Several suggestions for you.
Your echo comes from Texas?   There are several good SAR K-9 teams in
Texas.  Find one of them.  In the mean time, get yourself enrolled in a
good obedience class and don't stop with just basic obedience.
Everything we do with dogs requires exceptional control.  If you do not
have control of your dog, both on and off leash (in close and at a
distance) nothing works well.
The next step, in my humble opinion, is to find a good tracking class.
All the dogs in my team are cross trained for tracking and airscenting
( YES!!!! you can train for both!!), however, we have had the best luck
by starting with tracking.  New handlers become accustomed to training
in an orderly and managable manner, and the dogs become accustomed to
learning.  If you have a good training officer on the team you join, you
may be able to train for both at about the same time ( start with
trackingfirst though).  Our dogs are keyed to the skill they are to use
by the collar/harness  (ie the bell collar for airscenting and the
tracking harness for tracking), however, they do have the latitude to
intermix the skills on area searches as they are need.
As for books, there are several out there, but the one I would recommend
is "Search Dogs" ("the red book") that was done by the American Rescue
Dog Association.  I have several major disagreements with it, however,
for a new handler, it's not bad.
Last, but not least, I would strongly recommend you not put any
aggression work on this dog.  Rotties have a hard enough rep to deal
with without adding that (especially for a SAR dog).  I failed a handler
and a Rottie about 18 months ago because the handler tried to train for
search work and aggression (mastering neither adequately).  When he
tried to test out, the dog decided he was expected to bite, and did just
that....biting a sheriff's deputy K-9 handler that was kind enough to
hide for the test.  The dog is lucky he wasn't shot on the spot.
Hope I've been of some help.         DeAnna
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