Avoiding pursuit with dogs. Let's continue / School of survival / Don't get lost

Substances that negatively affect the acuity of smell in dogs

As a rule, the following compounds have a negative effect on the acuity of smell:

Various types of pepper. They are used by many criminals and dog hunters in an attempt to harm service and ordinary dogs. However, such products are quite safe for the animals themselves; their effect usually ends after a few hours. It is enough for the dog to rest properly and breathe clean air so that his sense of smell is gradually fully restored.

Almost all types of automotive chemicals , including oils, antifreeze, etc. It is highly undesirable to let your dog into the garage while your car is being serviced! A pet, “sticking its nose” where it shouldn’t, can be left without a sense of smell for a long time!

Substances and compounds used during repairs (paints, mastics, solvents, etc.). If a large-scale renovation is planned for the house, it is better to relocate the dog somewhere during this time. This approach will not only preserve the pet’s sense of smell, but will also protect the animal from constant stress (which will not have the best effect on its health).

Chasing with dogs. How to throw a dog off the scent!

Dogs are very well adapted for stalking and scent tracking. They have a very sensitive nose that can smell you! However, there are ways that can throw a dog off the scent!

For a dog to successfully find you, a small, calm breeze is best suited because it is the one that perfectly carries your scent, which the dog uses to navigate. It is much more difficult for it to work in strong gusty winds, as well as in the complete absence of wind. Also, heavy rain (especially with a thunderstorm) can come to the rescue, although it is not as effective as a gusty wind, it still washes away your tracks and the stronger it is, the less time it will take, but time is needed, and the dog can manage to pick up the trail.

The direction of the wind also plays a big role in the process of your detection; if you run against it, the smell will be carried with the wind, and if along it, the dog will have to sniff the ground, which can significantly slow it down.

Pay attention to the terrain and landscape. If there is a fence in front of you, or some kind of obstacle that you can climb over despite a more convenient path nearby, climb over! And when overcoming an obstacle, try to jump as far away from it as possible. Even a small fence can throw a dog off the scent, but something larger, such as a two-meter concrete wall, will do the job best. Not only can a dog physically not overcome it only with the help of a person, but your scent itself may be lost.

If it happens in a city, you need to use crowds of people, municipal buildings in which you can disappear. In more open areas, such as rural areas, the entanglement method is suitable. The goal is to confuse not only the people following your trail, but also the dog itself. To do this, when rushing past some object (be it a building or a group of trees, bushes), it makes sense to run around it, and then trample false tracks to the sides, moving away from the circle ten meters each time, there is a chance that the dog will peck at the false track and will get confused. Now you need to enhance the effect, make another circle moving two hundred meters away from the first, make false tracks, the size of the second circle should be made at least 100 meters. After that, climb into some bushes or climb over a fence and leave. Naturally, there must be time for such maneuvers.

A river is a good way to lose track, but first you need to break away from the chase in order to quietly approach the river and swim across. In addition, you can try to mask your smell and influence the animal’s sense of smell. Sprinkle the place where you are staying and following with pepper, spray the grass with perfume, scatter pieces of rotten meat, etc. The main thing is to reduce the smell. However, the more tricks you use, the more chances you have.

A few more facts about the work of search dogs: it has been noted that the use of dogs in mountainous areas has worse results than at the foot of the mountain and on the plain. The performance improves if the relative humidity increases, so during drizzling rain the detection range increases! At low humidity the results are opposite.

Even solar radiation affects the quality of trace detection; with a low radiation balance the results are good, but with a high balance they drop by almost half. Elevated soil temperatures negatively affect work, and when it’s hot, the dog gets tired quickly; sand that gets into the bloodhound’s respiratory tract is also detrimental. Search activities are worst for dogs in the period from 11 to 16 hours; the rest of the time they are better, especially at night.

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pluvo27 01/29/2016 Survival Instructions on how to confuse a dog, how to throw a dog off the scent, how a dog follows a scent, search dogs No comment

Natural factors that impair the sense of smell in dogs

Purely natural environmental factors can lead to a deterioration in the sense of smell:

Heat. As we wrote above, the sharpness of a dog’s sense of smell largely depends on the volume of mucus synthesized. And if it’s too hot indoors/outside, there may not be enough of it, and as a result, the dog’s sense of smell noticeably deteriorates.

Low air humidity. For the reasons described above, it also has a bad effect on the sense of smell (little mucus, the membranes of the nasal cavity dry out).

Air dustiness. A large amount of debris in the mucous secretion of the nasal cavity significantly impairs the dog’s ability to recognize odors.

