NEWBURYPORT — The girl was gone, but Dracut police officer Bill Bailey and his dog Mason knew how to find her — with saliva.
The pair were tracking 7-year-old Leona Hartwell in a demonstration of "toothprint tracking," in which a police dog is able to find a person based on the scent from an impression on a mouthpiece.
Dr. Lindi Ezekowitz, owner of Newburyport Pediatric Dentistry, is trying to raise money to get a tracking dog for an area police department and wanted to demonstrate the usefulness of having an imprint in case of emergency.
"Hopefully, you'll never use it, but if it is there, it makes our job 300 percent easier," Bailey said.
Leona made a toothprint by biting down on a softened piece of plastic for 20 seconds, long enough to embed her scent in the material. The plastic was then sealed in a plastic bag to keep the scent uncontaminated. If a child is missing, parents can give the toothprint to police so a tracking dog like Mason can get on the case.
Bailey said Mason, a 3-year-old German shepherd, has a sense of smell 1,000 times better than a human's.
"Why waste 100 man-hours looking for a lost child if a dog is closer?" Bailey said. "Scent discriminating is a whole different ball game."
After making a second toothprint, Leona and her mother, Elizabeth, walked to the Old Hill Burying Ground on Pond Street. Bailey then let Mason sniff the first toothprint, and the dog immediately started on Leona's trail. Mason, tongue hanging out, traced the path out of the dentist's office at 3 Cherry St. and up Cherry Street to Hill Street.
Mason made a few wrong turns at the intersections of Bircher and Hill and Hill and Pond, but quickly corrected himself. Bailey said intersections can be a problem because cars traveling the other way drag a scent in the wrong direction.
After 20 minutes, including several pauses to let Ezekowitz and other observers catch up, Bailey and Mason arrived at the burying ground. When Mason reached the corner of the cemetery, he again had to circle around and weed out Leona's scent from those emitted by a dozen onlookers. But he soon went inside the cemetery and started nosing around where Leona was crouching behind the wall, though not indicating her directly.
"Can't you see a lady is missing?" Leona scolded Mason.
Bailey said other area police dogs, such as Amesbury K-9 Officer Kaybar and state police K-9 officers, have their own levels of expertise, but Mason was specifically trained to track humans. He was originally going to work for the New Orleans police, but had to be rescued from their kennel after Hurricane Katrina. Mason has only one vice, Bailey said — bacon.
"And he won't touch it unless it's crispy," Bailey said.
Elizabeth Hartwell said she was happy to have Leona be the first child in the area to get a toothprint.
"The whole program is good for all children," Hartwell said.
Newburyport Pediatric Dentistry has a donation box for people to contribute toward getting a dog like Mason for the area. They don't come cheap, Bailey said — a dog can cost $6,000 to $8,000 before training. But the cost is worth it, he said.
"Having a dog makes a huge difference in law enforcement," he said.
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