I'm new to the forums and to the whole dog training thing so bear with me. I've been in law enforcement for 16 or so years and our new chief is pro-dog, whereas the old one wasn't. I've got a 9 month old male GSD who is currently away getting some obedience work done, beyond what I felt comfortable teaching him.

He loves to play "fetch" and will get whatever I throw as long as I'm throwing it and isn't real crazy about giving it back. We also play hide-and-seek with a "Chill Pill" toy. I hide the toy with him out of the room, usually in some articles of my clothing, and then bring him into the room and let him find it. He scratches for it then I reward him.

My question is this-Where should I start training him as far as narcotics detection? I'm going to build a scratch box but it's my understanding that boxes will come later in his training. Thanks for the help.

Considering he is not trained yet, i would say train him to sit and stair rather then scratch, i got to run now but i will get back to this soon.

And to my understanding box's are the first thing you do to get the dog to recognize the odor.

To me the first thing that comes is OB. If your still having problems with the "out" then you should work on that a bit more before you work on detection.

If i was put in charge of training a detection dog the first thing i would start with is the wall, what it basically is is a wall with lots of holes cut in it and PVC pipe in it to, big enough to have a good amount of holes 20ish maybe and tall enough so a man can stand behind it and not worry about being seen by the dog, the holes are always in pairs, one above the other, the bottom one with the training aid in it and the top one for the other person to toss the toy through. Thats a very rough description but you get the idea.

Now i say a passive response for a few reason, the main reason is we train are dogs to scratch and park when searching for people, so i don't want to be running in there after a person when i should be calling EOD or the Narc unit, and i don't want to be calling EOD or the Narc unit when i should be calling SRT/SWAT.

Of course lots of people use the scratch response with great success, but i just don't see a benefit to it.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

As I said I'm pretty new to all of this, so what is "OB"? Also, he has no narcotics training at all. The only training I've been giving him is in obedience, since I thought he has to have at least the basic commands down before starting narcotic detection work.

The reason I'd said I thought I should wait on the scratch box is because I read in another thread that it was best to start that later, but I'm always open to suggestions and help. Also, he won't be used for any kind of bite or tracking work, just narcotics.

OB=obedience.....I get stuck on some of the computer/internet lingo too.

Try this video
http://leerburg.com/109.htm

 Quote: michael henderso

As I said I'm pretty new to all of this, so what is "OB"? Also, he has no narcotics training at all. The only training I've been giving him is in obedience, since I thought he has to have at least the basic commands down before starting narcotic detection work.

The reason I'd said I thought I should wait on the scratch box is because I read in another thread that it was best to start that later, but I'm always open to suggestions and help. Also, he won't be used for any kind of bite or tracking work, just narcotics.

As carol already pointed out OB stands for Obedience.

Even without bitework its just my personal preference for the passive response. And Cindy just pointed out the DVD from this site for you.

Michael (H)

There are several ways to approach this. You can do a search in the Narc and Bomb training sections of the forum archives for some pretty detailed information; but basically your first step is to build your dog's hunting drive. You are already doing this by hiding his toy and having him search for it. Remember though, don't give him any help or clues to where it is hidden, let him find it on his own. Also, I would not put it with your clothing that often, you do not want the dog to learn that he is supposed to search for your scent!

Keep in mind that the dog does not search for drugs (per say); the dog is trained to locate its toy. Later in training, when substance is introduced, the dog is trained to associate the receipt of its toy (reward for indication) to the target odor/s. There are various ways to accomplish this, a scent wall (like Michael mentioned), scent boxes, scratch boxes, etc.

I would recommend searching the archives that I mentioned and sending a few PMs to some of the persons knowledgably involved in some of those topics found therein. As this is an operational subject, you may not get many fish tossing this kind of a hook in the open forum.

He's gotten pretty good at finding his toy and I try to make a big deal out of it when he locates it. I just turn him loose in the room and tell him "find it", and his nose starts working. I'll stop hiding it in my clothes, though; I was using my scent only to mask the scent of the toy. Thanks for the suggestions, that's what I was looking for.