K9 Investigation Errors: A Manual for Avoiding Mistakes

Make sure your K9 investigation work holds up in court. Based on Resi and Ruud’s previous book, K9 Fraud, with updated content and a new chapter.

Learn how to:

• Avoid the most common mistakes handlers make.
• Become a better trainer and handler with a scientific understanding of scent and tracking work.
• Train your dog for scent-identification lineups using the scientifically proven Dutch standard.

Faulty K9 investigations often have serious consequences: the guilty might walk free, and the innocent might suffer. Internationally recognized dog handlers and trainers Dr. Resi Gerritsen and Ruud Haak use real-life case studies―historical and recent―to highlight K9 errors that can derail entire investigations. Each of these mistakes, such as influencing your dog’s results or relying on contaminated scents, damages your reputation and the value of your work. But with the right knowledge and training protocols, you can minimize investigation errors.

K9 errors have hampered investigations from the earliest uses of dogs for police work in Europe to twenty-first century cases such as the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States. Don’t let the same mistakes happen to you and your team.

Dr. Resi Gerritsen, a psychologist and jurist, is an international judge for the International Rescue Dog Organisation (IRO) and the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI). Along with her late husband, Ruud Haak, and other colleagues in Austria, Resi developed a new method for training search-and-rescue dogs that revolutionized the field after producing stellar results in disaster zones around the world. She still trains her dogs for search and rescue, detection work, and Schutzhund.

Ruud Haak was the author of more than 30 dog books in Dutch, German, and English, and for over 40 years he was the editor-in-chief of the biggest Dutch dog magazine, Onze Hond (Our dog). Ruud travelled the world with his wife, Dr. Resi Gerritsen, teaching their unique methods to police departments, search-and-rescue organizations, and other dog trainers. He passed away in 2023.