Poach sniffers....

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azatrox
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Poach sniffers....

Post by azatrox »

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Antonsrkn
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by Antonsrkn »

Agreed it is cool, but I'm surprised it has taken this long and that these are the first wildlife detector dogs, seems like an obvious option with all the other dogs being used to find drugs and food being brought across the border.
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gbin
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by gbin »

My thoughts exactly, Anton. And in addition to "why so late?" I'm sitting here pondering "why so few?" Four dogs for four incredibly large and busy import centers? Really?...

Hopefully the dogs will be every bit as big a success as there's every reason to believe they will be, and the program will rapidly expand.

My wife and I were just discussing how we might use dogs in various wildlife studies we're considering conducting in the near future. Lots of dogs are already being used for such work, of course, as well as in various aspects of law enforcement, search and rescue, airport clearance of nuisance wildlife, medical examination, etc. Still, there's no doubt canine assistance continues to have absolutely huge growth potential.

Gerry
Reptiluvr
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by Reptiluvr »

Aside from what everyone else is also thinking about it, good and bad, I'm curious about one thing. How long does this training process cost and is it expensive? I don't know the first thing about training dogs in a manner like this.
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gbin
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by gbin »

I can't speak to exact dollars and cents, which depend on the application (and would require me to have a better memory for figures than I have ;) ), but relying on dogs' sense of smell is very cost effective for many tasks, and for many others it's essentially the only viable option (you're just not going to find many American marten fecal deposits in the northwoods by looking for them on your own, for example). I'm not under the impression that it takes very long for an appropriate dog to be trained by someone who knows what they're doing, either (it likely takes longer to train a new person to properly handle that dog after its been trained), but I would imagine that reliability requires not only good training but also some degree of maturity on the part of the dog.

There is an issue with using dogs in drug law enforcement (LE), though, that LE doesn't like to talk about. As amazing as dogs' noses are, their ability to pick up and act upon the desires of their handlers is even better. There's lots of evidence to suggest that LE dogs "alert" in response to nonverbal, perhaps even unconscious, cues by their handlers if the handlers aren't very careful to avoid this (and there's unfortunately often plenty of reason why the handlers might not want to be). An officer sees someone he deems suspicious for whatever reason, he sets his dog to searching the person's property and the dog promptly reacts. When no drugs are found, the argument is that the dog detected evidence of their having been there previously - ample grounds in some places, apparently, to confiscate whatever cash and other property in the person's possession that LE wants to confiscate. Pretty appalling, but so far the Supreme Court has been pretty lenient toward the practice. It's hard to imagine that LE could deal with potential poachers the same way, though.

Gerry
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reptilist
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by reptilist »

I'm no fan of police dogs... Police state complacency. Don't wait until they round up your own special interest group with dogs.
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Jeff
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by Jeff »

The recent Supreme Court decision on the matter appears directed toward the private property/search warrant realm, and probably would not apply in ports-of-entry where participants would expect to be searched..

Jeff

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... smell-test
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Crimson King
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by Crimson King »

I believe dogs have been used to sniff out indigos on a few busts in the past...

:Mark
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gbin
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by gbin »

Jeff wrote:The recent Supreme Court decision on the matter appears directed toward the private property/search warrant realm, and probably would not apply in ports-of-entry where participants would expect to be searched..
Nor at increasingly common road checkpoints, where dogs are now frequently used on every car stopped. And I believe the Supreme Court previously ruled against regular and stringent reliability testing being required (as was being sought by folks who were worried that what the dogs were really doing was alerting when their handlers wanted them to alert). That's modern-day America...

Gerry
sawfish
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Re: Poach sniffers....

Post by sawfish »

Sniff, Sniff, blah, blah
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