Man's Dog Becomes Hero After She Helps Find Missing Toddler In Forest

May 13, 2021

Bloodhounds are amazing animals. Known for their incredible sense of smell, these dogs have been used to track animals and people since the Middle Ages. Even today, police officers continue to use bloodhounds to track missing individuals, criminals and lost pets. This just goes to show that animals can be incredibly useful, as they provide skills that humans lack. After all, who has ever heard of a police officer sniffing out a criminal? That takes one major nose!

With that said, such tracking usually requires some amount of training — even if you are a bloodhound.

While Honey is no police dog, she does have a good track record when it comes to hunting down things that are hard to find. She accompanies her owner, Douglas Downs, when he goes hunting, helping her best friend track deer in the woods of Sabine Parish, Lousiana. But in 2016, Honey was sent on her most important tracking mission yet — one that would save someone's life.

On a Tuesday night in 2016 off highway 171, which cuts through west Louisiana, Honey was tasked with finding then-3-year-old Eli Alcock. The toddler, who was at a friend's house in Florien, Lousiana, had wandered off while trying to chase a dog. And when his mother looked for him nearby, he was nowhere to be found.

Luckily, this story has a happy ending that left Honey a hero, Downs a proud bloodhound owner and Eli one lucky kid. Read on to find out how Honey, a happy-go-lucky bloodhound, ended up saving one young boy's life in the middle of a forest in Lousiana.

Ahead of a youth board meeting in Florien, Lousiana, Lindsy Alcock took her kids to play over at her friend Pam Squillini's house, according to the Lousiana Sportsman's 2016 reporting. While Lindsy was inside changing her 1-year-old's diaper, Eli was outside with Jackson, his then-7-year-old brother, Squillini's son and a dog.

“I came back outside to check on the kids," Lindsy told the local outlet. "I asked the two older ones, ‘Where’s Eli?’ They said, ‘I don’t know.’ So I said, ‘OK, he’s over here in the sand pile or over here in the mud hole.’ He has places where he’ll go off if he’s not with them,” Lindsy said. “We looked in the normal places and he wasn’t there, and that’s when we kind of started freaking out because if he’s not there, you know he’s wandered off somewhere.”

Word got out that Lindsy's little boy was missing, and so Steven Martin called up his friend, Douglas Downs, to ask him for a favor.

“He asked me if I thought Honey would do anything. I said, ‘Man , I don’t really know. I’ve never done anything like that with her,’ Downs explained. “If it was a deer, or he was wearing a deer hide going through the woods, I’d say no problem, no doubt.

“But I said, ‘Dude, all I can do is try. So I left there, came to the house and picked up the dog.”

When Honey and Downs arrived at the house, the dog was out of her element. Not only had she never looked for a person before, but she also wasn't used to the large crowd that had gathered to search for Eli.

But with the help of the young boy's jacket, which contained his scent, Honey got to work.

After a little while, Honey began to sniff the air and walk through the forest, seeming to catch Eli's scent at a pond. According to the Lousiana Sportsman, that's when Downs' "heart sank."

“I told the guys that were with me at the time, ‘If she sits down on this pond levee, I’m going to the house. I’m not going to sit here and watch them pull this baby out of this pond," Downs added.

But Downs soon realized that Honey hadn't finished her search for the missing 3-year-old. Eventually, Honey seemed to lead Downs and the rest of the search party to the back porch of a nearby house, but Downs wasn't convinced that his bloodhound friend was on the right trail, and so he returned to Squillini's house. Even though it started raining, the search party, led by Honey, kept on looking for Eli.

“For the first 30 seconds, you mind goes to, ‘I have to find my kid.’ But after two hours, then the possibilities of what has happened come in," Lindsy said of the search. "So sitting there and pondering and thinking about what the possibilities were was tough. But then you have to try to pull yourself back out of that and say, ‘Just find your kid. Just find your kid.’”

And find Eli they did. With Honey's help, they eventually found Eli at the bottom of a hill.

“I’m telling you, man, there’s not a greater feeling,”  Downs said. “I have found several deer, and helped many a man put deer on the wall they’ll tell stories about for the rest of their lives.

“But there is no greater joy that I can even begin to describe than when I handed him to his mom and she knew that he was OK."

What do you think about Honey's heroic act? Have you ever heard of an animal saving someone's life? Let us know — and be sure to pass this story on to others.