Training Detector Dogs for Law Enforcement | The Pizza Method or The One-Odor Method

This is the first in a series of videos concerning differing opinions on training detector dogs. There are different opinions on how to introduce new odors during the early stages of training detection dogs. Some trainers strongly believe that their method is the right method. Just to be clear, I consider detector dogs to be law enforcement dogs and not civilian scent work dogs. The scent work dog sports are great sports for civilians but to be clear they are very different than law enforcement detector dog work. They may seem similar, but in fact they are not. One analogy could be those who enjoy trap shooting clay pigeons Vs combat soldiers trained to shoot in a war. One is a sport the other is not. There are basically two groups of detector dog trainers that disagree on how to introduce new dogs to odor. One group is made up of trainers and instructors who have 25 to 30 years of experience in training detector dogs. The second group is made up of mostly of civilians who are relatively new to the discipline. They mistakenly claim they have a better training system that is a faster way to train and it’s based on recent scientific studies. I produced my first narcotics training video back in 1987. In this video, you will see what I believe the scientific papers these trainers refer to are all flawed and lack merit.

Dog's Don't Smell Pizza - Article

K-9 Detector Dog Training with Kevin Sheldahl - Online Course

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When people have specific training questions we recommend that they go to our website and post those questions in the ASK CINDY on the front page of leerburg.com. Cindy has been training dogs since she was a teenager and has competed in several dog sports at a regional and national level. She was also a vet tech and owned a boarding/training and grooming business for many years as well as breeding working Dobermans and Belgian Malinois under the kennel name Kaiserhaus.

Questions posted to ASK CINDY are answered almost every day. They are also recorded in our systems if a dog owner has additional questions Cindy will review the previous Q&As and this helps her give better feedback and assistance.