11.03.2026

On a Saturday, 13 dogs pant around the cooling towers of FRM II, sniffing around the staircase next to the nuclear egg. What at first glance looks like a controlled mass dog walk has a meaningful purpose: the BRH Rettungshundestaffel Erdinger Moos e.V. (BRH Rescue Dog Unit Erdinger Moos) is practicing searching for missing persons using mantrailing and area search techniques. This time, they have chosen the grounds of the research neutron source in Garching for their exercise.

Lucy is following a hot lead. She has picked up the scent of a missing person and is sniffing her way to him. Her owner, Tanja Kosjak, had previously held a transparent bag in front of the black mixed-breed dog’s snout. Inside was a piece of fabric belonging to the person being searched for. “It could also be a set of keys or a bed sheet on which the person last slept,” explains Tanja Kosjak, who puts a special harness with a long leash on Lucy, which is only used for searching and training. “From the outside, it looks like they’re just going for a walk,” explains Ella Hufnagel, training manager of the BRH rescue dog unit and mantrailing instructor. But in fact, with this special working harness, it is the dog who is in charge, not the owner.

Trained rescue dog

Lucy immediately picks up the scent and pulls Tanja Kosjak behind her past a blue container. “We lead the dogs to the place where the person was last seen,” explains the veterinarian and trained dog handler. Lucy is currently the only fully certified rescue dog in the mantrailing division of BRH Rettungshunde Erdinger Moos. BRH stands for Federal Association of Rescue Dogs. Twelve dog-human teams are currently in training, and six certified area search dogs are already available for deployment, explains Ella Hufnagel. Some of the dogs present today are already “in well-deserved retirement,” as Ella Hufnagel puts it, but they still practice with the others.

Ella Hufnagel (left) has let her Malinois dog TnT out. She sniffs around the atomic egg under the critical gaze of dog handler Tanja Kosjak. © Andrea Voit, FRM II / TUM

Ella Hufnagel (left) has let her Malinois dog TnT out. She sniffs around the atomic egg under the critical gaze of dog handler Tanja Kosjak. © Andrea Voit, FRM II / TUM

Is the missing person in the meeting room?

Lucy now pulls her owner purposefully toward an office building of the neutron source, her snout close to the ground. She stops in front of the entrance door and looks at the handle. She clearly wants to enter the building and waits patiently for the door to be opened. In the significantly warmer interior, Lucy acclimates for just two seconds, sniffs behind a glass door to the left, but then follows the scent to the right through another glass door. Once to the left and once to the right in the hallway, Lucy stops and lifts her snout, sniffing. To the right is a lounge, to the left a meeting room. “In fact, we also stood here for a moment and thought about where to hide the person,” admits training manager Ella Hufnagel. But Lucy is not distracted by a few extra scent molecules in the hallway and leads straight into the meeting room where Konrad Past, also a dog handler, is hiding. She happily sits down in front of him—her way of showing that she has found what she was looking for.

A rubber pig as a reward

As a reward for the search, which took Lucy a record-breaking two minutes, she receives dog treats and her favorite toy: a rubber pig that makes grunting noises when Lucy bites into it.
The association, founded in 2020, completed just over 30 missions in 2025. “We all do this on a voluntary basis,” emphasizes Ella Hufnagel. For the dogs, this is both mentally demanding work and a great source of joy. Training to become a mantrailer takes about four years, and three years to become an area search dog.
“We practice twice a week,” Ella Hufnagel continues, as she opens the door of the dog transport box in her car for her Malinois bitch TnT. “And of course, we’re happy when we get to visit different places every now and then.” The FRM II was also a lucky find when it came to choosing training locations. In addition to forests, industrial areas with buildings are also interesting destinations for the rescue dog team.

Is someone hiding in the container? Search and rescue dog Leni picks up the scent. © Andrea Voit, FRM II / TUM

Is someone hiding in the container? Search and rescue dog Leni picks up the scent. © Andrea Voit, FRM II / TUM

Leni sniffs around the atomic egg

While TnT tracks down a hidden person, a bright ringing can be heard in the distance. Leni, an Old German Shepherd, sprints around the atomic egg with a bell on her collar and completely off the leash. Dog handler Cornelia Schraml walks attentively behind her, looking left and right. Leni is a trained area search dog and sniffs around the several hundred square meter area around the atomic egg, the FRM II reactor building, and the cooling towers at an impressive speed, searching for any human scents.

Using tactics to combat the wind

When searching an area, dogs generally follow human scent and thus track down all people within a certain area. “To do this, it is important to think about tactics for guiding your dog in the best possible way so that it reaches its goal as quickly as possible,” explains Gabriele Böhmer, an area and rubble search dog trainer. This is because there is a risk that dogs will quickly become exhausted during a lengthy search and possibly become hypothermic in winter. If possible, it is therefore better to lead against the wind rather than with the wind in order to direct possible scents to the dog’s nose.
Leni then alerts at a staircase: she has tracked down her hidden colleague from the rescue dog team. It took her less than five minutes to cover the 500-meter distance with various buildings in between. After five hours of training, both dogs and humans are happy: the 13 sniffer dogs have found all the hidden people.