What started as a way to harness Solo’s unruly energy and enthusiasm soon became a calling that introduced Warren to the hidden and fascinating universe of working dogs, their handlers, and their trainers. article/60+Seconds+With+.+.+./3587030/647600/article.Cat Warren is a university professor and former journalist with an admittedly odd hobby: She and her German shepherd have spent the last seven years searching for the dead. These tasks affect how I think about a case as it’s unfolding. I’m watching my dog carefully, looking for behavior changes, while also having to think about if he’s well-hydrated or tired. I’m so focused on making sure we’re covering the area properly.

How do you separate emotion from the task at hand? It’s not as hard as you think.

You’ve worked on many crime scenes with search-and-rescue dogs. One kid wrote, “If you want kids to like your book, you can’t say that!” In the young adult version, whenever there was an opportunity to explain the science behind what we were doing, I’d insert a sidebar that explored the idea deeper. It’s funny, in the original book I had a line about hating Star Wars, since so many people asked me if I named Solo after Han Solo.

I sent the book to six kids between the ages of 8 and 12 and told them to highlight where they were bored, where they were scared and what they liked. When you were adapting the book to a young readers’ version, how did you decide what to keep and what to scrap? The process took me over a year. You want a dog that simply enjoys the “game” of hunting. What makes a good search and rescue dog? The dog has to be confident, have a drive to hunt, as well as a strong desire to get out there and work - potentially for long periods without reward. From there, I fell in love with the work - working with Solo, working with groups of dedicated forensic investigators and law enforcement officers and understanding the science behind it all. But he loved the task of cadaver search and rescue. The book was my attempt at understanding and wanting to preserve everything I was learning when Solo flunked out of so many obedience classes. We talked with Warren about the literary process and her experience with dogs that search for the missing and the dead. Solo started out as a rambunctious puppy but eventually grew up to be a successful cadaver dog. Like its predecessor, it covers the science and history of scent detection dogs, but focuses more on Warren’s journey with Solo, her German shepherd. The book made The New York Times bestseller list, and Warren has recently released a new edition for young readers. NC State English professor Cat Warren’s 2013 book What the Dog Knows was a deep dive into the world of working dogs that are trained to find everything from illegal drugs to explosives to missing people.

What the dog knows by cat warren