Rex found the missing girl in just 12 minutes (2 photos + 1 video)
In Colorado, a seven-year-old girl ran away from her family in a park; people, vehicles, and drones searched for her for nearly two hours. Then, a sheriff's deputy arrived with Rex, a black Labrador. The dog was given the girl's shoes to sniff. 
Twelve minutes later, Rex led the officers to the right yard. Sometimes, all modern technology boils down to simply letting a dog sniff a shoe.
For Rex, this was his first successful real-world assignment after sixteen months of training. The dog has a broad skillset: he searches for people, detects explosives, and works as a therapy dog. That last skill came in handy immediately. The girl, once found, tried to run away again out of fear; another officer stopped her, while Rex switched from "search mode" to "calming mode." He’s got a pretty good setup—he finds the client himself and then works with them, too.
Afterward, the girl's mother even offered to give Rex those very shoes—let him chew on them; he’d earned it. The officer declined: you can't explain to a service dog that it's okay to eat *these* shoes but that the next pair given to him will be for tracking a person. So, Rex got a toy, the girl returned to her family, and the shoes remained intact. Professional ethics—there’s nothing to be done about it.
