I first saw Ruby on July 10, 2020. She was not quite two years old. I was looking for a hound with a good nose to be a mate to my other bloodhound. I went to see her and was a little shocked as she wasn’t what I expected her to look like. She was considerably small for a bloodhound. I was told Ruby had the best nose for trailing. She had been trained in mantrailing. I wasn’t looking for a mantrailing dog and knew very little about it. So they took me out to watch her work some trails. I was blown away. I had been around hunting dogs my entire life and I could see Ruby had that “it” factor. She had drive like no hound I’d ever seen before. She stayed focused and accomplished her goals. I knew immediately I wanted her. I drove home and asked my wife what are the chances she would be mad if I got a new dog? She said 50% chance. I thought those were great odds that I was willing to chance! So I made arrangements to go pick Ruby up.

July 14, 2020 I picked Ruby up. My wife happens to be a fan of hound dogs so it worked out great. When she found out Ruby was trained in mantrailing, she was like what are you going to do with that? I said I’m really not sure, but we are going to have some great games of hide and seek! I said let’s test her out, go walk across the yard and through the woods. Let’s see if we can find you. After a few minutes, I got Ruby out, started her on the scent, and Ruby put her nose down and went straight to Pamela. It was mind blowing how good and quick she was. We played hide and seek several times a week after that. The kids absolutely loved hiding from Ruby and trying to stump her. To this day, three years later, they have yet to elude her nose!

The first week of August 2020, Pamela and I took a little vacation. Sunday August 2, I got a phone call early in the morning. It was my cousin who is a local first responder. He said hey man, I know you got a mantrailing dog a few weeks ago, want to try her out? We have a missing person from yesterday that we haven’t been able to find yet. I said, I would love to see how we can help but we are in Nashville. I didn’t think much else about it and we came home on August 4th. Wednesday August 5th, I woke up early to go work my dogs. As I was walking to the kennel I saw on Facebook that it appeared the man still hadn’t been found. I made some phone calls and confirmed he hadn’t been found and the search had been momentarily suspended. I went back in and told my wife, I was going to the scene to see if we could help.

This was Wednesday morning, four full days since the man had walked away. I was told there had been hundreds of volunteers on foot and several other K9s in the area searching. I knew the chance of a successful search was slim to none at this point. But I thought, what’s the worst that could happen? I arrived at the home and spoke to the missing persons wife. She was about to leave to take a family member to work. She was thrilled I was there and told me we had permission from all the landowners in the area to search as needed. Then she said words I’ll never forget. She said you’re welcome to search anywhere, but God told me my husband is coming home today. She said so I think he must’ve gotten in a car and they are bringing him back today. She gave me a scent article that she said belonged to her husband and no one had touched since he had left. Ruby put her nose down on the front steps at 7:40 am. She went straight down the driveway and made a sharp left at the road. The lady was pulling out of her driveway about that time and said honey he didn’t go that way. We think he went this way and pointed to the right of her driveway. I’ve been working dogs long enough to know I was holding the dumb end of the leash so I kindly said thank you, I just want to see where she takes me. Probably less than 100 yards from there Ruby veered left off the road to the backyard of a house. As we rounded the corner of the house, a chained pitbull lunged at us barking and growling. Ruby jumped back and tried to get behind me. I just knew this dog had ruined whatever trail we were on. I walked Ruby around this dog and she put her nose back down and walked down this persons driveway and back to the road again. We got to the road and made another hard left. We followed the road for a bit as Ruby kept her nose down. All of a sudden she made a hard right into a pine plantation that had been thinned a year or two before. She was pulling hard now so I knew she was on a trail. I didn’t know who’s trail but we were after someone. The briars were so thick in spots I literally had to crawl on my hands and knees. I thought there is no way an old man went through this stuff. But I just kept following her along as she pulled harder and harder. I fully trusted she was on a trail. A trail I assumed was probably a member of the search party that had been out. She got to a clearing before me and stopped. I couldn’t see her at the end of my 30 foot lead but felt the slack and knew she was stopped. I caught up to her and she was standing looking down at the ground. When I got where I saw a pair of neatly folded blue jeans with a rolled up leather belt placed on top. Nearby was a folded black and brown button up shirt and a Pittsburgh Steelers ball cap. I knew these were placed here on purpose and recently. And whoever put them here was the person we had been tracking. I made some phone calls and was told these were not our subjects clothes. The man we were looking for was wearing a pajama set. I decided to let Ruby keep looking and just see what we could find. Was it possible someone else was in these woods? I knew those clothes were fresh so they hadn’t been there long. And they weren’t dropped, they were neatly put there on purpose. I gave Ruby her search command and she began sniffing around again. After a few minutes, she deciphered a direction of travel and off we went. We were probably less than twenty yards from the clothes when we started hearing faint cries for help. Ruby pulled so hard I could barely hang on. As we came to another small opening we found our man laying on the ground in a makeshift bed he had build from small trees and large limbs. I could not believe what I was seeing. He was so happy to see us. At 8:14 am I was on the phone with emergency services telling them we had found our missing man. We sat and talked for a while waiting for help to get him out of the woods. He insisted he could walk, but I convinced him to wait for help as he was pretty weak after being out for so long. Especially in the August heat in Louisiana. He knew exactly who’s land he was on but said he got turned around and didn’t know which way was out. He told me he had gotten hot the day before and took his clothes off but then couldn’t find them when it got time to get dressed again. He apologized for being in his boxers and undershirt. EMS arrived and were able to get him out of there.

As Ruby and I got back to the road, the neighbors had come outside to see what the commotion and flashing lights were about. They knew their neighbor had been missing and that we were out there searching. One person said I saw y’all walking behind my house where my dog scared y’all. That man walks back there all the time to pet my dog! At that moment I knew Ruby had been on the right trail from the start. The man’s wife arrived back at the scene after receiving a phone call sharing her husband had been found. She walked straight to me and said, I knew God told me he was coming home today but I had no idea this dog was bringing him! I couldn’t be more proud of Ruby and I’m so thankful this family got to spend some more time with their husband, dad, grandpa, uncle, brother, and cousin.