(ABC 6 News) – Imagine if you could call a SWAT team – with all the gear and know-how – just to find your lost dog. That’s, in essence, what The Retrievers are, and it’s exactly who Andrea Mauer called when her 5-year-old Goldendoodle, Ramsey, bolted from her Albert Lea home last year.

Ramsey, according to Mauer, is a pretty nervous pup.

Especially around people.

“He always has like dogs (more),” she says.

Rescued from a puppy mill in Texas and brought to shelter in Iowa, Ramsey hadn’t had a lot of exposure to people.

Mauer had only had him for a week when he took off from her yard during a storm last August, and was missing for six months.

The search began immediately.

“I was doing things on my own that I knew that I could do,” Mauer says. “But I realized pretty quickly that all those little tricks aren’t gonna work unless he’s around there.”

Enter, The Retrievers.

Started in 2014, the group began as an internal rescue squad for the “Retrieve a Golden of Minnesota” organization.

Led by co-founder Devon Thomas Treadwell, the team specialized in locating, trapping, and reuniting lost golden retrievers with their families all over the state.

“So that we would have processes and equipment and you know documents or whatever in place so that when it happened we could jump right into action and we wouldn’t have to organize each time,” Thomas Treadwell says.

They got so good it, they even developed their own kind of trap, called a “Missy Trap” after a particularly difficult dog lost in the Northwoods.

The “Missy Trap” uses large fencing panels and electronic switches to lure skittish dogs and enclose them, without the need for hand capturing.

Eventually, the group splintered off to start offering their expertise to more than just Golden owners and, over the years, they’ve had their hands in thousands of rescued pups.

“”When you think about what owners go through, it is like a 24/7 thing for them,” Thomas Treadwell says. “And so the moment you can put that dog back in their hands, all that goes away. That weight of the world is off their shoulders now.”

In Ramsey’s case, it took a 10-foot wide cage around a pile of leftover cow parts he had been feeding on to finally catch him.

“They take each case, and they take it personally and they want to do everything they can to help,” Mauer says. “It meant… it means everything to me.”

The Retrievers is currently trying to expand its team of volunteers in Rochester and get more boots on the ground in Southeast Minnesota.

They’re looking for individuals who have experience working with skittish dogs and flexible or open schedules to be called upon on short notice.

They also have an active case involving two missing English Red Fox Labradors named Radish and Rosemary – both of whom are pregnant and due this month. Rosemary was due Tuesday of this week.

Both dogs were last spotted somewhere between Preston and Spring Valley.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Radish and Rosemary are encouraged to call their owners, Lance and Chrissy Klessig, at 608-780-2134.

They ask not to attempt to call or chase after the dogs, as that could scare them away from the area and make it harder to find them or their puppies.