Cadaver Dogs and the Deathly Hallows—A Survey and Literature Review on Selection and Training Procedure

摘要

Dogs are used in many contexts, including the detection of odor sources. A particular application of dogs during searching activities is the location of human remains. In this work, we aimed to gather the common practices of police dog handlers based on a survey made of nine questions, which was sent to police dog handlers around the world (N = 10; N = 16; N = 50) and then compared to the information available in the scientific literature. We highlighted a wide diversity of selection and training procedures used by handlers. Studies dedicated to human remains detection dogs are not abundant. However, we found key information that should be applied by handlers during the selection and the training of their human remains detection dogs. First of all, they should include the anatomical traits during the dog selection as behavioral traits alone are not representative of their potential. Finally, even if the training procedures are well performed by handlers, we highlighted a wide diversity of homemade training aids. However, no information was found in the literature regarding the effect of the training aids on the dog performances. For these reasons, handlers should create normalized selection and training procedures while scientists should investigate the behavior of these dogs to provide more information to handlers.