Helping dogs to help people
MY WORK
SCIENTIFIC WORK
Working on a scientific papers connected with K9/HRD work some of which you can find here <-
PHOTO GALLERY
CCK9 TEAM
We are a small civilian and highly professional cadaver team with the specific kind of interest in dog
work. Our main area of interest is the search and retrieval of deceased persons and human remains.
When we started this kind of work we were named Croatian Cadaver K9 Team (CC K9 Team) by
German Police, and that name sticked to our group.
Our team combines different profiles of people with the knowledge necessary for the professional
organizing, monitoring and implementation of a search for human remains and other types of search.
Members of the team have participated in hundreds of different missions in the last twenty years and
were trained in a variety of organizations and Centers across Europe and USA with different specialties
(search management, cadaver search, human remains detection etc.) Within the group we have a search
manager that updates, monitors and stores the data at the end of the submission as an analysis of
action pursuits.
Since 2012, CCK9 Team worked with many Military, Police and SAR services in EU, Balkan region,
Turkey, Middle East and Africa as well as with BKA (German Federal Criminal Police Office) on
criminal and missing person cases and natural disasters. As a team we are Contracted External
Associates of Ministry of Croatian Veterans Affairs, Department for Detainees and Missing Persons
working on discovering of the mass and single graves from 2nd WW and Croatian War of
Independence (1991-1995). Also, we worked of locating of the archaeological burial site with University of Zadar and Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt,
Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte.
In our work we combine experience collected in many years participating in SAR, military and police
K9 practice and science in relation with finding of the clandestine graves and human cadavers mostly
buried under ground. Our work follows science from this field and it’s a part of it. The thing is
THEY ALL DESERVE TO COME BACK HOME
I put together the team I am comfortable working with, the team I trust. With me as a team leader, there are just two permanent team members and the rest of the teammates are included as needed. So, let me introduce the permanent team members :Andrea Pintar
Team leader, K9 instructor
I have been doing this since 1996, and trust me, I am a nice person and know what I'm doing. For real.
Christian "Chris" Nikolić
dog handler, search manager
Chris is an ex military person, worked around the world with hunting, SAR, protection and detection dogs. Educated as a search manager in Wales, UK. He used to be in Mountain Rescue Service as a rescuer and Search manager instructor.
Vedrana Glavaš
Archaeologist
Vedrana has a Ph.D in archaeology and works as research assistant at the University of Zadar, Croatia. Her special area of interest are non-destructive research methods. Specialised in aerial photography and remote sensing of the landscape. Loves dogs and has one.
Our dogs
3 malinois / one GSD
They work. Hard. Then they occupy couch. Hard. It is a hard life.
First of all ...
For a long time, I was convinced that I was an excellent dog trainer. And I was.... One morning things changed. Now I’m in the most beautiful part of my instructor career. I am letting dogs train me. They teach me how to listen to them. And yes... dogs are talking “but only to those who know how to listen” as Orhan Pamuk wrote in one of his books. So, we just need to listen to them carefully. :-)
Me, myself and I
I started working with dogs in 1996. In 2003, in Slovenia, I gained my first title as aninstructor for SAR dogs. Since then, and up until 2012, I was the Chief instructor in Croatian Mountain Rescue Service for SAR dogs, made standards in licensing the operational K9 SAR teams and trained and participated in training of more than 50 SAR dogs and handlers, and every one of them was or is working in some kind of service. Everything is done through operant conditioning with clicker training and positive stimulation. For this kind of K9 work I was educated in EU, UK and USA and now I have my own methods, standards and protocols. I had 4 SAR dogs (Willy, Yoda, Padme and Sattve), and now I am working with 3 malinois (Mali, Panda and Pepper) and one GSD (Arwen). Cadaver, forensic and HRD dogs. During all this time, I had participated in more than 300 different search missions for missing persons in the last fifteen years. In Croatia and the Balkan area I had lots of mission for searching the graves from war in Croatia (1990s) and mass graves from 2nd World War as well as giving help to police when they need a dog for human recovery. Police (department for war crimes and missing persons) ask for me and my team to help when they have a problem in pinpointing the exact location or to confirm suspicious place. They call my team when they need dogs to find grave or human remains (cold cases). Together with my team, I worked in "cold" cases with BKA and Police services in EU, Turkey, Middle East and Africa. I am a Contracted External Associate of Ministry of Croatian Veterans Affairs, Department for Detainees and Missing Persons working on discovering of the mass and single graves from 2nd WW and Croatian War of Independence 1991-1995.