High level of solar radiation (searching for traces on a hot and sunny day is an undertaking with dubious prospects).

Is it possible to deceive a service dog? ONT experiment on the eve of the II European Games

Very soon, not even in the virtual world, but in reality. Well, or on TV – we will cover the 2nd Despite the reach and popularity of the Internet, the level of trust in television remains high, sociologists say. Plus, television is much safer. And in order to make the stay of guests and athletes in Belarus safe and comfortable, a variety of services will be involved.

If you imagine a dog lover’s rainbow dream, most likely it will be exactly like this. Plush dogs and puppy delight - a real doggy paradise. But! One dog handler team, and here it is - reality: the dog stops being cute and turns into a soldier. Versatile fighters with an exceptional scent. Able to distinguish... two million odors! Just imagine - in their heads these animals have a gigantic card index of different aromas, 100 times larger than the human vocabulary. It's not surprising that service dogs react to drugs like a Geiger counter reacts to radiation. One of these people has a hidden drug - five grams of hashish. Will the dog find him? (see video). People begin working with dogs almost from birth. First, the psychotype is determined. Only choleric and sanguine people are hired for service - they get along better with people and are amenable to training. As soon as the puppy turns one year old, he is given an owner.

Ivan Shkarovsky, head of the canine service of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus:
“We are trying to find the same military personnel, with the same temperament. A person and a dog must find a common language. Before a dog handler comes to us, we prepare him mentally, physically and psychologically to work with a service dog.”

They train for four months. After obedience courses, teenagers are divided into specializations: guard - for protection, search - for searching for people, explosives and narcotic substances. Animals are taught to follow only one scent, which the dog handler pointed out. We decided to check whether a dog could find a person in the city: among an endless variety of smells and irritants (see video). Sometimes people forget to lock their cars, and something can be stolen from them. For example, a mobile phone. In such cases, a service dog is involved in the search for the criminal.

Neither the noise of traffic, nor the smell of cats and other dogs from the private sector, nor the scorching sun threw the dog off the scent. To achieve such concentration, dog handlers conduct constant training. As a reward - a treat or toy. Oris Mars Gwen Blade is a “game” dog. The titled handsome man with the count's name has found about eight kilograms of drugs over the past year - and that's hundreds of arrests. And all for the sake of this toy.

Denis Demyanov, cynologist instructor:
“We carry out searches both indoors and in apartments, and search vehicles and carry-on luggage locally. A lot of work for a dog - in different conditions, with different stimuli. It went off and indicated with a signal position where narcotic substances were subsequently found.”

Any breed of dog can be trained, but dog handlers are especially fond of shepherd dogs - they are physically hardy, easy to train, and more calmly experience a change of owner.

Valery Muraveiko, head of the service-search dog kennel of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Minsk City Executive Committee:
“We are ready to go to a crime scene where a dog of its category is needed: to search for traces, for drugs or for criminal burials.”

Right now, dog handlers, together with other services, are ensuring public order and safety on the main sports ground of the 2nd European Games. In general, how events of this level will go depends on many factors. And safety is one of the most important. Law enforcement efforts must be effective, but not excessive. It is in this spirit that we intend to act in Belarus. Dynamo Stadium is a sports facility that will soon attract the attention of millions. The stands can accommodate more than 20 thousand spectators, and under one of the seats we hid a dummy explosive impregnated with TNT. Let's see if the service dog can cope with such a test (see video). Dog handlers inspect every car. And if the dog gives a signal about the presence of explosive objects, sappers will arrive on the scene. The performance of the animals is constantly checked. If the dog is tired or exhausted by the heat, it is immediately changed.

Alexander Bakun, chief specialist in the canine service of the main directorate of the commander of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus:
“About 100 service dogs are used to ensure public order at the II European Games. The facilities are guarded around the clock and are on duty for 12 hours. The task is made a little more difficult by weather conditions, but we have reserve dogs and veterinary service specialists.”

Now preparations are in full swing at the Dynamo stadium for the opening ceremony of the main games of Europe; more than 50 trucks enter the territory every day, less at night, but nevertheless the dog handlers have enough work. They will perform the same functionality during games - just as quietly and unnoticeably as they do now.

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What smells dogs can't stand?

The main natural smells that dogs don't like are citrus fruits. This property served as the basis for a technique that will help wean a dog from an unwanted action, for example, barking. There are collars that release strong citrus scents when a strong sound vibration is detected. In order not to encounter an unpleasant odor, the dog will not bark again.

