Detection Training Centers use different styles or techniques in training their dogs, but the foundations that they teach are pretty similar -- regardless of what the dogs are being trained to detect. It could be drugs, alcohol, gunpowder, certain chemicals or even stashes of money.
Dogs are first taught to detect and follow scents by letting them retrieve scent-soaked toys or balls. This develops their ability to retrieve scented objects and when they perform this successfully, they are rewarded immediately. This will make them feel that scent trainings are fun and enjoyable.
After that, the next part of the training is to teach the dog how to respond once the scent is detected and retrieved. Commonly, barking and other aggressive responses are used to indicate if the scent detected is that of drugs or other substances. On the other hand, passive actions such as a “sit” or a “down” are used for gunpowder and explosives.
This second step isn’t an easy task. It requires a lot of repetition and positive reinforcements before the dog gets the idea. According to Steven Sharp, a professional scent dog trainer, what they do is that when the dog located the scented article -- a bomb, for example -- the handler then commands the dog to do the appropriate response -- in this case, “sit”. If the dog obeys, she is rewarded and praised -- physically and verbally. This process is repeated until the dog knows how to respond on her own.
After 20 successful times of retrieving a scent, the trainers then moves along to the next odor. Even if the dog is learning the new scent, she is still constantly trained to detect the last odor she learned -- making the search more complicated. The trainers will try leaving out the substance for a longer period -- making the scent less prominent -- or try hiding it in a more covert place.
The difficulty of the tasks given to the dogs is slowly and gradually increased to challenge their abilities. But not so much that the dogs will fail to retrieve the scent and stop trying.
Training scent dogs doesn’t require them to learn all of the odors, but mostly the scents their future handlers will require them to know. “We don’t ‘finish’ a dog," Steven exclaims. Their future handlers have the liberty to teach their dogs the rest of the scents for them to be able to know how to handle and train their dogs on their own.
Once the handler learns the technique on how to make his dog learn more and more scents, this means that they are already comfortable with each other, which makes them a better team -- also considering the dog’s “new scents."
Copyright (c) 4loveofdogs.com, 2009-2010