K9 Scent Training: A Manual for Training Your Identification, Tracking and Detection Dog

Whether you’re searching for drugs or a missing person, K9 Scent Training will improve your K9 team’s capabilities in the field.

Use proven techniques to train your dog for:

• Scent identification line-ups to indicate a scent connection between crime-scene evidence and a suspect.
• Tracking along a wide variety of track types, including the cold track, the broken-off track and tracks that run over or under cross-tracks.
• Detection work for searches in buildings, vehicles, open terrain and more.

In this must-have guide for SAR teams and police K9 trainers and handlers, Dr. Resi Gerritsen and Ruud Haak present everything you need to know to build or improve a scent training program. Scent training involves high-stakes work, and in the case of a search for a missing person, the right training for your K9 can mean the difference between life and death.

Beginning with the science behind odors and how dogs perceive them, Resi and Ruud show you how to harness that knowledge to eliminate training problems and maximize your dog’s potential. You’ll learn how to start scent training for young dogs using simple exercises before building up to more complex training. Finally, using techniques they’ve perfected over decades, Resi and Ruud share their specialized, step-by-step programs for advanced scent identification training and tracking.

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.