Traildogs K9 SAR

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Traildogs K9 SAR K9 Search & Rescue | Live Find + Recovery
Operational dogs. Real deployments. Donor-funded. Every training matters.
⬇️ Support a working dog.

15-month-old boxer Bowie may be HUGE, but he’s all puppy heart.Bowie took a training trip to Hobby Lobby during their fa...
10/21/2026

15-month-old boxer Bowie may be HUGE, but he’s all puppy heart.

Bowie took a training trip to Hobby Lobby during their fall setup, so many new smells to practice focus through! He nailed his public manners and earned extra credit from some sweet older women and new friends who stopped to love on him.

Our therapy dog team doesn’t search for anyone missing: they show up afterward, for first responders, for communities, for anyone who needs something steady to lean on for a few minutes. Moments like the ones Bowie had at the store are exactly why this work matters. A few minutes with a calm dog can change someone’s whole afternoon. It’s quiet work, and it’s just as much a part of who we are as the water searches and the trailing.

Future therapy dog in the making. 🍂🐾

Has a dog ever made your day better when you needed it? Tell us about it in the comments.

Want to support our volunteer team or learn how to get involved? traildog.org

10/19/2026

What if you could see the invisible world your dog smells?

One of my favorite things to tell people is to use their dog’s nose to create a picture of what odor is doing. Watch the nose, and you can begin to understand what your dog is telling you about the world of scent.

This morning, the sun had been up for about 90 minutes. The air temperature was around 40°F, with a light breeze.

Watch the fog lift off the pond. Notice how it moves and changes as the environment warms.

Now use that visual to imagine the challenge facing a search dog.

Human scent doesn’t simply travel in a straight line from its source to the dog’s nose. Air movement, temperature, terrain, and other environmental conditions influence how scent disperses and where it becomes detectable.

The fog isn’t a map of the scent. It’s a window into the environment in which scent moves.

Before deploying a dog on land or water, we consider the conditions that may influence what the dog encounters.

Our dogs work in a world we can’t see. Understanding that world is part of understanding the dog.
Next time you watch a dog work, don’t just watch the dog. Try to picture the odor.

Today was a good one. Thank you to everyone who stopped by Hollywood Feed to meet the team, ask questions, and learn a l...
09/20/2026

Today was a good one. Thank you to everyone who stopped by Hollywood Feed to meet the team, ask questions, and learn a little more about what Traildogs actually does. And most importantly, receive some puppy love.
One moment we won’t forget: a man stopped to meet the dogs and told us that search dogs were part of what led to two friends being rescued on September 11th, and that bloodhounds later tracked down two of his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan. Moments like that are why we keep showing up to train - every hour we put in is really about one thing: supporting these dogs to help bring people home.
A big thank-you to Hollywood Feed for hosting us and giving this mission a place to show up in person. If you missed it today, don’t worry - we’ll be doing more of these.

We are here until 4, stop in and say hello and pet some dogs!
09/19/2026

We are here until 4, stop in and say hello and pet some dogs!

It’s with an impossibly heavy heart that we share that K9 Darwin passed away on September 15, 2026.Darwin was ten years ...
09/18/2026

It’s with an impossibly heavy heart that we share that K9 Darwin passed away on September 15, 2026.
Darwin was ten years old, born July 21, 2016.
Darwin was our first search dog, and for ten years he spent his career trailing through Georgia’s woods and water, searching for people who were missing.
Darwin was a once in a lifetime dog. He was up for any adventure that came his way, no matter the ask.
Darwin’s lifetime credentials:
Darwin von Bachbett RE SAR-W THDN DS CGC TKA BN-V
American Kennel Club (AKC) Search & Rescue - Wilderness - 9/22/2019 - 1st boxer on record to receive this title
AKC Canine Good Citizen - 11/2017
AKC Rally Excellent - 6/25/2021
AKC Trick Dog Advanced - 6/11/2020
AKC Therapy Dog - 2/12/2025
North American Diving Dogs - Dock Senior - PB 17’9” - 9/2/2019
AKC Beginner Obedience Novice - 9/15/2026
Georgia Emergency Management & Homeland Security License - 12/2017, 8/27/2020, 8/14/2023
GA K9 NTC Tactical Tracker Teams Program, Level III Certification - Trailing Expert - 10/22/2021 - 1st boxer to receive this title and is still 1 of 2 (second is Angie)
National Association for Search & Rescue, Canine SARTECH III - Trailing - 9/22/2019
National Association for Search & Rescue, Canine SARTECH HRD Land - Type Other - 11/28/2018 & 10/31/2020
North American Police Work Dog Association - Trailing - 10/5/2018
L.E.T.S. Human Remains Detection Certification - Land & Water - 9/26/2022
19 trailing searches and 32 human remains detection cases over his career
Upwards of 20 SAR related seminars
Worked or trained in at least 10 different states
Thank you, Darwin, for every hour of training, every search, and every family you helped bring home an answer to. You gave this team everything. We are beyond grateful to have had him in our lives. Rest easy, D.
If you have a memory of Darwin — please share it.

