How do I train my dog to find narcotics?

Question

I have a few training aids, and treats, but I want to know if there are any specific excercises, or tips that I could do to help the training.

Answer 1

People often wonder if dogs sniff out hidden drugs because they want to eat them, or because they're addicted to drugs themselves. In fact, the dogs have absolutely no interest in drugs. What they're actually looking for is their favorite toy. Their training has led them to associate that toy with the smell of drugs. The toy used most often is a white towel. Police dogs love to play a vigorous game of tug-of-war with their favorite towel. To begin the training, the handler simply plays with the dog and the towel, which has been carefully washed so that it has no scent of its own. Later, a bag of marijuana is rolled up inside the towel. After playing for a while, the dog starts to recognize the smell of marijuana as the smell of his favorite toy. The handler then hides the towel, with the drugs, in various places. Whenever the dog sniffs out the drugs, he digs and scratches, trying to get at his toy. He soon comes to learn that if he sniffs out the smell of drugs, as soon as he finds them he'll be rewarded with a game of tug-of-war. As training progresses, different drugs are placed in the towel, until the dog is able to sniff out a host of illegal substances. The same method is used for bomb-detection dogs, except various chemicals used to manufacture explosives are placed in the towel instead of drugs.

Answer 2

I'm sure the act of training your dog to find narcotics is legal. The illegal part comes in possessing those narcotics for training purposes!

Answer 3

When training a dog to do anything you must me consistent. As far as training them to find narcotics I don't have any formal training in that, but I did find this website. Check it out and see if it helps.

Answer 4

A dog should be trained on how to eat, walk with you, not to bark, potty training and sleep on its place etc. You can teach anything to your puppy, dogs get trained easily with some good instructions. If you want some good training tips visit https://tr.im/Umr7X

If properly trained, they should also understand whistle and gesture equivalents for all the relevant commands, e.g. short whistle or finger raised sit, long whistle or flat hand lay down, and so on.

It's important that they also get gestures and whistles as voice may not be sufficient over long distances and under certain circumstances.

Answer 5

Do you even have the neccesary permits to legally posess narcotics to use as training aids?

To do this you must first imprint the scent on the dog. The scent means reward (usually a toy or food).

Answer 6

I think you should leave that type of training to professionals. Don't you need to use the narcotics? Wouldn't narcotics be illegal for you to possess?????

Answer 7

Narcotics dogs are taught to go "find" something that smells a certain way. When they find it, they get praised and rewarded.

Think of it as analgous to teaching the dog to go find anything that has a hot dog smell. Only way to teach them to find something by the smell is to familarize them with the smell and then teach them that finding that smell gets them praise.


You can't teach them to find something by scent if you don't have the object that smells that way.

If you have cocaine sitting around so you can teach your dog to go find the smell of cocaine, you have bigger problems than training a dog. Tough to train the job if you are in jail.

Drug dogs are never trained by wanna-bes or the general public. You have to have the exact drugs in hand to teach the dog to find anything that smells like the drug. Since it is not exactly legal to have supplies of cocaine or marijuna or other illicit rugs is the cabinet, you can't do it.

Answer 8

unless you are a police officer, then DON'T DO THIS. you need a special kind of dog for that work. i am currently working with a narcs dog and she is having a hard time because her dad is an officer but he doesn't want to do the training, therefore she won't work for him. if you are wanting this just to find them on your friends, etc, you are playing with fire. a narcs dog can't be a pet dog the way you might expect, so PLEASE don't go there.

Answer 9

go to yahoo type in drug-dog-training-narcotics then pick a site. or you can buy one for 15,000.00 trained and waiting.

Answer 10

Let him have a whiff when your getting high--he'll like it so good he will start spending all day looking for narcotics