Around here you don't need a dog to find sheds, most every house has one or more behind them (just kidding). Seriously you can train a dog to find anything that has an odor and most every thing does. There are several good books/videos available to train your dog to locate, human remains, drugs, or articles any of these techniques would work just substitute shed antlers for what ever the book/vidoe is training your dog to locate. Several of the books are available from the local library. But like training your dog to do anything it just takes time and repetition. As far as the breed of dog goes about any breed but a hound would work well, while hounds are excellent trackers and some even do human remains detection work, their brain is really not wired to make them a good detector dog (before this starts a fire storm, I am not knocking hounds, I handle a Bloodhound and for what he does there is not a better breed I am a devoted hound fan, but they are what they are ). If you are getting a dog specifically for this, I would look at one of the herding breeds, or one of the retriever breeds but a heinz 57 mixed breed would work also if it had the right drive. If a dog will not play ball it generally will not make a good detector dog. As far as the guy selling the dog for 6500 dollars, though that sounds like a lot of money, he probably has a lot of time tied up in locating and evaluating a potental dog, then training and proofing that dog just as if he were training it to locate anything else. From what I understand "professional shed hunters make several thousand dollars a year selling the shed antlers so they would probably recoup their investment fairly quickly. Let us know how it turns out
