The dog who understood what 'Find' meant

Doges Editorial · 2026-05-21 · 6 min read

When a Bernedoodle named Panko vanished from his Connecticut property and was found trapped under rocks, his owner gave one word to his German Shepherd companion: 'Find.' Remy knew exactly where to go.

By the time Remy stopped moving, his owners were sure he had found something. The eight-year-old German Shepherd had his nose to the ground and was working methodically — not panicking, not playing, but moving with the quiet certainty of a dog who already knows the answer to a question his family is still trying to ask. He was heading toward a pile of old construction debris near the back of the property, and he did not deviate.

The morning Panko disappeared

Scott and Donna Brinckerhoff knew within minutes that something was wrong. Panko — their two-year-old Bernedoodle, a Bernese Mountain Dog and Poodle mix — never wandered from their four-acre property in Haddam, Connecticut. He had never given them cause to worry. That morning, he was simply gone.

We began looking for him everywhere, inside and out, and calling his name. We even drove down Plains Road on the off chance he had chased some woodland critter and gotten lost. No luck.

— Scott Brinckerhoff, Panko's owner

They searched the woods, circled the property, called until their voices carried across the Connecticut morning air and came back with nothing. It was Donna who suggested asking Remy. The German Shepherd was eight years old — calm and experienced — and had grown up alongside Panko in the way only dogs who share a home for years can be bonded to each other. If anyone knew where Panko was, it was Remy.

One word

The instruction they gave him was simple. One word: Find.

Remy put his nose to the ground and went immediately to work. He moved along the property with a methodical sweep — not the frantic energy of a dog who doesn't know, but the focused intention of one who does. Within minutes he came to a stop beside a decades-old pile of construction debris and large rocks at the back of the property, near the tree line. He didn't bark. He didn't paw the ground. He stood there and looked.

Only his nose was sticking out

Wedged between a large rock and the earth, completely hidden by the debris, was Panko. His body was entirely concealed. Only his nose was visible above the pile. He had been there for somewhere close to four hours.

He was clearly in bad shape — exhausted and likely in shock. He was whimpering but didn't seem to have any bark left in him.

— Scott Brinckerhoff

The Brinckerhoffs gave Panko water and called 911. Crews from the Haddam Volunteer Fire Company responded shortly before 4 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, pulling their rigs onto Plains Road and walking back through the property to where the dog lay trapped.

Fifteen minutes and some baked ham

The firefighters didn't rush it. They spent time evaluating the configuration of the debris before touching anything — the risk was that moving the wrong rock could cause a collapse and cause further injury. Only once they had a clear plan did they move.

They used pry bars to work at the large rock pinning Panko in place. They also brought something that would give the dog a reason to be patient with the noise and the vibration: chunks of baked ham, passed through a gap in the rocks. Within approximately fifteen minutes, the stone gave way.

Our crews took great care to make sure Panko could be freed safely without causing further injury, and we're grateful everything worked out so well. Credit also goes to Remy for leading the family right to him.

— Fire Chief Sam Baber, Haddam Volunteer Fire Company

He shot out like a Jack-in-the-Box

When the rock gave way, Panko didn't limp out cautiously. He came free in a burst — what Scott Brinckerhoff later described to fire officials as shooting out "like a Jack-in-the-Box" — and immediately began greeting the firefighters who had rescued him. The two-year-old who had been too exhausted to bark an hour earlier managed a full introduction, nose first, tail going.

Officials said Panko is expected to make a full recovery, despite having been wedged between the rocks for up to four hours. He showed no significant injuries beyond the obvious exhaustion. A few days of rest, a lot of extra attention, and he was back.

What Remy knew

There is a straightforward version of this story about GPS trackers and how different it might have looked if Panko had been wearing one. That's a fair thought. The technology exists and it works — in dense terrain, a real-time location can shave hours off a search that otherwise depends on guesswork and good luck.

But what actually happened on a property in Haddam that Monday didn't involve a tracker. It involved Remy — eight years old, unhurried, doing something that years of sharing a yard and a house and a daily walk had apparently made very natural: knowing where his companion was. That knowledge didn't come from a sensor. It came from sustained, attentive cohabitation.

Fire Chief Baber's comment at the end of the incident report is worth staying with for a moment: "Credit also goes to Remy for leading the family right to him." Credit. To the dog. For a working firefighter writing a formal incident report, that's not a throwaway line. It's an acknowledgment that when the search party ran out of ideas, another dog had one — and it was exactly right.

The next time you're on a walk and your dog stops to investigate something you've already walked past, it's worth pausing a moment. They're reading a version of the world you don't have access to. On a Monday morning in Connecticut, that turned out to matter quite a bit.