Wilmington Historic Grave Search

Maggie, one of Lisa Higgin’s cadaver dogs, alerting during a training.

I am helping organize a historic grave search with cadaver dogs in Eastern North Carolina from Sept. 12 to 14. An African-American church’s graveyard is being relocated because of a road widening project. The church has generously agreed to having the cadaver dog teams on site to see whether they can help confirm or locate unmarked graves.

I am trying to raise some modest funds to cover the expenses of three experienced cadaver-dog handlers — Lisa Higgins, Paul Martin, and Susan Goodhope — who were featured in What the Dog Knows doing this work. Separately and together, they have worked on ancient remains projects across the United States. The link provides just one example of Lisa Higgins working with her dog Dixee on such a project at Dozier School for Boys.

The three handlers, whom I know personally, are bringing their dogs and their handling talents to this project because an environmental review coordinator at the NC State Historic Preservation Office read the chapter in the book on historic remains, called me, and suggested that it might be a great opportunity to both help the church, and to be able to study how accurate dogs trained on detecting ancient remains can be. The state department of transportation will need to move all the graves, marked and unmarked, to another area on the church’s property. The DOT is using GPR and other methods on the site, and will be excavating.

A donation of even $10 will help, but time is of the essence.

We want to cover the expenses (hotel, food, and gas) plus a minimal honorarium for the handlers ($300 each), who are generously coming from some distance.

We have two ways to give: Triangle Search Dogs has kindly agreed to host the project because of its mission to further the education of K9s and handlers. I and another member of Triangle Search Dogs will be on site to help and learn (I’m so excited to be able to do this!). Triangle Search Dogs is a non-profit, and any donations you give will be tax deductible. A donation of $50 or more, and I will send you an autographed copy of What the Dog Knows.

Or, if you’d like to donate via Indiegogo, you can use your credit card. That donation (because of our tight time frame) isn’t set up to be tax deductible.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me, cat_warren@icloud.com, or whatthedogknows@gmail.com. Thank you!

Cat Warren