The Rochester E.X.C.E.L. afterschool program had a visit Monday from Vermont State Police Officer Bob Giolito and his canine partner, Officer Mitch. The kids, who have been studying wilderness survival, learned from Officers Giolito and Mitch how the police find missing persons using a combination of human tracking skills and the superior smelling power of the canine unit. (Herald / Tim Calabro) Many of the students in the ExCel after-school program at Roch­ester Elementary School were wiggling in their chairs with excitement Monday afternoon when Vermont State Troo­per Bob Giolito and his K-9 unit partner, a German Shepherd named Mitch, visited the school with U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer Mike Klingen­smith. Klingensmith, who is stationed at the Green Mountain Forest Service office in Rochester, and also lives in town with his family, often works with Trooper Giolito and Mitch on search operations, and arranged for them to visit the school.

The students, who have been working on a unit about outdoor survival in cold weather, had lots of good questions for Trooper Giolito.

“What if more than one person gets lost?” they wanted to know.

He explained that Mitch can pick up and distinguish the scent of specific people, out of all the smells around him.

Asked if Mitch ever got lost, Giolito said that had actually happened the very first day he got him seven years ago.

“We hadn’t bonded yet, and when he got out of the car at my house, he dashed away after a deer. An hour later, I found him back in my yard.”

The two soon became a team, and Mitch makes his home with Giolito, who demonstrated many of the commands he uses to communicate with him, including saying “plotz,” the German word for sit, to get him to do so.

Ready to play the role of a “lost” person, so the kids could see the team in action, Klingen­smith went outside to hide in the fields behind the school. Ten minutes later, the sun was setting behind the mountains across the river, when everyone headed out to find him.

Student Daron Gendron, who had been assigned the role of group leader, held an article of Klingensmith’s clothing for Mitch to sniff. Giolito and the dog headed across the field as Mitch had his nose to the ground, hot on the trail. Within a few minutes, Klingensmith was discovered at the far end of the field, hiding behind a large pile of dirt and rocks. Following the successful “rescue operation,” Giolito asked Gendron to recap the steps the team went through to find someone.

Giolito later explained that he and Mitch also do other types of work together, in addition to searching for people who are lost or for criminals who are hiding from authorities. The state police K-9 teams are tested once a year for their drugdetection skills and can distinguish between the smells of seven different kinds of narcotics.

This is the first K-9 dog Giolito has been paired with, and it was clear from watching them that they make a good team.