Meet the housebuilder’s new best friend – Freya the English spaniel.
She has been trained to detect that bane of development sites, the great crested newt, allowing them to be found and relocated up to five times faster than human experts.
The dogs were trained by PhD student and Wessex Water ecologist Nikki Glover.
After about six months of training, Freya was able to tell them apart from other amphibians, and even detect great crested newts hiding in their burrows as deep as 20cm below the ground, in both sandy and clay soil.
And Freya is not alone. Trials have also been done with a springer-cocker spaniel named Newky, who performed equally well.