Powder or crushed red pepper, placed in a place that the dog has begun to spoil, can wean him from bad actions. By the way, if your pet is still a puppy, then the pepper should be wrapped in a piece of gauze or bandage to avoid possible burns. Do you want to eliminate your pet's habit of chewing shoes? Then rub it with hot pepper. Usually, after the first such procedure, the dog no longer shows increased interest in the boots.

What smell do dogs not like? Another educational tool for a pet can be shag. To wean your dog off a bad habit, you need to sprinkle cigarette tobacco in the area where the animal likes to misbehave. You can also use an infusion of shag. To do this, you need to steam the tobacco in half a glass of boiling water for 45 minutes. Then soak the problem area in the house with the strained liquid.

Artificial scents that repel dogs

To the question: “What smell can dogs not tolerate?” The answer is simple - almost all synthetic odors. Even freshly bleached trees, which emit a specific smell, cause disgust. The most hated home remedy that dogs try to get away from as far as possible is bleach. The dog will also not want to deal with the similar pungent and fetid smell of welding carbide. This substance causes the “fragrant wave” to spread over tens of meters around, and when it comes into contact with water, the plume becomes simply creepy.

Pets dislike citrus and anti-smoking air fresheners so much that they leave the room.

With the help of volatile organic compounds, which cannot be avoided without alcohol, gasoline, toluene, ethers, solvents and paints, you can rid your dog of the desire to do bad things. The method is simple - moisten a cotton pad in this product and place it in the desired place.

4.2.4. Dogs

The dogs perform three types of searches: people, drugs and explosives.
In the US, most police and military dogs are trained at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. The dog and handler need to be trained together, because in the future they will work as one team. The training course lasts about two months, and then the dog and handler take an exam, in which they must correctly complete approximately 95% of the tasks. Usually dogs are trained to search for either people and drugs, or people and explosives, but never for explosives and drugs at the same time. The fact is that these two types of smells can confuse dogs, which is why “bomb dogs” and “drug dogs” serve in the detective service.

A huge advantage of dogs is their speed of work. A dog can search, for example, an airliner and a passenger's luggage in about half an hour, but a team of observers will need eight hours to conduct a thorough search and make sure there are no explosives on board. This is especially important these days, as there are many false phone calls about alleged bombs. Their number is so great that without dogs, special units would be faced with a difficult dilemma: either delay, in our example, flights for a long time, or take a big risk by sending planes without a search.

In the same way, dogs are trained to detect drugs, which greatly speeds up the work of security guards and customs officers. Although criminals have developed their own measures against such dogs, drug searches are more effective with them. Dog handlers are unlikely to like this, but we still note that sniffer dogs are easily vulnerable.

Their weakness is in the very method of searching, in the sense of smell. It is easy to distract a dog from a hidden item or even disrupt its sense of smell. An ancient remedy against bloodhounds is a mixture of dried blood, gunpowder and pepper. Soon they found a stronger substance - cocaine. This is a drug that acts as a local anesthetic and numbs the dog's senses for several hours. Nowadays, there are stronger and faster-acting local anesthetics that are sold without a prescription. There are various tanning lotions that contain punercaine or dibucaine. There are also pain-relieving ointments that are sold under different names, for example “Nupercaine”, “Orangel”, etc.

All of them are suitable for this purpose. If mixed with an animal's blood, the mixture will attract the dog long enough for the anesthetic to take effect and disrupt its sense of smell.

Another way to deceive a dog. Let's say you need to mask a person's smell. To do this, you just need to leave traces of his blood or a note in different places, a few drops are enough.

A drug-trained dog can be tricked by leaving scattered traces of drugs nearby. Marijuana leaves have a very strong smell, and if you rub these leaves on different places in the house, the dog will raise a false alarm so many times that its handler will stop searching. Drug dogs are especially sensitive to cocaine. If you scatter a little cocaine on the floor, the dog will certainly become interested in it. And this will be the last smell she smells for the next few hours.

Explosives have a characteristic odor of nitrates, and dogs are trained to detect bombs. You can deceive such a dog by rubbing a piece of plastic explosive on your luggage or suitcase, especially if this luggage belongs to several different people.

Dogs are very attracted to certain aftershave lotions and react to them as if they were explosives. This can be used to “disguise” real explosives.

Once you become familiar with the searchers' methods, you will have a better idea of what you will have to face to keep your secret. Although at first glance it seems that those who search are great professionals and you can’t hide anything from them, they do not work as efficiently as they would like to show you. Proof of this is the huge number of various illegal items on the territory of our country. And if they find something, it is only because of the stupidity or extreme bad luck of the one who hides it.