BETHEL — “I may be intimidating, but he isn’t,” Maine Game Warden Norm Lewis said of his partner.

That’s a good quality for a search and rescue dog. Warden Clyde — a 2-year-old black Lab — has just the face a lost child would be happy to see.

Lewis and Clyde have been together since Clyde was a five months old.

Lewis, who patrols the towns around Bethel for the Maine Warden Service, trained the black Labrador retriever under the supervision of a Maine State Police dog trainer.

Clyde is one of only 10 dogs in the Maine Warden Service, which has about 125 wardens.

Lewis had been a warden for 21 years when the opportunity to apply for a dog came along two years ago.

“I wanted to learn to do something new,” Lewis, who lives in Woodstock, said. He was accepted into the program, and man and dog began learning how to communicate with each other.

First there was basic obedience training. They met with the trainer once a month for several days. Then the pair went home to practice, and in Norm’s case, to read about dog behavior and psychology.

The career for which Clyde was training would almost always involve finding something with a human scent. And because food is a powerful motivation for dogs, the teaching method connected the two.

“We’d leave an article with human scent in the outdoors, with food,” Lewis said.

Clyde learned to find an article with a scent that matched that of an item Lewis would show him, such as a piece of clothing belonging to a missing person.

The dog also learned to track evidence related to cases of illegal hunting — such as hidden deer meat, or spent bullet casings that can be matched to a gun.

Clyde’s training is different from that of a police dog, which may be called upon to go after a criminal.

“Clyde hasn’t had aggression training,” Lewis said.

And because of their special role, search and rescue dogs generally need a kindly image. Labradors are chosen for such work, Lewis said, because they are viewed by many people as friendly, a trait particularly useful when the missing person is a child or a senior citizen.

Clyde’s search technique varies according to whether he has a scent to work with. If an item belonging to the person is available, Lewis puts the dog in harness and stays with him as he searches for the specific scent.

If no scent is available, Lewis and Clyde are assigned a section of territory. Clyde is let off the leash and wears a vest — both clues to him that he will be rewarded for finding any person in that area.

Clyde found his first lost person last summer, when he located a man in the Bethel area.

And although it’s not his primary line of work, he can also be used occasionally to pinpoint people who don’t want to be found. That was the case when a man fled from state police after a traffic stop.

Clyde was not asked to track the suspect directly, but he did identify him. The man had lost a shoe during his escape. Hours later, police found someone they believed to be the escapee. After getting a sniff of the shoe, Clyde walked up to a group of men that included several police officers and the suspect. The dog sat down next to the man whose scent matched the shoe.

“We can’t use the dog’s identification alone, but it can be part of the evidence,” Lewis said.

In order to give both of them more experience, Lewis takes every opportunity to involve Clyde in a search, even when they’re not officially on duty. Not long ago, for instance, they left a party on a Sunday to join a search.

Although Clyde may not be the searcher who locates the victim, any outing is another chance for the team to work together.

The search techniques of each human/canine team can vary, Lewis said. For example, he said, the state police dog trainer has a dog that is so laid -back on a search, “she looks like she’s out for a walk.”

Clyde operates a little differently.

“He drags me into the woods, and I’m trying to wrap the leash around a tree so I can try to catch my breath,” Lewis said.

In addition to search and rescue and evidence work, Clyde also serves as an ambassador for the Maine Warden Service.

“I go to a lot of sportmen’s shows,” Lewis said. “A lot of people see him at the booth and stop to talk, and I can educate them about conservation and the Warden Service. If Clyde hadn’t been there, they would have walked right by. He’s an icebreaker.”