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A dog nose best

In 1990, the best in the business when it came to locating dry rot went by the names of Sam, Scrappy and Goldie, writes Hollie Tye. At least that鈥檚 what Hutton + Rostron Environmental Investigation believed. The firm trained their team of dogs, or 鈥渞othounds鈥� as they were known, to bark whenever they smelt fresh dry rot. The company claimed using the dogs was far quicker than regular surveying methods. Tim Hutton, the former Royal Army Veterinary Corps man behind the idea at the Guildford-based firm, said: 鈥淚f you have a building you think is free of dry rot it would take a couple of days for a surveyor to go through and check it. A dog could go through it in a couple of hours鈥�.

Reporter Denise Chevin wrote: 鈥淭he expediency of the dogs was evident at a training session in a dilapidated Victorian terrace, belonging to Crown Estates, on the edge of Regent鈥檚 Park in London.

鈥淏erry, a former police dog handler, led the boisterous honey-coloured Labrador into the bare oak-panelled high-ceiled room where samples of timber coated with fresh dry rot had been hidden. Before Berry could say 鈥榙og biscuits鈥�, Goldie had unearthed the sample stashed underneath an open section of floor boards鈥�.