Explosives detection dog

Explosives detection dog at work

Minesweeper in the Syrian Civil War

An explosives detection dog is a service dog that has been trained to detect explosives (also in mines and other weapons) by their smell .

education

The training takes place on the play behavior of the dog by giving the person a toy, e.g. B. a Bringsel (from bring back) prepared with small samples of explosives. The dog later associates the smell positively with "playing" and is so strongly motivated. The training here is the same as for the drug sniffer dog , only with different odorous substances.

When finding an object, the dog must behave passively : he sits down to the display and thus makes the find clear. Active behavior (e.g. by scratching the object) would be dangerous or even fatal for the dog and dog handler as this could trigger the explosives.

Studies are available on the difficulties of conditioning search dogs and the possibilities of failure in well-trained animals.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ RJ Harper, JR Almirall, KG Furton: Identification of dominant odor chemicals emanating from explosives for use in developing optimal training aid combinations and mimics for canine detection. In: Talanta . 67 (2), Aug 15, 2005, pp. 313-327. Epub 2005 Jul 1. PMID 18970171
2. ^ I. Gazit, A. Goldblatt, J. Terkel: The role of context specificity in learning: the effects of training context on explosives detection in dogs. In: Anim Cogn. 8 (3), Jul 2005, pp. 143-150. Epub 2004 Sep 23. PMID 15449101