forest. By Scout is a fallen Scots pine, others towering above encircle it like mourners. The floor is soft pine needles. I listen. The only sound are birds beginning to settle down for the night. There is no human sound. ‘Show me.’ Scout raises his eyebrows, eyes open wide, an aggressive bark splits the silence. I must be useless if I cannot see the body. After ten minutes I figure someone must have been here in the day, a picnic spot maybe, sat on the fallen tree, communed with nature. The breeze now flowing across the brook must have carried the scent to Scout’s nose. I tell him to get on with the search and walk away. He stands his ground, barking, pounding the pine needles until they float all around him. He stands on the fallen tree in protest. He is really mad. I look up, half expecting to see the soles of someone’s shoes. No human is quietly swaying in the trees. Maybe he wants a drink. At the stream he’s manic. I’ve had enough, I thought we had got past all this. I walk away forcing him to follow me. Paul is not here. We’ve wasted another thirty minutes. Scout complains bitterly all the way back to the track.

I radio Paul who explains the route he has taken. He is at the next junction up. It’s my poor directions. But what worries me most is Scout’s behaviour. The shadow of the early days rears its head. What if scent dumps are so confusing to him that he cannot tell the difference from a body?

From Paul’s junction I step across a small stream and take a cycle track down through old woodland to begin once again working into the breeze. Scout turns sharp into a stream, I let him run so he can clear his senses and have a drink, he’s soon absorbed into the gloom. I follow the track almost to the beginning when I see bracken on my left swaying back and forth, getting closer to me, and a bell chiming. Scout emerges, his head poking out of the jungle. A double take has me located – eyes meet, he bounds forward, barks, spins around, disappears back down the portal. I follow, my bulk pressing hard against the high bracken, my feet out of sight; I can only see green, the only direction I have is Scout’s bell. Hot and sweaty I reach a huge, root ball from an upturned tree, grey with age, the roots poking above the bracken. But no Scout. And no tinkling bell. I call him. His head peeks, peek-a-boo, around the grey mass, his fur covered in torn green vegetation. Another bark and another drift of eyes. As I step forward a human foot appears by Scout’s leg, then the rest of Paul, snug against the tree roots. Scout sits upright, proud, his tail sweeping dust into the dying sunbeams. It’s a cracking find.

‘This is a great spot,’ I tell Paul, as he pulls and tugs the toy with Scout. He says he was beginning to worry he had got the wrong place especially when he saw us half hour ago. No, this is a good spot I say. It’s well hidden, even has some water that I think Scout used to track you on.

Something isn’t right. I go back through the evening until the penny drops.

‘What do you mean half hour ago, Paul?’

‘You were just there he says,’ pointing down to the stream. ‘Seemed to be for ages, I could definitely hear Scout.’

As I move below Paul, I come to the stream Scout tracked in on. Across the water a pretty little open piece of ground, in the centre a fallen Scots pine resting on a bed of needles, looking down on it a congregation of tall Scots pine forms a forest arboretum. It’s the spot where Scout took me to earlier. Where he was so insistent he had found Paul. As now, the breeze and the water were drifting Paul’s scent across the stream and dumping it in this gathering of pine. If I had worked Scout across the water, we would have found Paul half an hour earlier. I just wasn’t experienced enough to work it out.

I talk it through with Steve later, laying out every single detail: wind direction, temperature, water, previous finds. He knows exactly what has happened, it’s as I describe. I need to pay more attention to what Scout is saying to me. When Scout first came back and did his little dance and bark, not leaving, he was telling me he’d found something – there wasn’t a body, but I need to come and have a look. Operationally, it could have been some clothing discarded by someone experiencing hypothermia, that sort of thing. Or as this evening, the casualty close by. I now have two indications from Scout, one he’s found a human, the second he’s found something I need to investigate. The other thing I need to learn, that is what most handlers have to learn, is that Scout knows much more than me, always will. So, trust your dog.