The dog found him in half an hour
When an 80-year-old man in Kyoto went out for his morning walk and didn't come home, twenty police officers spent the afternoon looking for him and couldn't find him, so they sent for Mercurius, a three-year-old police dog, who sniffed the man's pillowcase and found him in half an hour, lying by a river a kilometre away. This week the police gave the dog a certificate and a football.
11 September 2026
Photo: Marina Nakamura, Sankei Shimbun
On the morning of 12 August an 80-year-old man in Fushimi, in the south of Kyoto, went out for his usual walk with his walking frame and did not come back, and a little after three in the afternoon his family rang the police. About twenty officers went out looking for him along the streets and the river, but it had rained that morning and the afternoon was going, and they could not find him.
At about five o'clock they sent for Mercurius, a German shepherd who belongs to the Kyoto police and works with Sergeant Masatoshi Ishigaki, the two of them having been a pair for two years. He is three, which for a police dog is still young, because a dog is an apprentice until about that age, and he is shy and notices people, which his handler thinks is part of why he is good at this, and by August he had already found five missing people this year.
They gave him the man's pillowcase to smell and he set off along the route the man walked every day, with the rain the worry, since the smell a person leaves on the ground can wash away, though this time it hadn't, and about half an hour after he started, roughly a kilometre from the house, Mercurius found the man lying face down in the long grass on a river bank with his walking frame beside him, unable to get up on his own and not really answering when they spoke to him, and the police say that if he had been found much later it would have been dangerous, but he was all right.
After he found him, he looked up at me smiling, as if to say, praise me.Sergeant Masatoshi Ishigaki, to Kyodo News
The certificate
On Sunday 7 September, Fushimi police station gave Mercurius a letter of thanks, which the station chief, Mr Nagano, handed over and Sergeant Ishigaki accepted on the dog's behalf, because the dog was busy with the other presents, a bag of treats and a toy football. Inspector Isogawa said that finding a person from a smell is something only a police dog can do, and that they were truly grateful.
Photo: Marina Nakamura, Sankei Shimbun
Sergeant Ishigaki patted him on the head and said that he hoped there would be many more of these.
Carry a story in five words
We run a game called Long Story Short: one real news sentence a day, and you keep the five words that carry it. Today's is below. Do play.
How to play
One real news sentence. Tap the five words a headline would keep, in whatever order the headline reads, then guess. Blue means right word, right spot. Orange means it is in the headline, somewhere else. Grey means it is not in it. Five tries. The result beats the process, the name or the job beats the place, and little words like a, the and of never count.
Yesterday: Just after noon a Cook County landfill supervisor stood over the motionless bald eagle, certain the bird was dead, until its poop proved it alive. The five: poop proved bald eagle alive.