If you want to purchase a dog for SAR, I STRONGLY recommend getting on a team FIRST and getting all of your other training / certifications out of the way and get some real search experience before you get a dog. That could take 6 months to a year or more depending on the team requirements.

Many teams won't even let you train a dog until you have demonstrated yourself to be interested in SAR first, available for deployment, and capable of the work, and the dog second to the point of being willing to get a different dog if the dog being trained does not *cut it*

Our team has a 6 month probationary period before you can even join as a member and I think that is pretty typical.

Some teams do not allow competition dogs (shutzhund) to participate. You can argue for/against till the cows come home but it is a reality.

Nancy is correct about the human certification coming first. I was 18 months with my unit before I had Raven certified.

SAR is serious work and needs to be done because you have a love of the work. In many units the dog is still not given the respect it's due. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> The politics are enormous and you may find that your dog gets used very little!

When I moved from BC to NB, I looked into joining a unit here and recertifying (sp?)Raven. The dog master that would do the job told me Raven would rarely leave the van. The local unit didn't get many calls and nobody else in the province would call us because of the politics involved in paying our expenses! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Frankly, I don't give a crap if anyone paid my gas or meals, I spent 3 years training this dog and myself and would like to put her to work.

Anyway, I was very disheartened, found the local group immature and unprofessional (they spent over an hour at the meeting I attended, bickering about group jackets!!!) and with the challenges of starting our business over again, I reluctantly retired Raven.

Moral of the story... make sure you really love SAR work before you spend the 1000+ dollars and the 1000+ hours on the dog!

Not to be a downer, just a reality check.
Good luck in your endeavours.