Yip, a 4-year-old kelpie, recently passed the test to become a qualified airscent search dog for LandSAR - one of eight such dogs in New Zealand.
She is the first operational LandSAR airscent search dog, also known as a wilderness search dog, to be based in Dunedin for three years and Mr Dougherty's first fully trained search and rescue dog since he retired his tracking search dog German shepherd Menou (now 15), six years ago.
Airscent dogs find someone by their smell, as opposed to tracking dogs, which follow a person's footsteps.
It was a long road to the rigorous four-day assessment in Hanmer Springs earlier this month.
Mr Dougherty, president of Search and Rescue (SAR) Dogs Otago, is a father of four young children, a manager at NZ Post and has been training search dogs for 15 years.
Training a search dog was an extensive and intensive undertaking, with no guarantees, he said.
Sometimes, an insurmountable failing could be found in a dog, even two years after training started, and the dog would have to be replaced and training started all over again.
He had spent 20 hours a week training Yip, at his own cost, for the past three and a-half years.
"She goes everywhere with me. She comes to work with me, we walk for two hours a day, we do five hours' search work training on Sundays."
It was necessary to have such a close relationship to Yip.
"The dog's got to want to tell me it's found somebody."
Yip is the only area search dog south of Omarama, which means she and Mr Dougherty are on call 24/7 to search for people who go missing or get lost or injured anywhere in Otago and Southland.
The training was ongoing and Mr Dougherty and Yip would be reassessed each year to ensure their skills were up to scratch, but in the meantime they were looking forward to their first chance to participate in a SAR operation.
Police task such missions and Dunedin police SAR head Senior Sergeant Brian Benn said having a search dog available so close meant a response could be much quicker.
Mr Dougherty was a skilled dog handler and had been involved in search and rescue for many years.
It took a huge amount of effort to get search dogs operational and it was great news Mr Dougherty and Yip had passed the test, Snr Sgt Benn said.
