A trainer shows how to teach a drug-detection dog to recognize heroin after it's already imprinted on cocaine. Using a "pay on sniff" method, the trainer places the new odor in a familiar location, rewards the dog immediately when it detects it, then moves the scent around to confirm learning and test with blank controls.
Chapters
Bang bang! Welcome to our short set today. Today we're going to discuss imprinting on new odors. So after we've completed the initial imprinting process, where we teach the dog how to search for odor and we teach them the final. Now it's a matter of adding more odors to that portfolio. So today I got some drug dogs that we're gonna— they already know the odor of cocaine. That's the odor they've been initially imprinted on. And now we're going to imprint some new odors. So we're going to put some heroin on them. Once we have our process going forward and we've taught the dogs how to search around vehicles, and they understand how to locate odor and final on odor. Now it's just a matter of adding new odors to that profile, and it's just as simple as adding value to it. So there's many techniques individuals use. The one that I like using the most and probably the simplest is just to pay on sniff. So I'm going to use place association by putting that new target odor in an area where our K9 has located a target odor before and knows that area very well. And as soon as I see the dog inhale on the source of the odor, I'm simply just going to pay that right at source so that the dog understands that, yes, there's value to that odor and we want them to locate that odor. So put— applying that value through the reward allows the dog to memorize and process that odor. And then from there, we start moving the odor around just to make sure that it is confirmed that dog has learned that odor. And then we just wait them out to get that final response. If they don't provide us with a final response, we may continue paying on the sniff or we may just assist them into the final response. From my experience, it's usually best to just let the dog figure it out. And if they know how to locate the target odor and final on it, Adding a new target odor is just as easy. That's all right, leave it there. We're going to reconfirm it. Now he finaled himself, which that tends to happen because sometimes they make the association with the, uh, the material that it's made out of, right? Odor. Not the odor, but that's fine because we can still get the odor in there. And then what we can do is, um, work them, put a blank one of those out, and it kind of just a process of elimination. No, they sniff it. He might be using his eyes. Find it. It's okay, we'll ignore him. He's got to understand that the only thing that's going to get him paid is him smelling the odor. That a boy! All right, and then we go ahead and move it one more time to confirm, and you can see on that one He's actually driving and sniffing it, which is exactly what we want. That's up in the B-pillar. Let him sniff. There. Wind's blowing out this way. Good boy. All right, we'll wait for the final on this. Unlocate it. No, find it. There you go. Get up, boy! Good man! Love him up, put him up! Thank you guys for joining us. I hope you enjoy the tapes.
