By Amy Herdy / Denver Post, Oct. 11, 2004

The call came shortly after 12:30 a.m.; the voice was urgent. "We have a missing 10-year-old in Gunbarrel," Bernadette Pflug was told. After a few questions, Pflug, 34, who lives in Lafayette, left her sleeping husband and daughter, dressed in search clothes and loaded Ranger, her stately 85-pound, 8-year-old German Shepherd in her car.

The Boulder Sheriff's Office relies on search and rescue dogs like Ranger, who together with Pflug is certified for searches through Front Range Rescue Dogs. Of the eight teams qualified through FRRD, Ranger is the only trailing dog, meaning he roughly follows the path a person has walked. The other animals are trained for air-scent work, following a scent as it diffuses through the air. While both require extensive training, the task of trailing is a discipline not all dogs enjoy.

A writer for "Unwrapped" on the Food Network, Pflug joined the rescue organization years ago before the birth of her daughter, now 6, becacuse it mixed three of her passions: helping people, being outdoors and working with dogs. "It's incredibly rewarding to feel like you are making a difference in a way that not everyone can," she said.

Boulder County usually calls out rescue dogs on any "lost person" report, often as many as 50 times a year. This late-August evening search began at a large apartment complex in north Boulder. At the scene, Pflug was briefed about the situation: The 10-year-old boy had been missing since 5;30 p.m.; Boulder sheriff's deputies had been searching since 7 p.m. After an arguement with his dad, the child took his dog, some money, and ran away.

No one had been able to find him, and deputies wanted Ranger to try to trail the child from his apartment, along with the Boulder sheriff's bloodhound, Sally. Two other members of FRRD, Ryan Root and Lauren Whittemore, both handlers of certified air-scent dogs, had arrived on the scene before Pflug and had gone into the boy's apartment to retreive items that might have his scent - a pillowcase and headphones. Pflug focused on the boy's headphones, which although metal, had foam covers that would hold scent. Since the boy had cleaned his room, she wasn't sure if the pillowcase had yet been used.

The sheriff's bloodhound, which had already shown skill on searches, would go first, Pflug and the others decided, and she would follow with Ranger to confirm the trail. Ranger began trailing at 9 months old, but Pflug took two years off to spend time with her daughter. Ranger became qualified at age 4, and since then has responded to about a dozen searches with Pflug.

That night, holding the plastic bag containing the head-phones open to Ranger, Pflug began to talk to him softly, cueing him that he was about to start working. "This boy is missing," Pflug told her dog, who nosed the bag intently. "He needs you to find him. Go find." Circling the entire apartment building as he fanned his nose from side to side, Ranger suddely popped his head near a doorway on the north side. Turning abruptly,  he put his nose to the ground and began moving around the building. Near the tennis courts, where Sally the bloodhound had headed west, Ranger instead turned east, and Pflug's heart sank. "I'm pretty hard on my dogs, and myself, and when he turned the opposite way I though, 'oh no.'"

Ranger continued on through the parking lots of the complex, at one poiont becoming distracted by a cat. After telling him to "leave it!" Pflug noticed he had begun to circle, meaning he had lost the trail. Discouraged, she stopped him and conferred with Root and Whittemore, who had been following. "We talked about getting the air-scent dogs and checking the nearby open space, and about how much more time I should spend," Pflug said. "The police had already searched that area pretty well." But Pflug wanted to try a few minutes more, convinced the child would not be far from home. "When you are 10, it's scary to go out into the big wide world."

Pflug began walking, and Ranger, who had been standing patiently, immediately picked up on the trail again, nosing the ground. After another 40 feet on the asphalt, he suddenly veered sharply to the south to a landscaped area. Suddenly, a furry animal darted from the bushes and launched itself at Ranger. Pflug realized when it began to bark feverishly that the animal was a black and white Border Collie mix - just like the one described by the boy's father. The dog snapped at Ranger before suddenly running away, and Ranger, who had steadfastly continued pushing into the bushes, began to wag his tail. Pflug saw a small boy asleep under a tree, using a duffel bag for a pillow. "Is that you?" she asked, calling the boy's name, and the boy groggily said it was. "You have a lot of people worried," Pflug told him as Ranger tried to lick his face.

As Root radioed that the boy had been found, Pflug pulled out Ranger's reward - a chewed up frisbee - and the boy began to throw it for him. Minutes later, the boy's father arrived, tearfully scooping his son in his arms and holding him tight. Searchers had walked past the shrubs that concealed the boy numerous times.

Tail high, chest out, Ranger - who has found one other person before - pranced back to the car. Once home, instead of heading to his usual spot, Ranger went to the master bedroom, where he toook over the dog bed of her youngest German Shepherd, Axel, an 11-month-old she is training to replace Ranger when he retires. "He's been sleeping in my room ever since," she said.