Cat Warren

Cat Warren is a university professor and a former journalist who also has an admittedly odd hobby: she works with cadaver dogs: dogs trained to find the missing and dead. What started as a way to harness her new German shepherd pup’s unruly energy and enthusiasm soon became a calling that introduced her to the hidden and fascinating universe of working dogs, their handlers, and their trainers.

Warren’s presentation follows her own journey learning how to work with Solo, starting to understand both how good dogs’ noses are, as well as what their limitations are.

While she explains the mysterious world of why dogs are so good at detecting the dead, she also talks about the wider world of scent detection dogs. Training and searching with Solo was the beginning of Warren’s odyssey into the world of working dogs: cadaver dogs, drug and bomb detecting K9s, tracking and apprehension dogs—even dogs who can locate unmarked graves of Civil War soldiers and help find drowning victims more than 200 feet below the surface of a lake.

Working dogs’ abilities may seem magical or mysterious, but Warren shows the multifaceted science, the rigorous training, and the skilled handling that underlie the amazing abilities of dogs who work with their noses.

Warren’s presentation is clear-eyed and unsentimental, but filled with humor. She explains why our partnership with working dogs is woven into the fabric of society, and why we keep finding new uses for the working dog’s wonderful nose.