Photos by Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Virginia State Police trooper Stuart Pauley works with his bloodhound, Sherlock, near the division 4 headquarters in Wytheville as they try to track a fellow trooper during a demonstration. The division responds to calls in Pulaski, Giles, Wythe and Carroll counties, among other locations.

Conroy (left) and Pauley congratulate Sherlock after tracking Conroy.

Sherlock jumps up to Sgt. Michael Conroy after successfully tracking him during a demonstration. "That tells me that that's the person that he's after. And he won't jump up on anybody else except the person he's tracking," Trooper Stuart Pauley said.

WYTHEVILLE -- Forget the cape, the smoking pipe and the unorthodox ways Sherlock Holmes used to search for clues.

His canine namesake relies instead on floppy jowls, a big nose and some high-pitched praise from the human who refers to himself as "his daddy."

Sherlock, a 14-month-old, 88-pound bloodhound is the latest addition to the Virginia State Police's Wytheville division, which responds to calls in Pulaski, Giles, Wythe and Carroll counties, among other locations.

His specialty is sniffing out people. He is not trained to search for drugs or explosives and isn't aggressive as some police dogs are trained to be.

Instead, he will be used to search for missing children or adults, or fugitives who are eluding police.

"I think that's where this dog is really going to be important, is lost kids, lost people," state police Sgt. Michael Conroy said. "It's the first bloodhound in Southwest Virginia that we've had."

Sherlock has been training for his job since he was about 6 months old. He began working March 10 with his handler, Trooper Stuart Pauley, and the pair went through 13 weeks of training.

"He's actually been on two calls, and he's done good," Pauley said. "He's been on track, and it's awesome to work with him."

Before Sherlock, the state police and other New River Valley agencies had to rely on tracking dogs from the Bland Correctional Center. The Pulaski County Sheriff's Office also has had bloodhounds but doesn't now.

The medium-security Bland facility that sits on a 2,200-acre working farm near the Giles County line has four bloodhounds and two handlers.

"They have to be on call day and night basically 365 days a year," Warden Larry Jarvis said.

Bloodhounds have been an integral part of the facility for at least 30 years and possibly since its opening in 1946, Jarvis said.

"I believe close to the time there's been a Bland Correctional Center there's been a bloodhound program here," he said.

The bloodhounds are kept on hand mainly in case an inmate escapes and needs to be tracked, he said.

"Fortunately, we haven't had to use them for that for many, many years," he said.

Bland does have a long history of loaning out its dogs and their handlers to other agencies.

On June 30, officers were searching for a Bland County man who was accused of shooting at another man. After a search that lasted about five hours, one of the facility's dogs led its handler straight to the suspect, Jarvis said.

"The nice thing about a bloodhound is it is scent-specific," Conroy said.

Officers say a dog that's cross-trained and can do a little of everything -- tracking, crowd control, searching for drugs -- can be more cost-effective for police departments. But none of them can track quite like a bloodhound.

A patrol dog, for example, doesn't focus on an individual scent, but tracks the last person to have been through an area, Conroy said. A bloodhound is first acquainted with someone's scent from an item that person has touched -- a piece of clothing, a car seat, a watch, even a piece of paper -- and home in on that scent alone. It doesn't matter, officers say, if the person was wearing perfume or cologne.

One windy day last week, Conroy and Pauley gave a demonstration.

Conroy left his wide-brimmed hat with Pauley and climbed up a hill behind the state police headquarters in Wytheville. He hid behind a stack of pallets in a shed.

A few minutes later, Pauley hooked Sherlock's "uniform," a brown leather halter.

He put Conroy's hat in front of Sherlock's nose. The dog sniffed it, turned in circles a few times, then took off -- retracing Conroy's steps almost exactly.

Pauley warned that the high winds might slow Sherlock down. It wasn't apparent if they did.

Within a couple of minutes, Sherlock sniffed out Conroy and placed his huge paws on the officer's chest.

"That tells me that that's the person that he's after. And he won't jump up on anybody else except the person he's tracking," Pauley said.

Over and over in a high-pitched voice, Pauley told Sherlock what a good boy he is.

"It gets them excited and they know, hey, I've done exactly what I was supposed to do," Pauley said. "It's a game; you've got to make it a game for him."

Looking eager to search for something else, Sherlock's nose never slowed down. He constantly sniffed the pallets, the grass, the ground and the people around him.

"They're actually built for tracking. They're a genetic tracking machine," said Dublin police officer Marty Dowdy.

The bloodhound's long ears collect odors and sweep them into the dog's nose. The loose skin around the face then helps trap the scent.

Researchers have estimated that a bloodhound's nose has about 230 million scent receptors, 40 times the number in human noses.

By some accounts, bloodhounds have been known to stick to a trail -- undisturbed by plenty of other odors -- for more than 100 miles and have been known to pick up on trails that are days or weeks old.

"If it's a track that's old, you can't beat a bloodhound," Dowdy said.

According to the American Bloodhound Club, people began to use bloodhounds to track other people in the 16th century.

Today's bloodhounds, the club says, are descended in part from those bred by Hubert, a 7th-century monk who later became patron saint of hunters. In French-speaking parts of Europe, bloodhounds are known as St. Hubert hounds.

Sherlock will likely soon be joined by other such hounds in the New River Valley.

The Christiansburg Police Department is planning to get one in a few weeks.

The Pulaski County Sheriff's Office may also get a new one.

"We've been very successful in the past with bloodhounds," Pulaski County Sheriff Jim Davis said.

The department's last bloodhound, Jerry Lee, was donated to a search-and-rescue organization. His predecessor, Jeb, was adopted by a family in Georgia after his retirement. Before Jeb there was Hoss.

The sheriff's office kept each of the dogs for several years.

"We look forward to having another one in the future," Davis said.

The sheriff's office works the dogs either until they begin getting too old, too arthritic to work or their handlers are no longer able to work with them. As is common practice among law enforcement canines, the handler is offered a chance to take the dog home as a pet.

Although Pauley and Sherlock have been working together only a few months, their bond is clearly a strong one.

"He's a big baby," Pauley said as he rubbed the dog's head and long, floppy ears.

"Wherever I go, he goes," Pauley said. "I don't go anywhere without him and whenever I put on this uniform and I go out to my car and start it up, he sees me and he knows, hey, I get to go play with Daddy."