A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, wildlife scat, currency, blood, and contraband electronics such as illicit mobile phones. The sense most used by detection dogs is smell.
UK SNIFFER DOG'S is Excited to present you the chance to turn your Dog into a Scent Detection Dog with OUR NEW DETECTION DO. .
Training a detection dog is a long process, but it is filled with play and positive reinforcement for the dog. Dogs first have to learn to play fetch or tug-of-war, two games most dogs love. Training is started with a toy, then the toy is laced with the substance the dog will be expected to find. Eventually, the toy is removed from the equation and the dog will learn either passive or aggressive scent detection. Aggressive detection includes pawing and barking at the object while passive detection involves the dog sitting when it smells something illegal.
Police lead a sniffer dog around a car at the gates of Rainbow Serpent. All images by author. The police set up at the festival's entrance. Derek said the sniffer dogs made it feel like something had shifted. It made me feel like we’d lost something special at Rainbow. It made me feel angry that police resources were being poured into this operation, instead of being directed to something that can actually help people stay safe, like pill testing," he said. For four-time Rainbow-goer Ange, the sniffer dog presence made her angry more than anything else. I thought it was a load of fucking shit.
A sniffer dog at work. However, unless the container has been sealed in almost laboratory conditions the dog is likely to detect any odour left on its surface from hands that may have come into contact with its contents. 2) DISTRACTING SMELLS. Another myth about sniffer dogs is that overwhelming odours – such as chilli powder and dried pepper – will repel the animal, mask other smells or perhaps temporarily disable it from sniffing any further.
Training for a sniffer dog lasts 12 weeks. They are trained in two stages. First, the trainer teaches the dog to recognize a particular drug or explosive. The dog soon learns to recognize the substance by its smell. The type of training aid is changed regularly but the smell always remains the same. 1 to finish work permanently 3 a part of a process 5 a return for doing something well. 2 to give a course of instruction 4 a piece of torn material or cloth 6 to discover something from clues.
Even the most-well trained sniffer dog will need to rely on some simple physics to make use of their olfactory skills. Odours will have to be able to permeate out or through a material so that they can be detected. Dogs are amazing, but can't smell the inside of any container through any material. This is where many drug smugglers fail. They try to conceal their stuff in between other odour-intensive things, like foods or spices, but a dog can detect all the individual things out of a plethora of other smells and will be easily able to pick out the particular smell he is looking for. So can you fool a drug sniffer dog? Obviously, no one can guarantee you that you will be able to fool a sniffer dog but you can decrease the chances of detection to some extent. Cold temperatures, for instance, slow down the rate of how fast odour could permeate through a particular material.
It is actually enormously difficult to conceal drugs from well-trained sniffer dogs. Mostly they involve ‘masking’ the smell by surrounding the drugs with something with a stronger smell (coffee grounds, perfume, whatever). This shows a profound lack of understanding of how a dog’s sense of smell works. The way it was explained to me (by an uncle in the police who trained sniffer dogs in the UK) is that a dog’s sense of smell works more like our vision than our sense of smell. Let’s say someone offers you a reward for spotting red balls on a pool table. The red ball represents the smell of the drug.
