Pssst… My dog smells dead people.

Saint is a cadaver dog in training. You may or may not be wondering "how deep can a cadaver dog smell?" Well, join us on our journey and let's find out for ourselves. My girlfriend and I are training him to be a cadaver dog and have been wanting to for a variety of reasons.

“That is weird.”

On a trail at Pismo Preserve

But it is also a very rewarding skill for Saint to develop. Training a cadaver dog, or any scent work dog, takes a lot of time, dedication, resilience, and consistency. We spend hours each week working on his scent detection work, and seeing Saint's development in understanding the scent and being able to more accurately pinpoint the location of the source is amazing.

“So... you have dead body parts that you use? How are you training him to smell dead people without having dead people?”

We did a lot of research, and worked with our dog trainer, on finding the most accurate scents that will aid in training our dog to detect both deceased and live humans and human only blood. NOT animals or animal blood. We found the company, Sokks. They produce these scent tubes that are non-toxic to dogs and humans, and that are "sourced from humans, cadavers, saliva, urine, blood or materials contaminated with human blood (no animal products). The product contains a group of odors from at least 10 non-diseased people declared clinically dead for less than 12 hours mixed with gaseous fumes of venous and fresh blood (less than 120 minutes old)."

At a local park for a training session

Sooo, yes. It is kind of weird.

But we are very grateful for the opportunity and the potential to be of aid to the community and being able to give back in a unique way. Giving families the answers they they need, while giving our dog, Saint, a job and task that he is strongly rewarded for.

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