TURAH — At one point, things looked pretty grim for Charlie.

An 8-year-old black dog with flappy ears and endless energy, he and his brother were found tied to a post in California years ago, emaciated and neglected. But he was nursed back to health and spent time with the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, training to help look for victims in piles of rubble.

He wasn’t quite cut out for that job, however, but he did find his forever home eventually at a longtime nonprofit organization just east of Missoula called Working Dogs for Conservation.

So he’s spent the past five years of his life detecting rare species, like sea wolves in Canada or leopard lizards and kit foxes in the southwestern United States.

Working Dogs for Conservation takes in, or sometimes rescues, dogs from a v

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