Mark your calendar: Saturday, September 19th, we’re setting up at Hollywood Feed for a meet-and-greet with the Traildogs...
09/14/2026

Mark your calendar: Saturday, September 19th, we’re setting up at Hollywood Feed for a meet-and-greet with the Traildogs team - dogs included.
Come say hi to K9 Kane, K9 Dixie, K9 Blue, and more, ask us anything about what search and rescue K9 work actually looks like, and put a face - well, several faces - to this page in person.
12-4pm at Hollywood Feed, 6235A Roswell Rd NE, Sandy Springs, GA 30328. Free to attend - just bring your questions, and maybe a treat if the staff allows it.
Tag someone who needs an excuse to pet a working dog this Saturday.

Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001.More than 300 search and rescue dogs worked at Ground Zero in the days tha...
09/11/2026

Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001.
More than 300 search and rescue dogs worked at Ground Zero in the days that followed - climbing rubble, working through smoke and fire, searching for survivors and then for the people who didn’t make it home.
One of them was a boxer named Louie, handled by jeanette. Every one of our working dogs is a boxer too, which is part of why that particular story has always stuck with us.
Pictured is our K9 Angie at an annual memorial service honoring fallen police and search-and-rescue working dogs - the same tradition of service and sacrifice that Louie and every dog who worked that week in 2001 represent.
Today we’re remembering all of the dogs who worked that week, and the handlers who trained them - every breed, every one of them showing up for something almost impossible to comprehend. Thank you.

09/09/2026

A question we get often: how does someone become a certified K9 search and rescue handler?
It’s a multi-year commitment, not a certification completed once. Handlers train continuously alongside their dogs in navigation, scent theory, and evidence preservation, and more. Both handler and dog periodically retest to maintain active certification. K9 Kane and I travel to a military training facility at least once a year for exactly this - getting both of us comfortable operating on rope systems, at height, in an unfamiliar industrial environment. It’s environmental socialization as much as it is a technical skill: the goal is for Kane to stay calm and focused no matter how strange the terrain gets.
The real-world case for it is simple - some search areas can’t be reached any other way. If the space we need to search is only accessible by rope, that’s not the moment to be learning the system for the first time.
This is also where volunteer capacity becomes a real constraint for teams like ours - recruiting and training new handlers, and maintaining specialized skills like this one, takes time and resources most volunteer-run 501(c)(3)s don’t have to spare. If your organization has an interest in supporting workforce development for public safety volunteers, I’d welcome that conversation.

After ten years, K9 Darwin is officially retiring from active trailing and human remains detection work.His first offici...
08/30/2026

After ten years, K9 Darwin is officially retiring from active trailing and human remains detection work.
His first official search was August 20, 2018, in Rabun County at Tallulah Gorge. His last was today, August 29, 2026 - also Rabun County. The same person who navigated that very first search eight years ago was behind the wheel of the boat today.
Darwin has spent a decade on this team - trailing, searching on land and in water, showing up for calls most people never hear about. Some of those searches ended with a family finally getting an answer. Some ended with someone found alive. Darwin was the first dog in the truck, every time.
He’s still one of the most reliable dogs we have. That’s exactly why we’re making this choice now, on our terms, instead of waiting for that to change.
Ten years of finding people. Thank you, Darwin.

08/28/2026

Ever wonder how we actually find out someone needs us?
It starts with a phone call - usually from local law enforcement or Georgia Emergency Management. They give us a location, a name, and whatever details they have. From there, it’s gear in the truck, dogs loaded, and on the road.
No sirens, no drama - just a very fast, very practiced routine we’ve built specifically so no time gets wasted.
This is the part nobody sees on the news. Now you have.

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