It’s a dog’s life
Following up on our dogs of war article from earlier this year, Move One Pet Transportation decided to run an individual piece specifically focused on sniffer dogs, praising their loyalty and courage.
Working dogs provide an important function in our lives, especially where their abilities eclipse our own. These abilities are in constant demand, following the changing needs and expectations of society. As well as detection dogs, there are guard dogs, police dogs, herding dogs, hunting dogs, sled dogs, or service dogs for the disabled, etc., that assist people everyday.
In particular, the adoption of dogs for search and rescue, military or law enforcement purposes is well known and practiced all over the world. Detection dogs are trained to use their sense of smell to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs or blood. Even as you read this, a group of trained dogs are on the front line in Afghanistan, assisting US Marines by sniffing out explosives.
The canine nose can detect a seemingly infinite range of odors, alone and in combination, and at concentrations down to the parts per trillion level. Detection dogs are able to discern individual scents even when those are combined or masked by other odors, and can detect things that have been left for as long as 10 years or detect blood even if it has been scrubbed off surfaces. In one case a woman tried to smuggle marijuana into a Brisbane (Australia) jail. She had hidden the drugs in her bra, inside a balloon that was smeared with coffee, Vicks VapoRub and pepper, but still couldn’t fool the professional snout and was arrested.
Dogs that search for missing humans are generally not considered detection dogs (although there is some overlap in the case of cadaver dogs that are trained to detect human remains), but are frequently in the public eye, helping search and rescue teams in disaster areas.
However, not every dog can be used for detection and only about 30 percent of naturally-born sniffer dogs can make the grade. Finding and training good sniffer dogs is difficult. For this reason and to help lower costs, South Korea’s customs service have deployed the world’s first cloned sniffer dogs created by the same team of scientist who created Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog. The Canadian Labrador retriever puppies showed better performances during the training than their conventionally bred counterparts. Scientists at Seoul National University say that 90 percent of cloned dogs could make the grade if the program continues.
Move One Relocations’ Pet Transportation department not only helps relocate family pets to their owners’ new destinations, but also delivers professional detection dogs to less accessible, hard to reach locations wherever their services are needed.
In the past three years, Move One has sent a total of 26 sniffer dogs from the Mine Detecting Dog Center for South-East Europe to Azerbaijan, Lebanon and Iraq along with consignments of special food and handling equipment for the working dogs. Last year, we also moved 14 dogs within Afghanistan from Kabul to Herat with an additional shipment this year in April, where we handled five dogs coming in to Kabul from a South African training center.
The job of a sniffer dog in a war zone can be just as dangerous as that of the soldiers they are helping on the battlefield. Unfortunately Move One had to learn this firsthand. In mid January last year, a Belgian Shepherd named Arissa was injured on a mission in Afghanistan and lost one of her legs. Because of poor veterinary services in Kabul, her owner (a UN employee) decided to send the dog to Croatia for a very complicated surgery while she was there on her leave. Move One provided all services necessary to complete Arissa’s shipping and when she finally recovered, arranged her move back to Kabul as well.
In short, even with today’s state-of-the-art, high-tech equipment, we would not be able to do that without a little help from our canine friends.
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