Scotland's only underwater sniffer dog retires after 11 years

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Scotland’s only underwater sniffer dog has retired from duty after 11 years of helping grieving families.Luss man Iain Marshall and springer spaniel Barra worked tirelessly together to find the bodies of those who had lost their lives in waterways.Barra undertook special training as a pup and could find human remains by standing at the bow of a boat and sniffing the air.His special skills have seen him help hundreds of grieving families across the country find closure, with Iain and Barra travelling as far as Wales to help with investigations.However last week Iain announced that, due to mobility issues, Barra would be enjoying his trips on waterways as a tourist from now on.Iain told the Lennox: “We’ll miss having him out and about with us, but it’s just proving a bit too much now.“Last week, we decided that his back end was getting away from him a wee bit and that enough was enough.“He’s done more than enough over the years and we were more than happy to retire him.“Barra will still come out with us on the river as a tourist.

He’ll be sitting in his big chair quite the thing.”Barra and Iain undertook specialist training in Wales in 2011 after Iain came across an article in a magazine.He explained: “I was in the Coastguard and we were dealing with situations where people were entering the River Clyde around the Erskine Bridge and all these kinds of places.“A search went on and then we’d be stood down.

And I always thought about the person who was still in the River, so we came up with this. “One of the lads brought a magazine to us and it had an article about dogs that were capable of doing this sort of work. “I went down to Wales and picked up Barra who was trained down there by Mick Swindles and Dave Jones who had a