Meet the Wigan-based pair of sniffer dogs dubbed “Lexi’s Angels” who track down missing fellow mutts
and live on Freeview channel 276
Brave border collies Diesel and Skye can travel miles over rough terrain and slip through cities searching for pooches that may be lost, injured - or even stolen.
Their owner Jennie Alton, 42, trained the fearless duo by getting her young children to hide in fields and asking the dogs to follow their individual scents.
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Hide AdAnd after assisting other dog search organisations for years, they’ve now stepped out as a single operation - and have already saved seven mutts this year alone.
Jennie says while most hounds are coached in either scent work, trailing or tracking, her dogs can uniquely do all three, meaning they’re like “real-life pet detectives”.
And the mum-of-three, who doesn’t take payment for her services, adds there’s was no greater feeling than seeing lost pups back in the hands of their loving owners.
She said: “It’s really, really good, especially when you see them with the owners. It’s just fantastic.
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Hide Ad“There are so many missing dogs and some people just don’t have a clue where the dogs have gone, so obviously, we can help.
“The difference with these and other dogs is most are only trained in one thing - scent work, trailing or tracking - whereas these are trained in all three.
“And in a sense, they’re like real-life pet detectives.”
Jennie, from Wigan, found out about eight-year-old Diesel’s sleuthing skills after he helped find a dog belonging to her son's pal in 2017.
The NHS worker, who volunteers as a dog obedience trainer, said she was amazed when he found out “exactly” where the pup was amid the undergrowth in a field.
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Hide AdShe continued to coach Diesel at home by getting him to follow her children’s scent and then moving on to smaller, harder-to-find items of clothing around her home.
She said: “I’d let them go and hide, and I took one article of clothing off a child, got him to smell that, and then out of three kids, he had to find the one that he smelled.
“Then I upped it in the house as well, taking small socks from a pair, hiding one and getting him to smell another one, and he was doing it.
“I’d hide treats high above too so that he had to use his nose and had to indicate, and then just watching body language really as to what he was doing.”
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Hide AdJennie then joined up with the missing mutt charity DogLost, and helped track down several hounds with Diesel, before she got Skye, now three, in 2019.
And she decided to take the duo “public” as a single entity last Christmas when they managed to find a missing pup called Lexi - and earned their catchy name.
Jennie said that Lexi’s family had been left distraught when she escaped from their dogsitter who was looking after their home, in Wigan, as they holidayed in Thailand.
They rushed back home 24 hours after they heard the news of her disappearance, but when they called in Diesel and Sky, they found her in just five minutes.