A recently qualified rescue dog has already had his skills put to the test after he successfully located a missing person just hours after becoming a fully-fledged, four-legged search and rescue pooch.
Ollie the Border Collie is part of a team of super-pooches working alongside Sussex Police and Sussex Search and Rescue to assist in finding vulnerable people who have vanished.
And just seven and a half hours after joining Lowland Rescue Search Dogs along with four hero dogs, Ollie made a heroic rescue.
In a tweet from Ollie’s personal Twitter account, a human team member wrote: “Well after seven and a half hours of being qualified we got our first call out with Sussex Search and Rescue and Sussex Police down in Lewes.
Get the news you want straight to your inbox. Sign up for a Mirror newsletter here.
“Thankfully a good outcome with the misper being located safe.”
His owner and trainer Lucy Brownrigg said she was left "speechless" by the series of events, which unfolded in a matter of hours.
Lucy, 35, explained: "We qualified during the day and then I think it was about eight o'clock in the evening that we got the callout.
"We were excited on the way there, I got a call from one of my supports who just told me to relax and treat it as a training session."
Lucy, who works as a Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) team member at Gatwick, said Ollie "coped really well" despite the pressures.
She said: "He definitely knew there was something different. There were people there that he didn't know and I think he could sense the adrenaline from me.
"But he coped really well, and his work was lovely even though he had done a really long search during the day.
"He enjoyed it, it's a really good game for them, really - that's all it is.
"It was exciting but I'm still a little bit speechless about those 12 hours, it was all a bit manic."
Darren Yeates, the vice-chairman of the search team, said: "Lowland Rescue Search Dogs Sussex are a charitable organisation that provides a response to search and rescue emergencies in the search for vulnerable missing people.
"They provide nationally qualified search dog teams to assist Sussex Police or any other Police Force in the UK.
"They do this 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All team members are volunteers and the team receives no external funding.
Their primary function is "to be a member team of Lowland Rescue, to provide a response to search & rescue emergencies in order to search for, rescue and recover those missing or in distress or potential distress."
Search Dogs Sussex's website explains: "The missing people we are requested to search for typically don't know they are lost or don't want to be found.
"Dementia, Mental Illness, Despondents are all very common reasons we get called out."
