Could you guys please explain to me why food rewards arent good for NDD? I know that are some proficient and certified dogs that were taught that way and hit on drugs in real situations ,but i still hearing that it is a bad method? Why?

Thanks
Rafa

Hello,RAFAEL, Let's do this hopefully the easy way I am A dog YOU want me to find drugs anywhere you ask me to so we go to school to find drugs in lockers of kids so I search through the school and hit on a locker and then we have the person that has that locker assigned to them to open there locker so we can get the drugs out but to our suprise we find a cheesburger that will not look to good on my training log that I indicated on a cheesburger if we EVER have to go to court because that might come out in court and we might lose the case. SO let's train by building my drive to find my toy that smells like the drugs you want me to find. Then when we work looking for drugs I find drugs and not food. HOPE this will work for you .

Kevin

You may be correct but this is not the reason to not train with food. Good drug dogs are trained OFF food - so this is really not the issue on food vs. scratch.

No reputable narcotics dog trainer trains a food reward. The US MIlitary used to do this. I understand that they have stopped. It required the trainer to determine what an optimine weight should be on the dog and then maintain 85 or 90% of that wieght - to keep the dog hungry all the time. THIS WAS DROP DEAD STUPID. It did allow the military to train dogs that would not have the correct drive to do normal primary and secondary rewards in training. They found out that this does not work.

I made a post on this the other day. Is there a reason it was removed?

Detector dogs can be trained using food. There are some individuals who like this approach to keep the dogs from becoming hectic as in the case with some really really high prey drive dogs.
I just had a discussion with a German dog handler who had just completed several weeks of work with his dog using food. He was quite satisfied with the results and in fact a little excited about the focus he was able to maintain from his dog with this technique and including a clicker device.
I'm not really an advocate of the clicker or food, although they may have their place.
The biggest reasons to use a prey item is to raise the drive of the dog, increase intensity at the find, and produce enough drive to carry the dog over distractions. The use of the toy should be as a primary reward..........the toy is the find. This is the simplest way to initiate new handlers, new dogs, and to keep potential problems from developing through the learning process for both dog and handler.
This approach has many many years of training and applications throughout detector dog history.
This approach has been proven among many intructors to provide rapid learning for the properly selection tested dog, and great longevity with the fewest problems cropping up over a dog/handler teams carreer.