Leith Thomson and his yellow-eyed penguin dog Sniper at their Dunedin home. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON

Meet one of the team, Sniper the hoiho tracker dog.

Those battling to save yellow-eyed penguins, including the Wildlife Hospital crew, have a new ally.

Furry, friendly and with an extraordinary sense of smell, Sniper is New Zealand's only qualified hoiho tracker dog.

The 4-year-old Hungarian Vizsla bitch, which belongs to Leith Thomson, of Dunedin, has successfully completed a Department of Conservation training programme certifying her to work in the field tracking yellow-eyed penguins specifically.

"She's really good. She's picked it up really well,'' said Thomson, a former Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust ranger.

Set her off on the scent and Sniper quickly gets to work.

If she detects something, she will stop and assume the typical hunting dog pose: nose and tail pointing and one foot raised.

Sniper can even distinguish between different finds, giving a ``soft point'' for feathers, scat (poo) or dead birds and a ``hard point'' for hoiho nests or live birds away from the nest.

Compared with humans, Sniper can search a large area more quickly and create less disturbance, Thomson says.

Her skills can be employed to do nest searches, to calculate hoiho breeding numbers. And if an injured penguin is reported by a member of the public, Sniper can be sent in to find the bird so it can be taken to the Wildlife Hospital for treatment as quickly as possible.

Sniper could be the difference between the endangered penguins' survival and the species' extinction.