The Michigan dog handler was Sandy Anderson and her dog is Eagle. She and
Eagle were written up in Archaeology magazine for Eagle's ability to find
prehistoric burials. Sandy recently pleaded guilty to charges of planting human bone
at potential homicide sites after about a 2-year FBI investigtion.

But I wouldn't throw the dog out with the handler. Almost any well-trained
cadaver dog can find recent skeletal material and it would depend on the dog and
soil how old they could go. Younger dogs have better olofactory senses than
older dogs (so says the handler I worked with on forensic cases). Using a probe
to aerate the soil can help the dog catch the smells in the soil.  There's a
book co-written by Marcella Sorg on Cadaver Dogs out of CRC Press (you should
be able to search on "Sorg" on amazon) that is as comprehensive a treatment of
cadaver dogs as is.

If you're interested in finding a dog and handler in your area, there are
both national and regional search dog organizations that can help and looking for
them on the internet would be a place to start (I could direct you to some
great folks if you were in Nebraska or Kansas...). These organizations certify
dogs that pass search tests, so one question to ask a handler is what
certifications the dog has.

Melissa Connor