FCSO K9 Abby Jo retires after 8 years of service

FORREST COUNTY, Miss. (WDAM) - The Forrest County Sheriff’s Office held a farewell ceremony Wednesday for one of its furry officers, Abby Jo.

After eight years of loyal service to the department, the search and recuse bloodhound is retiring from active duty.

A younger bloodhound, Juno, will now be filling in Abby’s spot for the sheriff’s office.

FCSO reserve deputy Nate Mosely says during her time on the job, Abby was responsible for finding lost children and impaired adults who wandered away from home.

“Abby started tracking into a patch of woods and I said, ‘The dog is wrong, a rabbit couldn’t get in there, it’s too thick.’” Mosely said. “But that little voice in the back of my head said trust your dog and about 100 yards off into the woods there was an old lady laying, and she was fine.”

With bloodhounds being known for their unmatched sense of smell, Mosely says he trained Abby with games like hide-n-seek.

“They basically go hide and she tracks them down,” Mosely. “And then it moves into scent differentiation where you let her smell the odor of one child, you have two different groups, they split off and go into two different directions and she has to follow the group that you gave her the initial odor to.”

Although all K-9 dogs have the same goal of finding people alive, bloodhounds carry out that process differently, according to Mosely.

“It’s not what we consider a cadaver puppy because they don’t go off that type of odor, but they go off basically the skin cells, the disturbance in the grass, or the chlorophyll and the disturbance in the atmosphere where the person has walked.”

Abby will be turning 10 years old and will get to live out the remaining of her years with the Mosely Family.

“Every find that you make with a bloodhound is a good one,” Mosely said. “Abby has worked hard for a lot of years.”

Want more WDAM 7 news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

Copyright 2023 WDAM. All rights reserved.