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A northern Minnesota farmer believes he's found a new, very effective tool for search-and-rescue teams. Terry Nowacki claims he's trained his horse to be a sort of equine bloodhound. His work is piquing the interest of search-and-rescue experts nationwide.

	Terry Nowacki and his horse Stormy pose in their search and rescue gear. (MPR photo/Dan Gunderson)

Nowacki and his wife Debbie farm on the eastern edge of the Red River Valley near Argyle. His avocation is training horses. He's also a volunteer with the Marshall county sheriffs mounted posse search and rescue team.

Early one afternoon, Nowacki runs Stormy, a nearly four-year-old quarterhorse who's real name is El Nino Poco, around a training ring to burn off some energy.

Like most horses, Stormy has a large and inquisitive schnoz.

About a year-and-a-half ago, Terry helped search for a lost person in Mahnomen county. Air-scenting dogs had to be brought in from the Twin Cities to help because many rural counties don't have easy access to trained search dogs.

When he came home, Nowacki thought about training his dog, then wondered whether a horse could do the job.

"And to my surprise, the more I did the more they liked it. I've never trained a horse for anything as easy as they train for this," said Nowacki. "Usually it takes months. This horse has only a total of four months training."

	This is the nose that may change the way search and rescue teams find lost people. (MPR photo/Dan Gunderson)

Terry Nowacki estimates he has invested about 500 hours in his pet project. He's also searched for a lot of volunteer victims.

"For training, of course, I use strangers as much as possible. And if it's clothing I use strangers' clothing. People who the horses have never seen before," said Nowacki.

Many visitors to the Nowacki farm have found themselves playing hide-and-seek with a horse.

To demonstrate Stormy's scenting ability, Nowacki drops a shirt borrowed from a friend in a hedgerow along a farm field. The shirt hasn't been worn for two days. Finding clothing is a much tougher test than finding a person.

According to Nowacki, the shirt will give off what's called a scent cone. Think of light smoke drifting with the wind currents and you get an idea how scent moves.

"He'll go to the closest human scent," said Nowacki. "When he hits the scent cone, he'll let me know. He'll take off on his own, even against my advice and he knows he won't get reprimanded for taking the reins."

In a real search, Nowacki would ride the horse. But just to prove he's not giving Stormy cues, he puts the horse on a 30-foot rope.

"He'll go 30-foot circles, especially when he thinks he caught something. He'll go and circle around and come again. It's kind of like if you ever had anything spoil in your house maybe under the sink. You wander around the house and sniff here and you come back because you gotta check if you really caught that scent. He does that too," said Nowacki.

Stormy starts across the field about 250 feet from the shirt. Midway through the first pass down the field, Stormy catches the scent and takes a hard left toward the hedgerow.

After working up and down the hedgerow a couple times he finds the shirt and points to it with his nose, waiting for his handler to catch up. A handful of oats is reward for a job well done.

	Stormy homes in on the scent of a shirt hidden in a hedgerow along this field. His handler claims Stormy has a 90 percent success rate in training. (MPR photo/Dan Gunderson )

Nowacki claims Stormy has a success rate of better than 90 percent in more than 100 training exercises. Horse and handler are yet to be tested in a real life situation.

Marshall County Sheriff Herb Maurstad is thrilled to have an additional tool to help search and rescue efforts.

"When the need is there, that's when you need the resources," said Maurstad. "And you need them right now and you don't have a lot of time. Because usually somebodys life is at stake. And, depending on your resources, you can save a life."

The sheriff said it's exciting to be part of a project that could affect search-and-rescue teams across the nation.

Mike Tuttle, president of the National Association for Search and Rescue, thinks Terry Nowacki is breaking new ground.

"Using a horse as an air scent is really thinking outside of the box. Something nobody's ever thought of to my knowledge. I think it's pretty exciting and certainly worth pursuing," said Tuttle.

Tuttle doubts horses will replace search dogs, but he sees several advantages. Horses can cover four or fives times as much ground in a day, the rider has a good vantage point from the saddle, and a horse can catch a scent wafting by several feet in the air.

Terry Nowacki knows there are still a lot of skeptics to convince. He thinks they'll be won over the first time Stormy finds a lost person.