Mr. Pedden,

I share your concern relative the courts (sometime) apprehension of trainers and handlers. As with most bad case law, it usually stems from taking shortcuts, not paying attention to detail or "fudging" the truth. As a commissioned officer and the Director of Canine Services for a State agency, I'm frequently called upon as an "expert" witness (translates to I'm old). Too often the documentation of training of actual utilization of a dog is woefully inadequate. Even to support the nebulous USC statement of a "well-trained dog. Handlers are notorious for making claims relative the proficiency of thier dogs that are hard for me as a trainer to believe let alone a judge and or jury. I've always supported a national certification, however it's not always a popular area of discussion among trainers. Dog training is not smoke and mirrors. It is applied operant conditioning that results in an observable, measurable, and predictable behavior. I'm afraind the attempted use of anything other than a standardized method of documenting the dogs training, use and proficiency will haunt us all one day.

DFrost

Mr. Hasley,

In the early 70's there was extensive research relative canine olfaction conducted by Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio Texas. All studies were conducted using double blind studies. The research centered on training dogs on pure heroin, that was continually washed with nitrogen through gas flow bottles. Once the dogs were trained on the pure heroin, the heroin was then allowed to acetalate, and was cut with several different diluents. Tests were continually run using pure heroin, the acetalated heroin and heroin with the different diluents added. Of course the diluents were run seperately as distractors. The outcome, regardless of the purity of the heroin, whether acetalated, diluted or pure, the dog maintained a better than 95% proficiency rate. The dogs did NOT respond on the diluents or the acetic acid. While it is impractical for dog trainers to maintain thier supply of training drugs in gas wash bottles, I believe training on the purest drugs possible is the best way to go. Unless there is a chemical reaction from a diluent, the odor of the drug is still there and can be discriminated from among the other odors. Like a Secret Service agent, that works counterfeit money once told me, The only preperation he did for detecting funny money, was to study real money, the more he knew about the real stuff, the easier it was to detect the funny stuff. Oh well, my opinion for what it is worth.

DFrost

With respect,

My concern is not weather the dog will be able to find the narcotic when cut after being trained on the most purest form of the narcotic. My concern is that the psuedo does not represent the entire spectrum of targeted scent found in the actual drug but an isolated segment. If you train with the real narcotic you are getting the full rage of that narcotic as well as the cut components. The dog looking for the “red shaded marbles” will still find it with the contaminated materials that would be represented as another color completely in my working model where each marble would represent one particle scent.

So unless psuedo carries the entire scent of the pure narcotic then the dog trying to isolate the psuedo scent does not find the full spectrum it was trained on with the real deal. At a glace this could be a strong argument for the validity of the use of psuedo because it “proves” it works like using pure training aids. What id does not explain is why many dogs trained on the pure real drug will not indicate on it psuedo equivalent. Ad this with the evidence the dog can and will hit on other chemical agents not related to the drug and we are reaching further into the compounds or compound in the chemical makeup.

The question is: What other components not related to narcotics directly and are found commonplace like aspirin, will breakdown and can mimic (maybe not exactly) the “shades" of the isolated fractions used in pseudo?

This question, combined with the possibility I am correct about scent detraction before discrimination, leaves room for error not in the dog's ability to find real narcotics but a hole nevertheless that can be exploited about false positives I think.

Mr Hasley

I totally agree. I've never used psuedo, won't use psuedo and won't allow the dogs in our unit to train with psuedo.

DFrost

For the sake of humanity can a moderater please close this post!!!!!!!!!!!

Why?

An honest forthright discussion among dog trainers and handlers is always interesting to me. As with most professions, I would think we are all after the same goal. We often just take different routes to get there. Use of psuedo is just one of those discussions that is hard to stay out of. Some use it, some avoid it. The discussion however will always be there. I never forget that the only thing two trainers will ever agree on is: the third one is wrong. I enjoy the discussion, i'm sure this discussion will die on it's own volition, and then, surprise, it will be back.

DFrost