Does anyone know where to get pseudo meth scent or is there such a thing?
Thanx

To my knowledge there is no pseudo meth available.

About 7 years ago Sigma was trying to create a pseudo-meth scent. I don’t think they were successful. About the same time period I used both pseudo and real narcotics for training. I soon discovered an interesting thing...

Dogs trained on pseudo drugs would hit on the real drugs but dogs trained on real drugs would not hit on pseudo. That is if they were good narcotics k9s with proven discrimination work. While a poorly trained narcotics dog will hit on many “odd” scents and can be talk into an indication, top k-9s who are street proven with high certification marks who do not hit on the pseudo-drugs peeks my concern about them.

Since that time I have not been a fan of any pseudo scents.

If you don’t have a DEA research license you can perhaps scent towels at your local PD. Ask the chief or Sheriff if you can place 10 100% cotton towels under bags of street quality narcotics in their evidence safe room. See if you can have them sealed up in a clear odorless container that has been left weathering outside for about 5 days.

The scent will impregnate the towels and you can then place them in a tubing to preserve the life of the scent. You can cut the cloth more cloth = more scent.

You should come to the local law enforcement with your qualifications and you should be qualified to do this type of training.

What I am about to say is not directed specifically at you but all people who want to train “police dogs”.

The fact is we have a glut of poorly trained vended dogs out there. So much so, qualified trainers can runaround the their state and country fixing supposedly well trained dogs and do it as a full time job. This is a problem. If you cannot produce a dog that is street ready and certifiable the day he leaves your hands you are not a good trainer. So be a good trainer.

Good luck

Thankyou for the comments and ideas. I really like the idea about the towels, I never thought of that. I would much rather use the "real thing" but don't have a dea license, maybe someday.
Thanks again

trained on pseudo drugs would hit on the real drugs but dogs trained on real drugs would not hit on pseudo. That is if they were good narcotics k9s with proven discrimination work. While a poorly trained narcotics dog will hit on many “odd” scents and can be talk into an indication, top k-9s who are street proven with high certification marks who do not hit on the pseudo-drugs peeks my concern about them.

If you understand that what you are training the dog on amounts to a scent fraction of the real thing then it also makes sense that the dogs can go from pseudo to real but not real to pseudo. It would be akin to telling someone, point out all the tires here and they point to all the cars present as well as the tires stacked to the side. Then telling someone to point out all the cars w/ tires, the answer is not the same.

Pseudo has a long track record. It is in use by many many training organizations, the US Customs Service (originators of pseudo) and US Border Patrol also. Thousands of highly trained, successful, and court defencible detector dogs are represented by those two organizations alone,
that said, in my training I move from pseudo to real as soon as the dog has an understanding of the task at hand and don't look back.

Kevin, what is the benefit of using pseudo to start a dog anyway if you move to real ASAP?

Originally posted by VanCamp, Robert:
Kevin, what is the benefit of using pseudo to start a dog anyway if you move to real ASAP? Simplicity while doing primary reward systems to start. No worries about spills and toxicity, and record keeping, and loss reports, etc.

The way I described eliminates the debate because it is the real deal and it is safe. Not only does it work I have no concerns about reliability.

As I have said I used both in the past. Breaking down pseudo-cocaine into increments using methelbynzoate and I am talking way down the fractioned parts per-million. It did work, and it was convenient to be able to break down the scents.

I know the courts uphold the cases where pseudo was used and I also know they allow have fairly high find ration as acceptable. (I believe 65% has held) I agree with you Kevin, “If you understand that what you are training the dog on amounts to a scent fraction of the real thing then it also makes sense that the dogs can go from pseudo to real but not real to pseudo.” I just don’t like it. Pseudo-scents are not accepted for certification so I stand on my position and still don’t look back.
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The "I won't train w/ pseudo" argument has been around for 20 years or so. Since there is not ONE appeallete court case that even addresses it I don't worry much about it.
It is a little like way back when I first started w/ police dogs we had this "thing" about using hidden sleeves. We did it because we thought we were making better police dogs, and we whinned about sleeve happy dogs. So we did all kinds of stuff to focus the dogs away from the sleeve believing that there was some problem w/ a dog that really liked the sleeve. In the long run w/ eventually learned that it wasn't liking the sleeve that was the problem but not wanting to fight the man that could be a problem.
It was just that we were adressing perceived problems not actual ones.

Kevin said, 'The "I won't train w/ pseudo" argument has been around for 20 years or so. Since there is not ONE appellate court case that even addresses it I don't worry much about it.'

Training with pseudo is fine and you can get the job started and train all the nuances of searching safely and probably the most compelling reason, conveniently. It was useful to teach the dog scent because it allowed a safe equivalent of a massive amount of narcotics. It is not out of lack of training wisdom I chose to no longer use it. Simply a choice. I like the Non-laboratory appeal to using street quality narcotics that offers slight variation of scent. I think uniform scent of a pseudo-narc is ok to train from the beginning as it seems you do, and there is no doubt it has produced some fine detection dogs..

The fact is it is all about training choice in the end. The “argument” does not exist if both produce quality detection dogs..and they do.