WHEN MAN'S BEST FRIEND BECOMES...A SMUGGLER'S WORST ENEMY

The importance of dogs like Lulu, Chip and Storm in the hunt for
smuggled goods is not to be sniffed at, writes Gemma O'Doherty

The afternoon flight from Amsterdam has just landed and Lulu the
Labrador is getting ready to start work. Customs at Dublin Airport
have received an anonymous tip-off that there may be a batch of
cannabis on board. As the bags come in from the tarmac and the
baggage belt starts to turn, Lulu looks up at her handler, a petite
blonde called Lisa, and waits for a signal.

Lisa fits a yellow harness over the Labrador's head, an indication
that work is about to begin. In that moment, Lulu transforms from a
laid-back, placid pooch into a bounding hound on a mission. She leaps
onto the carousel, ears pricked, head to the ground, and begins her hunt.

Lulu is one of three sniffer dogs based at the country's largest
airport and the only one trained to find drugs. Her finely tuned
nose, 100,000 times stronger than a human's, can sniff out heroin,
amphetamines and cannabis in anything from a baby's nappy to a fake
cereal box. Her sense of smell is so powerful, she can even pick up
the whiff of cocaine from somebody who was at a party where the drug
was in use the night before, even if they never laid a hand on it.

Her colleague, Storm, a black Labrador picked up in a pound, is
specially trained to detect large quantities of cash from the scent
of the dye on banknotes, while Chip, a sweet Springer spaniel, tracks
the smell of tobacco.

A storeroom at Airport Customs holding more than 500,000 contraband
cigarettes is testimony to the work he does for the State every day.
In the last two and a half weeks, his hunting skills have tracked
down 225,800 cigarettes alone.

Recently, a suitcase destined for Amsterdam caught the attention of
Storm. A stash of notes worth €80,000 was hidden inside, believed to
be the proceeds of crime.

This year is proving to be one of the busiest for seizures at Dublin
Airport and the three dogs have been responsible for a high
proportion of them. This week, it was revealed that so far this year,
there have been more than 257 drug finds valued at more than €5m and
resulting in 57 arrests. In 22 separate seizures, cash worth €2.3m
has been found, much of it leaving the country to be laundered, while
25 million cigarettes have been traced, worth a potential loss to
Revenue of €7.5m.

As Lulu zigzags through the luggage on the carousel, a red suitcase
catches her attention. She has been trained to associate the smell of
drugs with her favourite tennis ball. When she tracks down the right
scent, her reward is the chewed-up ball.

She gallops on showing interest in a black hold-all nearby but
returns to her original find, the dubious red bag. Tail flicking
frantically, she sits on it, staring at Lisa and back at the bag,
quietly waiting for her reward. Dogs like Lulu, who work in busy
public areas, are trained to stop and stare at a find in a calm,
controlled manner, rather than bark.

The operation has taken place along a section of carousel out of
public view. If drug smugglers see the dogs in action, they are often
tempted to abandon their bags and make a quick exit. From a distance,
customs officers observe two men picking up the bags and walking
towards the green channel. A search of their luggage reveals Lulu's
hunch was spot-on.

Hidden in the red bag among dirty laundry and some early Christmas
presents is herbal cannabis tightly wrapped in plastic and mixed with
coffee granules to camouflage the smell. The second bag she suspected
also contains the drug. The Gardai are called and the smugglers are
arrested. Lulu returns to her kennel for a rest until the next flight.

It's a small find but her second of the day. Earlier, as she sniffed
her way down a line of passengers disembarking from a Spanish flight,
she pushed her nose into the pocket of a young Dublin woman, stood
back and looked her in the eye.

When this happens, the person is asked if there is any reason why the
dog might react to them in this way.

The woman revealed that she had smoked a joint of cannabis the night
before and had carried a stash of the drug in the pocket of the jeans
she was wearing on today's flight. Her luggage is checked but there
are no drugs in it. She is allowed to travel on.

