Nobody should have to lose a loved one twice. Some dogs are helping to prevent that from happening.

When wildfires like the ones that ravaged California this summer sweep into a neighborhood, there is no time to collect valuables. Homeowners flee with bare essentials. Among the precious things that must be left include cremated remains, or cremains, often stored in a receptacle kept on a shelf or mantle. But now, professionally trained detection dogs are being dispatched to recover these human ashes from the charred ruins of destroyed homes.

“These people are devastated,” says Lynne Engelbert of the Institute for Canine Forensics, which uses Historical Human Remains Detection dogs to locate cremains. (See photos of detection dogs being trained