A seasoned SAR guy moved down here from Delaware. He is training a group of volunteers (me being one of them.) He is having us run away excited while someone holds our dog. Then we start to hide, etc. Some of the dogs are adults, some are puppies. Shouldn't the puppies be trained in foot step tracking first? How about adult dogs? Do you start them the same way? I will be purchasing Ed's tracking video this week but I was just wondering in advance. Maybe I should send the trainer a copy too ; ) I plan on buying a young dog soon and I want to start it properly. Right now I am using my old girl to get my feet wet. Thanks for any info.

The approach you discribe is a very traditional approach to starting search dogs.
Is it wrong..nope.
But, let me ask some questions. What is the role or roles of S&R dogs in your area?
If the only thing that they do is air scent then the thing you need to work on the most is directed search, of which the skill you discribe is a small part.
If your dogs also track then that is a seperate skill and mus be addressed as such.
A few years ago i had to ponder this whole S&R thing extensively. I was tasked with doing police dogs that were not trained to physically control suspects (bite/fight). I had been around a number of S&R dogs, traiiners, handlers. I had seen some fine animals and very dedicated S&R folks. What I didn't see was great skills and success.
I had done a minimum amount of S&R deployemtns with our patrol dogs with about the same level of success as we had in hunting bad guys, maybe a bit better.
I also sat down and had a talk with the trainer for the USBP's politically correct S&R dogs (the instructor is a long time friend) that have been used successfully in very harsh conditions along the Mexican Border.
Bottom line was we decided that to be successful we had to selection test dogs like we do for detection (the USBP and my own selection is a bitch, most dogs will make very nice schutzhund dogs as well as detector dogs and quite honestly are as good or better than the average selection tested dual purpose dog). This is key to a good program.
Then we start be establishing the indication and f/b the directed search just as we do in patrol dogs. Then we teach strict foot step tracking. Once this is done we expand their tracking to include live "victims" part of the time but also toys.
The picture is exactly the same as patrol dogs. In fact what we discovered is the searching comes along faster because the drive satisfaction is play/prey item. This is less stressful than B&H and using fighting drive as the end result of a search as we do with patrol dogs.
We have seen very good success, and these dogs are able to train right alongside the patrol dogs withour changing the training. A big plus.

There are a lot of different schools of thought on that. Some in my team have been gravitating towards tracking then trailing then air scent as a progression but it differs between individuals HOW to get there. The runaway approach is pretty common though - I have seen more folks do it that way than start with tracking.

Where are you? Who are you affiliated with? We have several established teams (4 I know about) in SC. Please PM me would love to talk. SC is a very different world than the surrounding states in terms of volunteer SAR.

Kevin- He mentioned finding children and alzheimer's patients as very commonplace. He also mentioned water search since we're surrounded by water: marshes, lakes, ponds etc. and natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornados. He said we can go as far as we want basically. He has a cadaver dog too and said if that was an interest we could do it too. He told me the local police want to use his services since they don't have a SAR unit. I think this covers just about everything as far as SAR goes. Thanks for the information. Please keep it coming.