Lisa is pleased with Lulu's day's work. "Today's seizures weren't
major but they prove to me that she is doing her job very well by
tracking down small amounts of drugs. She picked up the smell of
cannabis from somebody's clothes. In some cases, this can lead to
large quantities elsewhere."

Although her official owner is the State, Lulu lives with Lisa. The
pair, who have worked together for two years, are on-call for Revenue
24-7 and can find themselves in any part of the country at any time.
Lulu's current base is the airport, where she works an eight-hour
shift, five days a week.

"The key to a good sniffer dog is that they stay determined to get
their find, and whether they repeatedly want to chase a ball which is
thrown for them. Some people think that the dogs are given drugs and
that's why they seem to crave them during a search but it's not like
that at all. When they are training, they put, say, cocaine in a box
with a ball. They get the dog hyped up, open the door and the dog
runs in. This can be repeated 50 times or more until the dog learns
to associate finding a drug with finding their ball.

"There was a period recently when Lulu was finding something every
day. I remember one day in February I was doing the Amsterdam flight.
Suddenly she jumped off the baggage belt, pushed the baggage handlers
out of the way, jumped into the bin of luggage and started digging
her way down. All you could see was this big tail wagging in the air.

"I took every single bag out myself and laid them on the ground to
see what she was after. She pinpointed the one she wanted and when we
opened it there was 20 kilos of herbal cannabis in it. That is a huge
find and she did it all on her own."

Mary Mulholland is Storm's handler. The pair work mainly in
departures, tracking suspicious quantities of cash leaving the
country. Today, Storm has picked up a scent on a family jetting off
to Florida on holiday. Just as they are preparing to board their
flight, she reacts to one of their bags. Her instincts are right. A
search reveals €8,000 in notes which they say is their spending money
for the holiday. Customs officers believe they are telling the truth
and the family are allowed to board their flight.

"We were satisfied that was an honest explanation," says Mary. "But
often we get giveaway signs from smugglers when we approach a
departure gate or a group of passengers stepping off a plane. The
search team watches out for signs of avoidance, people holding back
or trying to stay away from the dogs. They might have a bag on one
shoulder which they will move to the other, away from the animal, or
they might just walk away from the baggage belt when they see him.

"These are the sort of things we watch out for. A person's body
language in reaction to the dogs can sometimes lead to a seizure."

As technology advances and canine training becomes more specialised,
sniffer dogs are being used in a growing number of searches. A dog
can screen anything from 100 to 200 bags at a time, their noses
carrying about 220m smelling receptors, 40 times more than a human.

In London, they have been trained to detect the polycarbonate used in
making pirate DVDs and have been instrumental in dozens of arrests
this year. Two Irish-trained Labradors, Lucky and Flo, have achieved
so much success in New York and Malaysia, they are now in worldwide demand.

This new generation of specialised search dogs is being deployed as
part of drugs clampdowns in nightclubs, prisons and schools across
the UK with breathtaking success.

A sniffer dog in Dublin's Mountjoy Prison recently uncovered a
consignment of heroin in a baby's romper suit, worn by a 12-month-old
child. One canine detective in Manchester's Strangeways jail has
become so successful at its job, an underworld contract has been
taken out on it which resulted in a number of "tangible death threats".

In the UK, the use of sniffer dogs for explosives is now commonplace
in public places, but in some quarters, resented. Some human rights
activists believe random sniffing in full view of everyone is an
infringement of personal privacy.

Irish Customs officers hear similar complaints but say the bulk of
the public are very happy to see the dogs.

"The vast majority of people have absolutely no problem with our dogs
having a sniff of them when they get off their flights," says James
Doyle, manager of Customs Enforcement at Dublin Airport.

"Irish people tend to like animals anyway. They know that they are
doing a very important job and let them get on with it.

"If they have anything to fear, we are happy to carry out a search in
another way. But most of the time, it happens so quickly, it's over
before they've even noticed."