The man walking in the river

When we walked along the towpath towards the Paper Mill Lock, we were very surprised to see something never seen before. You know already what it is from the title of this essay. We saw a man walking steadily along in the middle of the river, downstream as it happened. Immediately what came to my mind was the Betjeman poem about Matthew Webb, the Dawley man, who went swimming along the old canal which carries the bricks to Bawley (not sure of the spelling at this precise moment).
This man was about 50, maybe, and slightly bearded and solemn and steady. He had a short haircut and was wearing some sort of special clothing with an inflated patch across his shoulders - some sort of life-saving device, I suppose.
It seemed so extraordinary. It looked almost medieval, or even mythic. I don't think I have ever seen such a thing, so solemn and so unexpected. Here we were in the middle of open countryside, with tall ashtrees and willows along the banks, and the river running bright and clear, and quite deep too I guess, but with a man processing very vertically through the water right down the middle of the stream. He did not look as if he were trying to swim, or was lost, or had fallen from a boat.
A group of people further along on the bank were talking to him.
We said 'Are you alright?'
'Yes' he said.
'What are you doing?'
"Training dogs.'
We listened as he explained to the others. There is a group called Lowland Search and Rescue who use dogs to track and trace missing people. These dogs need to know how to find people who may have fallen into the water and he was setting a scent for them. We said we thought water was the way to put dogs off the scent.
'No,' he said. 'They can find a person even in deep water. The main scent from people comes from the oil in their hair, so I am letting some of my hair scent get into the water like this.....' and he wetted his head and then trailed his hands into the water again.
He said "The police in Essex don't like us much because we are volunteers' (can this be true? maybe I misheard). 'We found two people recently - one was a young black guy, you remember?' He thought we were local. We did not remember. 'And one was a young girl, committed suicide. Very sad'.
We all stood in silence.
'But mostly, it's for Alzheimer's people. They go for a walk, maybe in the woods, then they get lost, and we help find them.'
We walked on and later found not one but two of the young dogs in training. The first, called Indiana, is owned by a German lady who loves living in England and works in a care home. She let us take a picture of the two of them. The other dog is called Folly, owned by a local guy called Richard. These two had met at dog training classes. Folly was more experienced than Indiana, and very hyped up, waiting for his turn.
When we met them again later, we learned that they had each found David - the man walking in the water - quite easily. The dogs had signalled with their barks where he had gone into the water. Then much further along the banks they had been able to pinpoint his hiding place to within a couple of feet.
It seemed absolutely amazing that the dogs could focus in on the right scent, with so many people - probably dozens within the space of an hour or so - passing by while David was walking in the river, and distracting smells from horses and other dogs. They can do this work without being given any kind of object to work from.
These two young dogs are to be tested soon, so their training was timely. Both are Belgian Shepherds - like our Alsations in some ways, but lighter and smaller. All the work is voluntary.