SNIFFER DOGS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT

CALGARY -- Canada Customs admits its trained dogs sometimes bark up
the wrong tree when sniffing out suspected smugglers and luggage.

"It is possible," said Jim Roberts, the national co-ordinator of the
customs' detector dog service program.

"The dogs will play games; if they get frustrated and the master
doesn't read them properly, they get frustrated and then they'll start
doing what they call false alerts."

Maybe that's what happened to Richard Burleson, a placid cigar-smoking
music professor. Police ended up escorting him to the basement cells
at the Winnipeg airport because a dog "indicated" his suitcase carried
a stash of drugs.

"I was surprised the RCMP officer said, 'Judging by the way the dog
indicated on your suitcase, we're expecting heavy duty drugs in your
bag,' " Burleson said.

Police found nothing.

In Calgary, a woman who was working at the airport lost her job after
a dog singled her out.

Customs found nothing on Rebecca Wolfchild. She suspects her native
custom of burning sweetgrass. The dog got a whiff of sweetgrass,
which, when burned in aboriginal ceremonies, has a similar smell to
marijuana.

In both cases, custom officials denied their specially trained canines
made a mistake.

The 36 customs dogs posted across Canada have made 771 drug busts
since last April.

But an informal survey by Canada Customs found five of their dog
handlers saying the dogs aren't always on the right track.

"It appears that approximately 95 per cent of all referrals that are
made, they are either getting a drug seizure, traces of drugs, or an
admittance of either previously using drugs or being in contact of
someone who has," said Tom Prosper of Canada Customs.

But in five per cent of cases, customs officials have a hard time
making sense of why the dogs smelled something funny.

America's top dog in such matters says the four-legged hairy sleuths
are sometimes simply wrong.

"Certainly, the dogs do make false positive responses," said Jim
Johnston of the Institute for Biological Detection Systems in Auburn,
Ala.

The mistakes are usually caused by poor training or the dog's
background, Johnston said.

But a dog's nose usually knows because it is 1,000 to 10,000 times
more sensitive than a human's, Johnston said.

"Dogs live in an odour world," he said.

Dogs are capable of discriminating between several chemicals in an
object, whereas humans would just smell one odour.

But the dogs' keen smell can backfire.

Sometimes they pounce on a suitcase that was next to another suitcase
with drugs in it, Johnston said.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady