Many law enforcement personnel utilize dogs that have the ability to drug sniff. These dogs require training in order to do their jobs effectively. These dogs are trained to not only sniff drugs but also sniff items that may conceal drugs or be illegal such as fruit. In most cases, these dogs are highly successful in their jobs.
Though drug-sniffing does require training, it is actually not very difficult to train a dog to do. Anyone is able to train a dog to learn to sniff for drugs so long as he or she is patient enough. It may take a few instances of trial and error, but it is possible.
You need to ensure that the dog you want to train to sniff for drugs is bred with a great sense of smell. Some breeds that have better senses than others include shepherds, retrievers, and beagles. They have been bred throughout time to develop a keen sense of smell.
Something that is attractive to the dog should be associated with the smell of the drug or substance that the dog is being trained to sniff out. Many law enforcement personnel utilize white towels. These towels are easy to see, easy to clean and played with by dogs very well. It is important to make sure the dog associates its job with receiving a reward of fun and play after finding the toy or towel.
After ensuring that your dog is comfortable in associating a reward with finding the object, it is time to move on. It is important to ensure that both the toy and the substance that needs to be found are hidden together so that the dog can associate the two together. Dogs can find drugs, pornographic material on things such as external memory drives or CDs, bombs and weapon chemicals and supplies, money and any other illegal substance. The dog will eventually learn to associate the smell of the illegal substance with the toy so that it will only find the illegal substance.
In law enforcement, the dogs are trained with real substances at a very low level to keep the animals safe. It is important that the handler does not allow the dog to sniff if there is a risk of anything being loose in order to limit the danger possible to the dog. He or she should also carry naloxone to stop the effects of these toxins as well.
After the dog is able to find just the substance, it is important to teach it passive and aggressive responses. Passive responses should simply sit or point and should be utilized with more dangerous items. Aggressive responses may involve barking or pawing at the items.
Dogs will follow the leads of their handlers, however. This has caused some inaccuracies. When the handler is wrong about a potential substance, the dog may prove to be inaccurate. It is important to develop cues that your dog will follow in order to keep results as accurate as possible. You could even train the drug sniffing dogs to ignore any signals that do not mean a search is needed.