DRUG CATCHER

Dog With Nose For Contraband Is Available For Hire

MAKAWAO -- His sense of smell might be 6,000 times as sensitive as a
human's, and he can sniff out an unopened can of beer stashed in a parked
car.

Sniffing is Custer's favorite activity, and that's fortunate, because he
gets to do little else. Except for his daily training sessions and other
work, the drug-detection dog spends his day in a kennel. He can't be petted,
and he won't even poop or pee except on command.

But when he sees his sniffing harness and knows it's time to go to work,
Custer starts to quiver and dance with excitement. He wags his tail happily
as he busies his nose with rows of lockers and bags.

This dog lives to sniff.

The 2-year-old golden retriever is the first employee of Interquest
Detection Canines of Hawaii, a nose for hire that can detect everything from
alcohol to firearms to illegal drugs.

Company owner and Custer's handler, Whitney White, said she is hoping to
start her business with contracts to patrol private schools and later to
move on to the business sector. State policies don't currently allow the
drug-sniffing dog in public schools.

She already has her first client, Honolulu-based Academy of the Pacific,
where she and Custer will start sniffing in September.

White said she thinks her service will give school principals a tool to
enforce drug prohibitions, by identifying contraband on campus. Without a
dog to signal suspicious bags or lockers, "they have no way of knowing other
than just randomly opening things up."

When doing a search, she'll walk Custer down a row of lockers, watching his
body language as he sniffs each one. He might pause for a more detailed
inspection, but when he's sure he's found something, the signal is clear.
The manic sniffing stops, he plants his rear-end on the ground and gazes at
White expectantly.

That signal gives the dog's handler legal grounds to look for contraband,
White said. If given an "alert," she'll search the locker, bag the material
and deliver it to the principal with details about exactly where it was
found.

"All we do is detect," White said, adding that it's up to the schools what
to do with the information and whether to take disciplinary action.

The company is a franchise of the national Interquest Detection Canines and
isn't associated with the Maui Police Department, which has three
drug-sniffing dogs it uses for law-enforcement work.

White said Interquest's system has stood up to legal challenges over the
past 25 years, in a large part because of the company's strict and detailed
documentation requirements for all cases.

Custer, originally from Mexico, went through four months of training at the
parent company's Houston headquarters in order to become an official
sniffer. Only one out of every 75 dogs submitted for training actually
finishes the course, White said.

She paid "a lot" for Custer, in the range of $5,000 to $10,000, and has a
second dog due to arrive in October for use in Honolulu. The fees she
charges schools will vary according to the size of the facilities and
student body.

White, a lifelong animal lover with three teenaged children, said she wanted
to start a business that would involve dogs, teen issues and community
service.

"I know a lot of what's going on out there, and it's really a critical, sad
situation," she said.

While she said parents she's talked to like the idea of a drug-sniffing
service, she felt that concerned parents shouldn't have much to worry about.
Only nonaggressive breeds like labradors and retrievers are used, the dogs
are trained not to sniff humans, and the action of investigating uses only
the "sit" signal -- no barking, scratching or aggressive behavior.

White said she recommends schools have the dog come twice a month to inspect
select spots on campus, like a row of lockers, a parking lot or book bags in
a classroom.

"Just the presence of the dog at school reminds them this is not a place to
do that kind of stuff," she said.