Are drug-sniffing police dogs actually junkies?

The Master had a column five years ago on bomb-sniffing dogs, but I’m wondering if drug-sniffing dogs actually have a jones for the little whiffs of cocaine, heroin or marijuana they get when they find contraband? Do they have a habit, or do they get other positive reinforcement like food treats, a scratch behind the ears or a “Good dog!” from their handlers?

And yes, I know that Monty Python once made passing reference to a junkie drug-sniffing police dog. That’s what made me think of this question…

Its just reinforcemnt. You can train them to do the same things with other non-drug cues (bodies etc.).

I’d like to mention Brian Griffin at this point, just to cut off future Family Guy references. :smiley:

Read this and find out how Victorian sniffer dogs were accidently taught to sniff out talcum powder. So no Jones.

No specific cite, but I think I saw a tv show (or read a magazine) on the training of drug sniffing dogs. The dogs were rewarded with a towel to chew on. Maybe they got a wicked towel jones?

pigs or dogs…which win nose of the year award?

My husband was a former investigator who worked with drug dogs. Yes, they have some sort of reward system (they used a piece of pvc pipe). It was kind of cute at times, to begin a search, one of the dogs “Carol” would need for you to take the piece of PVC and fake throwing it. Then, the handler would hide it and say “find the gifty”. To Carol, finding the smell of drugs was the way she retrieved her “gifty”, so when she alerted, the handler would throw the pvc pipe and Carol would enjoy a brief gnaw.

Therefore, during searches, they would plant cotton balls that had previously been placed in boxes with drugs to absorb the scent. Thus, Carol could get rewarded numerous times, even if there were no drugs. It is really just play for them and really neat to watch IMHO.

No, to his knowledge they do not get addicted, but drug dogs do get burned out. You can only use them so many times a day, depending on weather conditions, and some have to retire in a couple fo years. The longest dog that my husband worked with was a 7 year veteran “Carol” and she was losing her touch near the end. Before that, she had made numerous busts for him (he was not the handler btw- merely the investigator at the prison where they would bring the dog in).

How long was the dog?

A little story to illustrate the training of drug sniffing dogs.

Years and years ago my Army Reserve unit was preparing to go on the great annual European war game. As part of the program an MP with a drug dog was brought in from Ft. Riley to screen the equipment and baggage. The screening included our vehicles. Everything went fine until the dog, an elderly German Shepard with a noticeable limp, go to the commo van, a pick-up truck with a steel box containing an electronics workshop mounted in the box. The dog went nuts.

First it started whining and scratching at the glove box. There was nothing in there except a dried out slice of pizza. Then the dog went into the back and alerted on everything, bins, boxes, drawers. The whole vehicle was emptied and the stuff laid out on the parking lot. The dog alerted on the display, whining, scratching and tail wagging, but there was no obvious marihuana anyplace. The dog went back into the now empty truck and again alerted. Again, a physical examination showed nothing out of line.

At this point the unit commander, a full colonel, the reserve center commander, a brigadier general, the commo officer, the headquarters company commander, the sergeant major, the first sergeant, the poor kid in charge of the commo van and the Ft. Riley MP were all involved, all frustrated and all getting pretty short tempered. The MP was determined that nothing and nobody was leaving the reserve center until the situation was resolved. The CO was equally determined that the vehicles and equipment were going on the rail road and going now. The MP went off to phone Ft. Riley for back up from the criminal investigation people there. Shortly the MP came back, told us to load everything back in the van and to generally continue the march.

It seems the dog had been trained with bundles of marihuana wrapped in electrical tape. The dog was alerting on electrician’s tape.

So do they put them down when they are no longer useful or do the trainer adopt them?

Same thing happened to a friend of mine’s father. He came out to visit her on Kwajalein and the dope doggie bingoed on his luggage. They searched it completely and were quite preplexed until they noticed a tin of tennis balls.

They trained the dope doggie with a tennis ball full of pot.

Fish: noted and appreciated!

So I guess the way to smuggle pot is to hide it in tennis balls, then.

(Getting the tennis balls into the rectum is left as an exercise for the smuggler).

The dogs are originally acquired from breeders in Germany or Austria. All of the pups are sent to The Academy. If they don’t quickly show a talent for searches, they’re adopted out as family pets.

Those that graduate are given to handlers. The dogs usually live with their handlers, though, of course, they’re “working dogs” and treated a bit differently than your average pet dog.

Most handlers keep them as pets after the dogs retire. The trainer we know has been doing this for years, and has several retirees on her large farm. Not all handlers are so attatched, though, so the dogs are adopted out-- generally to employees of the prisons.

She was telling us just a couple of weeks ago that one of her retired dogs was getting upset when he would see her leave with the new drug dog, so she sets up easy “busts” for him at new locations to keep him from getting depressed.

BLAST YOU, Leaper!!

Beat me to it.

<sulks>

I can’t think of it’s name (and whoever can gets the credit) but there was a movie made in the 1960s about the global effort to suppress narcotics smuggling. In one scene they showed drug-sniffing dogs and their handler explicitly said that they’d been addicted to heroin, and were kept on maintainence doses. I remember the remark “like a alcoholic who gets one drink a day”. This movie wasn’t necessarily accurate but may have popularized the notion that drug-sniffing dogs are addicts.

He should count his blessings. When I was there, the dog had a habit of peeing on the pax’s luggage…no alert, he was just…excitable(the handlers said). :confused: