Max the police dog proved himself during his very first shift on the job.
The two-year-old German shepherd and his handler, PC Peter Lloyd, were “crucial” in tracking down a missing mother and her one-year-old son in Powys, Wales, on Saturday afternoon, according to Dyfed-Powys police.
Max and Lloyd were drafted to find the mum and son after the mother’s car was found on a mountain road. The pair hadn’t been seen for two days.
Max and Lloyd covered “a significant distance” in 90 minutes, with the support of mountain rescue teams and a police helicopter, and discovered the mother and son on the edge of a ravine, where they had stayed overnight.
“They were safe, but cold, and appeared to have been in the area for a significant amount of time,” police Inspector Jonathan Rees-Jones said in a statement Wednesday.
Lloyd hailed his canine partner’s focus during their first operational deployment together, saying Max “proved invaluable when he reacted to the call for help which resulted in us locating them.”