{"id":118351,"date":"2014-08-20T18:40:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T00:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-dog-team-locates-lost-boy-in-forest-2\/"},"modified":"2014-08-20T18:40:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T00:40:50","slug":"dolores-dog-team-locates-lost-boy-in-forest-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-dog-team-locates-lost-boy-in-forest-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolores dog team locates lost boy in forest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Dolores
Dolores Search dogs, Quiditty and Darwin, relax after helping to find a missing 10-year-old boy in the Rio Grande National Forest.<\/span>Courtesy of K-9 Search and Rescue<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

K-9 Search and Rescue, out of Dolores, were successful in finding a missing 10-year-old boy in the Rio Grande National Forest on Friday, Aug. 15.<\/p>\n

The boy, only identified at Ian, from Texas, was exploring the area around his family\u2019s campsite in the Cathedral Peak area when he became lost.<\/p>\n

The Dolores K-9 unit was called in to assist Thursday night and arrived on scene at 3 a.m. Friday morning in the remote mountains north of Del Norte. Two search dogs \u2013 Quiditty and Darwin \u2013 and seven rescue staff responded to the incident.<\/p>\n

Base camp was set up in the Cathedral Peak campground. A search dog and handler were sent up the Embargo Trail with no sign of the boy.<\/p>\n

The other dog and his handler were sent up the Cathedral Peak Trail, where they found the boy at around 7 a.m. about a mile from his camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was quite frightened, cold and tired. It was his first night alone in the woods,\u201d said K-9 director Chuck Melvin. \u201cThe search was in rough terrain and more challenging because it was at night. It was a live find, so that is always good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy was unharmed, and reportedly huddled in a ball throughout the night. Low temperatures were in the mid 40s, and the boy was wearing jeans and a T-shirt.<\/p>\n

Officials said he had crossed several creeks and lost track of which way he had come. He had no food or water and had lost his jacket.<\/p>\n

Melvin said the night search relies more heavily on the skills of the search dogs to perform and find their way back to the handlers in poor light.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t see them, but they responded well navigating in the dark and returning to us,\u201d Melvin said.<\/p>\n

Kayla Hardin, K-9 public information officer, praised the boy for staying put during the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat made it easier for us to find him,\u201d she said. \u201cThe old adage \u2018hug a tree\u2019 when lost is a good strategy. There were a lot of happy tears when he was reunited with his family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardin advises hikers to always carry a backpack with food, water, a whistle, and a jacket.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dog was very happy, too. He knew that\u2019s who we were looking for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

K-9 Search and Rescue heads to Rio Grande National Forest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-118351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118351"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=118351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}