We all know about the 5 Ws of journalism: who, what, where, when and why. They are basic questions that are also considered when responding to a search. In order to prepare for a search incident, we could also ask ourselves these questions when training and maintaining our dogs.

– Who will we be looking for? Male or female, adult or child?
– What will we be looking for? Evidence and/or remains?
– Where will we be looking? What type of terrain will we be searching in?
– When will we be looking? Did the incident just happen, or is it historical?
– Why are we looking? Criminal or overdue?

These 5 Ws can all be recreated through training. It will keep our minds tuned in to searching and not just setting out sources and running the dog. The proofing and testing, as described in this book, will keep us as a dog team, or the dog teams we train, fluid, and prevent everyone from becoming stagnant. This book was written for the handler or trainer to promote thinking outside the box when preparing the dog team for searching in the field of human-remains detection.

Mary Ann Warren has over 25 years of volunteer experience working as a search dog handler in the profiles of live find, disaster, water and human remains detection. She has been the volunteer trainer and Training Director with the Search & Rescue Dog Association of Alberta for over 20 years, aiding in their members search dog and handler team's development. Professionally she has been a dog trainer for over 35 years, learning all she can in the dog obedience, tracking, search and detection world.

Mary Ann is an accomplished author of many training documents with one published book on Human Remains training. She has be awarded, for years of service, pins and medals from the RCMP, Edmonton City Police, Office of the Fire Commissionaire, Alberta and The Search & Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada, with many police agency acknowledgements for finding the missing person.