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K-9 locates disabled amputee, missing overnight, in snow

With snow piled up around him, David Bassett was lost in South King County Tuesday night.

Thanks to K9 Gilly and his handler, Kris Gustafson, the 64-year old disabled amputee is back home.

Gustafson and the German Shepherd are volunteers for King County Search Dogs, and have trained for more than 3 years to help find missing and lost people, mostly in urban and wilderness areas.

However, "we don't get to train a lot in snow," Gustafson told KIRO 7 on Friday. "In conditions like that, we've very concerned with the time that they're spending out in the wilderness."

Bassett, who has the mental capacity of a 5-year-old, walked away from his home in unincorporated Federal Way around noon Tuesday. When he hadn't been found 18 hours later, King County Search Dogs were called in.

Gustafson said it was difficult for the 3-year-old Gilly to immediately find Bassett's scent. "With the trail that she was following being roughly 18 hours old, the wind and the weather had blown the scent in different directions so the dog was trying to pick up where the most scent was."

However, once Gilly did find Bassett's scent, she led Gustafson straight to him. Bassett was found about a mile north of his home on South 382nd, in a snowy field near the woods.

"We just called out his name and he happily said, 'Hey! I'm over here.' And we get there and he was just in great spirits," Gustafson remembered. He said Bassett was wearing a shoe on his prosthetic leg, but his other foot was "just in a sock in the snow, so there was some concern he'd been out there all night and hypothermia could be an issue."

Gilly has been a certified search dog for less than a year and has already located two missing people.
According to Gustafson, many search dogs never locate anyone.

"I think she's pretty good at it. She likes to think she is, too."

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