The science and mystery of cadaver dogs

Some interesting insights into this craft. It's amazing to see these dogs abilities.

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Breed isn't overly important. The dogs just need to be very energetic and very motivated to work for a reward. However, typical cadaver dog breeds are German shepherds, Malinois and Labrador retrievers.


Only fifteen dogs have qualified to work with the Ottawa Valley Search and Rescue Dog Association in the past 25 years.

Kim Cooper has personally trained five of them.
Kim Cooper

Kim Cooper is a founding member of the Ottawa Valley Search and Rescue Dog Association. (David Ridgen/CBC)

The most important part of the training is to expose the dogs to as many human remains as possible.

Cooper said human bones can be ordered off the internet from companies with names like Skulls Unlimited and The Bone Room. She occasionally gets access to the surface, be it a piece of carpet or some dirt, for example, on which a body was found.

But the most common training aid is placenta, donated by new moms.

"I'm in the habit of congratulating family members and in the second sentence saying, 'So, what are you doing with your placenta?" said Cooper, who has a few placentas in her freezer at home.

She said a handler will train a dog with the same odour source for approximately six months so the dog learns the subtle changes that take place during decomposition.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ca...ning-1.3654993

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Those dogs are truly amazing when trained in tracking. I went with one of our (OPP) dog handler to a local high school on a PR gig. We hid four tiny sample packs of weed around the school athletic field under the sod and high in the bleachers. The handler brought the dog around and he promptly found seven.:cool:

I have used them in backwater gum ponds and swamps. They have found bodies 5 ft deep in still swampwater.

Pretty amazing pooches and a tremendous help.

THose dogs that do police work are amazing.
My brother-in-law is a doctor who works for the W.H.O -World Health Organization - and an A.I.D.'s / Hep.C clinic in Ottawa. As a result he travels a lot to Europe.
Drug dogs regularly alert on him. Why ? They smell drugs he may have handled or given out to a patient. Of course the Officer
never finds anything , but definitely slows up my relative's trips. :)

Experiments have established that a trained dog can smell a single human fingerprint on a glass slide that's been left on a rooftop in the weather for a week.

So I'm going to keep the deer scrap (skin, blood and meat) of the camp in the next few seasons and my next shepherd will be train the same way!!! The one I have right now is pretty good but not exceptional, great to learn something that simple.
Thanks for sharing!

For anyone interested in cadaver dogs, Cat Warren's recent book What the Dog Knows recounts how she came to train her dog, Solo, as a cadaver dog.

By coincidence, I just started it.

Do these trained dogs roll in the cadaver like my idiot does when he finds dead stuff? He is pretty good at finding dead stuff. Maybe i should enroll him? :joker:

I know one Munsterlander in SAR, they also look for live people, not just dead bodies.

The conversation about dog's scenting abilities, reminds be of a question I couldn't answer - how dogs know which way animal went on a scent track?

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Originally Posted by vom Dufenshmirtz

I know one Munsterlander in SAR, they also look for live people, not just dead bodies.

The conversation about dog's scenting abilities, reminds be of a question I couldn't answer - how dogs know which way animal went on a scent track?

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When i ran coyote dogs, the odd time when they were put on a track they would take it backwords for a short time , then sort it out, come back to the starting point and run it the right way .
I guess that they are able to figure out which way the strongest scent runs , amazing olfactory sense.
No different than a bird dog scenting a running pheasant, they follow the strongest scent.

or an experienced beagle on a rabbit trail. They learn to backtrack and see if the rabbit jumped etc.