Dogs search again for missing Andover woman to no avail

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2015 Telegraph Publishing, LLC

Sgt. Anthony French coordinated Wednesday’s search for the Vermont State Police

Four dog teams from New England K9 Search and Rescue spent Wednesday morning looking for traces of Lynn Perry, a 56-year-old Andover woman with early onset Alzheimer’s disease who has been missing since July 28. Unfortunately, their search was unsuccessful.

According to Vermont State Police Sgt. Anthony French, the teams were invited to come back to the scene on one of their training days to work in a search area that French says is hard to describe. “You take a big circle around (Perry’s) house (on Route 11),” said French, “and you concentrate on the corridors where people could travel most easily.” This would include “edge” areas like roadways and trails in addition to streams. The searchers pay less attention to difficult areas to travel in like steep hills and mountain tops. “We are re-doing our searches behind the house and concentrating on other areas of high interest,” said French.

Searchers with their dogs carry GPS devices that record where they have searched and, when they finish, that information is downloaded into computers including those of the VSP. Searchers can take this information to plan future efforts.

Donna Larson and Amanda Perl of New England K9 Search and Rescue log GPS coordinates of the day’s search into a laptop while Riker looks on.

New England K9 Search and Rescue is a volunteer organization that helps assist police in Vermont and New Hampshire in finding missing persons by using trained “air scent” dogs. According to Donna Larson, one of the founding members of the organization, NEK9 made its first search in Vermont in 1984 and conducts an average of 40 searches per year in the two states.

Searchers work with the dogs, but according to Larson they also work with the wind by placing dog teams where they will get the wind blowing across the target area.

Search teams Donna Larson with Haven and Amanda Perl with Rook.

“We use the wind to our advantage,” said Larson.

“The dogs work off-leash,” said Larson. “They are like hunting dogs who find what they are looking for and then point.” In the case of search and rescue dogs, they are trained to return to their human handler and either jump or grab a toy carried by the handler to signal a find.

Training is a big part of working in NEK9, with anywhere from a year and a half to two years needed to train both a dog and its person although according to Larson, it’s more often the people who wash out because they can’t meet the time commitment. “When someone is interested in getting involved the first question I ask is if they have a job that would allow them to leave work and search,” said Larson who works with Haven, a 10-year-old Belgian Malinois that has participated in more than 200 searches.

“It’s more than taking a walk with a dog,” noted Larson. “You need to be an outdoors person, bushwhacking your way over some rough terrain in all kinds of weather.”

Although the day’s work was unsuccessful, French said the VSP will use future training days to continue looking for Perry with dogs and with ground searches by humans.