My first encounter with military narcotics dogs was my assignment in Thailand, where I worked under the umbrella of the US Customs Service, performing customs pre-screening of military personnel returning to the United States. We would use narcotics dogs to check the luggage before the personnel could board the plane. We provided amnesty boxes in the bathrooms so that personnel would get one final opportunity to rid themselves of the drugs that they hoped to bring back to the States.
Having previously been a working dog handler at my previous station, I enjoyed watching the narcotics dog work. The more I watched the handler, the more concerned I was over the dog’s ability to perform. The handler would hide drugs, and the dog would find the drugs. Seemed like everything was fine.
To test my theory, I emptied the amnesty boxes and decided to hide those drugs without the handler’s knowledge. When the handler showed up, I pointed to specific bags that I told him could be suspect. Hey, I was trying to help the guy. The handler ran the dog and cleared the entire shipment. Before the handler left the area, I asked him to watch me as I took drugs from about a dozen different suitcases. I turned to him and said, “Good job, you have ruined a perfectly good dog.”
I then began to list out his faults:
- You are hiding your own drugs. Not only are you imparting your own scent on the drugs, but since you know where the drugs are hidden, you are probably giving unconscious keys to the dog, like raising your voice when the dog gets closer to the drugs.
- You are using the same amount of drugs all the time. Dogs get lazy. In addition to using their noses, they look for shortcuts, like the keys that a handler gives in #1, and they are slowly taught to sniff for the exact amount that they are trained to find. Or, seek the scent of their handler on the drugs. I used drug amounts that exceeded the dog’s training threshold.
When I returned to the States, I became a narcotics dog handler and worked for the Air Force and then the US Customs Service. I knew to use other people to hide my training aids, and I would, on occasion, “borrow” several kilos of drugs to offset the smaller amounts that we trained with. I even made use of a Border Patrol Agent who would roll joints for my partner and me so that we could add a new scent to the vehicles that we searched in. We were fortunate in that we worked when the drug flow into the US was high, so our dogs would come into frequent contact with large amounts of drugs. I once jumped my dog into a 300-kilo pile of marijuana; the scent was so strong that he just stood there and peed. Note to self: check the nearest vehicle if the dog suddenly pees.