Sharon Ballweg has been a member of Mason-Dixon Search Dogs and the search and rescue community since January 2006. She has worked in the fields of live find and human remains detection (HRD) certifying three out of five K9 partners. One of the five K9’s had to be retired early due to health issues and the other was retired due to lack of drive for the job. Her current partners are two Belgian Malinois. One is certified in HRD land, crime scene, and water. The other is expected to certify in HRD land in the very near future. He is also being trained on water recovery.

Sharon is a Live Find and HRD evaluator with The American Rescue Dog Association (ARDA) as well as an HRD Lead Evaluator for National Association of Search and Rescue (NASAR). She is a lead training coordinator with her team in both live find and HRD. As requested, she has also assisted other teams with their training programs.

Sharon has been instructing in both disciplines with a focus on human remains detection for more than 10 years.