A floppy-eared officer at the Gastonia Police Department helped track an endangered child a few months ago, and now he’s in the running for a national award for his heroism.
Bo, Gastonia Police Department’s bloodhound, is a finalist in the American Humane Society’s Hero Dog Awards, said Sgt. David Rowland, Bo’s handler. Bo is one of five dogs nationwide that qualified in the first responder category, and now, people may vote on their favorite dog. Then, a panel of judges will consider the results and announce the top dog.
“It’s awesome, really. It just goes to show that people care about the impact that Bo has had on our community. I’m just truly honored that he’s considered out of all these dogs nationwide,” Rowland said. “It means everything. It shows all the hard work and the long days of training.”
Bo is brought in for cases in which normal police dogs are unable to track a scent. He has done 18 tracks since he was certified in November.
Three of those tracks stand out to Rowland as particularly heroic.
In January, Bo tracked a man who wandered away from a retirement home on North Highland Street in Gastonia.
The man, who had dementia and other intellectual disabilities, had left at 11 p.m. the night prior, and Bo was called in the next morning to track a scent that was around nine hours old.
“We get there, it’s like 19 degrees, and they bring out his bed sheets. I put Bo on the bed sheets to see that odor,” Rowland said. “And then Bo starts tracking down the middle of the road, tracks all the way down Highland Street, across Airline (Avenue), across the train tracks, through the through the new FUSE ballpark, onto Franklin Boulevard, and then down Franklin Boulevard eastbound, headed towards Lowell.”
Bo tracked the man a mile down Franklin Boulevard, and then police received a tip that the man had asked to use a cell phone near Toyota of Gastonia in Lowell.
“Bo’s picked up in the back of a police car. And, you know, we zoom down to Lowell, and I put Bo on the last place this guy’s seen, and we track from Lowell and Wilkinson Boulevard all the way over into Cramerton,” Rowland said. “Bo tracks into a grocery store, through the grocery store, back out of the grocery store, and to a park bench where the missing subject was sitting at. It was insane.”
“And the guy was able to carry a conversation on with us, and he told us that, yeah, I left and walked through the ballpark,’ and basically everywhere this guy walked, Bo was hitting the turns, and he was on the odor, and it was almost 12 hours old,” Rowland added.
Bo’s most heroic moment came in May, when he saved a 7-year-old boy who was taken at knifepoint by his mother, who was experiencing a mental health crisis.
Bo tracked the woman and the child seven miles, and the child was successfully rescued.
“You know, he never stumbled. He never strayed. He stayed on the odor and saved that child’s life,” Rowland said. “Because the drone was out of batteries. We were spread thin when it came to manpower. We were out of options. And Bo was the last ditch effort. You know, he was it. And if Bo wouldn’t have found that child, I don’t know what would have happened to that child.”
To vote for Bo in the American Humane Society’s contest, go to https://www.herodogawards.org/. Voting stops Oct. 9.