What are Detection Dogs trained on?

What are Detection Dogs trained on?

So when we see videos of wonderful dogs sniffing out items hidden on baddies or stashed away in hidden corners of buildings or under car wheel arches, it is the result of many weeks and in some cases months of teaching the dog to find, a, drugs b, money c, explosives d, guns

and in fact a dog can be taught to search out, using its nose, anything that has a scent, which, basically is everything, even if we mere humans can not smell it.

The question then is what and how.

Firstly, the 'WHAT'

Many years ago when I first became involved with helping to train detection dogs it was indeed as Drugs detection dogs where we were asked to provide both Passive and Pro-Active dogs for different tasks.

Passive- is where the dog will detect a smell that is targeted, as people walk past or the dog walks past, usually on a leash and either/or stand still/sit/lie down, indicating to the handler a find.

Pro-Active- is where the dog will actively search an area, buildings, cars, trains, planes, looking for the target scent, usually off leash running free but under the guidance of its handler, once found, the dog will again indicate to the handler in a variety of ways including ones already mentioned.

The question most asked to us was, or implied by the very way it was asked, was, 'are your dogs hooked on drugs?'

It is a misconstrued idea that the dogs are hooked on 'coke' ' heroin' 'meth' please feel free to insert your drug of choice here, so that they will search for and then find the hidden supply. NOT TRUE!!

What is true is that a tiny amount of any drug being searched for was used in training and indeed nowadays as technology has forged ahead, the actual drugs themselves are now deemed as not needed as a training aid, with the ability to make 'fake scents' of literally ANY smell you might need, you can buy the  pseudo training scent required.

This then suggests that,

 NO!... THE DOGS ARE NOT HOOKED ON DRUGS!

In fact the main driver behind most training is something you have all probably used if you have ever been involved with a dog...

the humble TENNIS BALL!!!!

The How...

I am going to use drugs detection as the basis for this part, but explosives, guns, money even disease and body detection all work in roughly the same way, even search and rescue or criminal tracking.

As with most dog training it is done in small steps over long periods, with the temperament of individual dogs being key.

Having a hyper dog with boundless energy, even a destructive nightmare of a dog is the kind dog needed for Pro Active searching, with a fear of nothing, as this type of search work will entail all kinds of nasty inhospitable wet, dark, hot, smelly, dirty, high, low, deep, noisy and often scary places that your average dog would just not want to venture.

For Passive work, almost the opposite is required, where the dog needed is one of calmness and being of a laid back nature but still having the stamina to work for long periods. As most of this type of searching involves people and lots of them, both inside and out, ( Airports, Docks, Train Stations etc ) the dog will need to be friendly to humans and more often than not, seen as no threat.

So I have mentioned that the training is done in short steps and over long periods of time with the right 'Kind' of dog, we would normally introduce the dog to different environments, where we can monitor the reactions of the dog to different stimuli, such as floor coverings, steps, sounds, smells, heights, darkness, small spaces etc, etc, you name it we want the dog to experience it,so that if, like us humans, they do not like something we can work a way around the problem,( here I will say that some dogs just can not be trained to say work at heights, or will not walk on open metal grid walkways or enter small dark spaces and it is during this initial period of environment training we get to see which dog is suited and which is not.

OK, we have got the dog we need to continue the training now we develop the search and find technique, many ways can and are used by different agencies the world over but the basic pattern tends to be the same.

We work on the dog through play, that the tennis ball is the dogs reward, it will become its whole world full of JOY to receive the tennis ball when a positive result has been achieved.

Just the act of throwing the ball and praising the retrieve will be the start of a long fulfilling journey  towards being a qualified search/detection dog.

Once the ball has become the goal the scent can now be added to the equation, this can be done using the pseudo scent ( chemical soaked material like little pads used as facial wipes, with the scent of choice, gun oil, cocaine, Meth, LSD)

introduced to the dogs nose for a very short time, then placed in an open area of the room usually in a plastic or wooden box with holes in it for the air scent to escape into the room, the ball is then rolled to the box in sight of the dog who then retrieves it a few times with great praise each time.

What happens is the dog starts to associate the smell/scent with positivity, ie, the tennis ball!

Over time the box/scent becomes harder to find and the dog can not see it any more so has to begin searching with its nose to find it.

Each time the box is hidden a little better making it harder for the dog to find, but with a view to it being able to be found as the dog may just give up in the early stages, remembering SMALL STEPS over LONG PERIODS, often repeating short easy searches with ball rewards as incentives.

Now after a few weeks of this sort of search training with the difficulty in finding the 'SCENT' getting harder the dog will start to understand that it will have to 'WORK' to find the scent...His reward...Ball! and will start to know what is expected, ie, I need to locate the source of smell (A) to receive my Ball so I need to get searching...To a dogs nose this is the easy bit, I'm not going to tell you the scientific biology about just how good the dogs nose is I am sure you know its a wonderous tool, but just to underline it here...

if its in there the dog can find it...or at least give you a good idea as to where it is.

After a time the routine is: The dog is made ready, we use a working harness often made of lightweight fabric, usually with high visibility bands on ( for our sake not the dogs ) to turn the 'WORKING' switch on, so the dog knows that it is not just on a leash for a walk, it has in fact got its work clothes on and its mindset has already been changed to wanting to find scent (A) so that he can get his ball and with the aid of the handler giving positive guidance throughout the search it will be, or should be a great experience time after time so after many months the dog will be ready to search whatever, whenever.

Obviously with Passive dogs the searching is often done using similar  techniques with a ball still as the reward but using smaller areas to search, hiding the object under and inside furniture, clothing, bags, boxes, suitcases and the like moving onto people as the training progresses, hiding the scent in handbags, pockets, coats and shoes, it does not matter where because the dog will search for it where ever it is hidden and when found the ball is immediately given as the reward, the dog again associates, SCENT FIND = BALL REWARD.

To start a small space like a sparsely furnished room with very few distractions in would be used, then as training progresses the room size can be made bigger with more distractions as long as the dog is able to cope, often returning to smaller areas to reinforce what has been learnt previously. Then things like vehicles, outside areas and night time training can be added to the regime.

Over time the dog will learn to cope with everything sent its way, but it all starts with a Tennis Ball and small steps over a long time.