what are drug sniffing dogs actually looking for???

i was reading another thread about drug sniffing dogs and whatnot. it got me thinking, what are the dogs specifically trained to smell?

if you take the 100% of the crystals off the bud, you are a left with plant matter that still smells like.............WEED. so if you have something like budder, are the dogs smart enough (or beter yet, well trained enough) to smell a nearly pure extract?

now, ive never smelled budder, but i do plan on making it in the near future.

ive also heard pure thc has no scent. somehow i dont believe that. which is actually the basis of my question.

dogs can smell a pot seed from about 20 feet away...

What he said....

....im not talking about pot seeds...?...im talking about budder or pure thc.

JUST FOR FUN, I trained my dog to search for weed. I used nugs, but she will also hit on empty pipes and bowls. I have never tried concentrate. I just happen to have some IWE sitting around. I will try and report back.

Ok, here is the deal, you look at a bowl of stew, you see carrots, meat, gravy, peas etc with your eyes you see each piece. A dog smells like you see. That is why they can smell through just about anything. When they train them they start out by rubbing a ball in weed. That smell pretty much stays there for as long as you or I could ever smell it but the dogs can. You can not beat the dogs dont try. They win everytime.

you dont understand what i am saying....you say they are using a BUD for the training. how do you know that the dog isnt honing in on another ingredient in the plant matter?

goldowitz.....thanks for being the only one so far that knows what the hell im talking about. let me know how it turns out.

and btw, i am more than familiar with how dogs smell. which is partly why i am questioning this in the first place. if the thc is like the carrots, how do you know the dog isnt learning to look for the smell of the 'onion' in the 'stew'?

I had a link to an article from some guy that trained them forever but cant find the darn thing. I hear what your saying, could be hoining in on another part of the plant etc. I wish I could find the article it was very long but very informative. My gf trains dogs, not drug sniffers, but she knows her shit. I let her read it and the bottom line we came up with was screw it, cant beat the damm things. Might be anything I went to cancun a while back, I know there is a dog at the luggage pick up as I have seen them before. The luggage I use is in the grown room and had recently harvested so I went over by the dog on purpose knowing I had nothing in there to see if it would hit on the luggage and it did not. Not even a second look just walked right by me and on to the next piece.

fonzirelli said:

you dont understand what i am saying....you say they are using a BUD for the training. how do you know that the dog isnt honing in on another ingredient in the plant matter?

goldowitz.....thanks for being the only one so far that knows what the hell im talking about. let me know how it turns out.

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i know what you're saying.. what exactly about weed is the dog smelling and knowing as weed?/ is it the trics, the plant matter, what part, i get it..
and where did the person who said a dog can smell a seed at 20 feet get that info from?? got any links or anything for that?

well, a seed from 20 ft actually seems reasonable to me, but would have to be proven for me to stand behind it. dogs can definately smell things from many many yards away. but yea, seeds dont smell much, if at all, so maybe, maybe not.

Here are my results:

She will find a nug by itself or in a nug jar, no problem. She will hit on other people that have weed on them, if I tell her to search. She will find an empty pipe (resin), no problem. This was my first time using a concentrate. I used a glass jar with IWE. She was able to find the jar, both with and without the lid. I wanted to make sure that she was not just smelling my scent, so I dumped out a dap worth of the stuff. When I ordered her to search, she went right over to the location of the IWE, but did not hit on it. I could tell that she smlled it, but I think she was confused about what to do with it.

In the past, she has only searched for nugs, jars, pipes and bowls. I think she just needed something viable to pick up. I again ordered her to search and she did stick her nose into the dap and hit on it. IMHO, a dog that is trained to smell weed will also hit on concentrate.

i have to ask, wtf is iwe m8??

Ice Water Extract, a.k.a. bubble hash

Goldowitz said:

Ice Water Extract, a.k.a. bubble hash

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duh, ok, lol..

I'd say if a dog really can smell a seed from 20 feet away (which is a huge ammount less smelly than hash). It'd probably find some extracts way easier.

Dogs are the shit thats all there is to it. So if you get a drug dog called on you its over.

ok, so you used bubble hash and it was harder to detect. this is very good. so im guessing that they would still be able to hone in something like budder, but it would be much more difficult. however, you are using hash, which still has other things apart from thc. as a result, weve concluded that it is not in the plant matter. but it seems like the dog may have recognized the thc, but was thrown off cause it was lacking scents of stuff in the plant matter. this is interesting to me on many different levels. i mostly wanna know this just cause i was curious. and god forbid i do have to have something on me while traveling, i can feel better with just a little bit of budder instead of a big bag of smelly weed knowing that it will be harder to hone in on it. generally tho, i leave my shit at home.i just roll a nice fatty, and if i get pulled over, just eat it.

This is all just speculation, but I think she hesitated because she only saw a dap of powder and not something tangible, like a jar. She picked up on the smell right away. I would guess that if it has THC in it, a dog can smell it.

I don't think there is a definitive answer on exactly what the dog is indicating, simply because cannabis probably has a wide variety of odors the dog smells that we can not.

Leaf material, stems, buds, resin, all may have unique aromas that are beyond our capability to detect, but may be easy for the dog. So a concentrate may still be recognizable as a part of the whole, and would warrant an indication by the dog. The goal of the trainer is to create an association between the scent item, and the reward. However, while that scent item is just ONE scent to us, ie cannabis, the dog is more than likely creating a multitude of scent associations because they can probably smell a bunch of different scent properties cannabis has that we are not aware of.

Dogs are smart, and they're also greedy in that they will go with the "close enough" option to get the reward, if they are allowed to. So while a concentrate may not carry all of the aromas, in the dogs mind, it's probably "close enough" because it is a part of the whole it was rewarded for in the past.

I imagine it would be similar to us if we were told to "find the car". We see the car, no problem, there it is. However, if you only see a wheel, we would assume that there is a car attached to it somewhere and look harder, or we'd try to get the reward for at least finding a part of the car.

In the end, it's always easier to defeat the handler than it is the dog, as the human is the weak link in that particular team, for tracking or scent work.