The basic training for PPA dogs takes about two years, though not every dog is suited for service duties.

Helen Komussar, in charge of the PPA's K9 service, said: "When we choose service dogs, we generally look for animals that are courageous, that move well; above all they have to be social, as a social dog is also a brave dog."

German and Belgian shepherd dogs are the most common breeds used for these purposes, though spaniels are also used in Estonia.

Spaniels are especially useful in scent detection. We use them a lot for drug searches because they are light, small, move well in tight spaces, and can perform complex tasks more easily than perhaps a larger dog can," Komussar said.

Maik, four years old, "does not really like to stay still, he likes to work," his PPA handler Risto Kotkas said.

"Work is a stress reliever for him. His work ethic is strong and that is exactly what we need; we can build on that," he told the show.

As a result, Maik spends his days training and performing tasks in his specialization, searching for missing people.

"We don't really have much downtime. When not on call, we will be training. There are certain seasons, like mushroom picking season, where we might get more specific calls regarding missing people. Though in actual fact we search for people and items, objects, all year round. There is always work for us," Kotkas added.

The dog's main tool is his nose, which has a sense of smell vastly superior to that of human beings. As is seen often in the movies, a dog is presented with an item that has the missing person's scent on it, then the animal tries to track them down from that reference point.

Kotkas explained more.

"I hide something somewhere then let him use his sense of smell to find it. He starts sniffing. What he's really doing is looking for a human-scented item within the environment. We don't need the dog to mark all kinds of rubbish — he walks around and sniffs what has been freshly touched," he outlined.

As for when he has located the intended mark, or something of interest, Maik will let his handler know by barking, though how well this carries depends a lot on the landscape. "If the terrain is dense, with lots of trees, that can muffle the sound quite a bit, especially if there are valleys and such. GPS can also be a big help. He's been trained to bark at people, but if we're doing more precise searches for small objects, he can also be trained to lie down at that location," Kotkas added.

Maik loves to play too, so a toy is the reward earned for a job well done.

The PPA has around 70–80 canines on "payroll" at any one time, with the number constantly fluctuating as new additions, puppies, come in, while veteran dogs retire.

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