DEMAND, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE, BOOMS FOR DOGS TO SNIFF OUT SECURITY THREATS

FRONT ROYAL, Va., Nov. 10 -- Panting, his tail whipping and nose
bobbing, Angus, a black Labrador retriever, scampers along the aisles
of a food warehouse near here. Abruptly, he stops, excited, and sniffs
into the crevices of boxes holding jars of Super Dolce pizza sauce.
Then he sits, immobile as a sphinx.

Tucked among the boxes of pizza sauce was another corrugated box,
labeled as containing packets of orange Jell-O. But there was no
Jell-O inside. Instead, the box held $65,000 in one-dollar bills that
the United States Customs Service's Canine Enforcement Training Center
here had hidden to test him. "Good boy, good boy," says Jeffrey Daft,
a customs officer and Angus's handler. Mr. Daft thrusts a tightly
rolled terry cloth towel the size of a big bone toward Angus. It is
the dog's reward and evidently a preferred plaything among Labrador
retrievers.

Angus, here on a visit from his post in Houston, is a 2 1/2-year-old
Customs Service currency dog, and a star. "He got $2.6 million in
finds in the last eight months," Mr. Daft said. Before that, he found
$370,000 that had been buried in a cooler six feet under a barn in
Arkansas. Though they usually hunt for drug money, Angus and Mr. Daft
have an additional mission now. They have begun scouring airports,
seaports and borders for cash that is being exchanged among terrorist
organizations.

Dogs have long been used to investigate suspicious packages, chase
criminals, patrol property and find cadavers and illegal drugs. But
with the Bush administration's promises to choke off terrorists'
money, the Customs Service expects a big rise in its need for
money-spotting dogs.

At the same time, demand for bomb-sniffing dogs, mostly Labradors,
golden retrievers, German shepherds and Belgian Malinois, is surging.
"Demand is not the word for it," said Tony Lavelle, founder of a new
group called the International Explosive Dog Association and owner of
Detection Support Services, a company in Sacramento that hires out
bomb dogs and handlers. "How about 'overwhelming crush for dogs,' "
Mr. Lavelle said. "All we do is bomb dogs now. There's no interest in
drug dogs any more."

Michael L. Munson, president of Augusta K9 Services in Rocky Gap, Va.,
in the state's southwestern corner, said he had sold 15 bomb dogs
since Sept. 11. "We normally sell seven a year," Mr. Munson said.

He sells trained bomb dogs for $8,000 and bomb dogs that can also be
used for patrol and tracking for $10,500. He has a contract to sell
four to six untrained dogs to the Customs Service for $3,000 each.
They will be trained as drug and currency dogs.

No one seems to keep a reliable census of dogs used for protection and
law enforcement. Carl Newcombe, manager of the Customs Service's
National Canine Program, said the center trains 80 to 100 teams of
handlers and dogs a year and has 513 at work, compared with 6 when the
program began in 1970.

Next to the Customs Service's center here, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms opened a school to train bomb and arson detection
dogs. In San Antonio, Lackland Air Force Base operates the nation's
biggest school for patrol and bomb detection dogs. It trains 200 to
300 dogs a year for Defense Department facilities and has more than
1,000 dogs on the job. It also trains dogs for the Federal Aviation
Administration.

More police departments and private businesses are using the dogs,
too. The United States Capitol Police has 30 teams of bomb dogs and
handlers. John Grubbs, owner of United States Bomb Dogs Inc., a small
company near Culpepper, Va., said current and former clients, who buy
trained dogs or hire them to patrol special events, include Amtrak,
the Ford Motor Company and Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceuticals company.

Only the Customs Service's Front Royal center, here in the Blue Ridge
Mountains 70 miles west of Washington, trains currency dogs, an
outgrowth of narcotics training. Four dogs graduated this week from
the 13-week course, bringing the total of currency dogs in the field
to 22. Three of the dogs are heading for airports in Newark, Atlanta
and Miami. The fourth is going to Hidalgo, Tex., on the border with
Mexico.

There are likely to be many more since the Customs Service has begun
searching for money that may belong to terrorists, not just drug
dealers, said Dean Boyd, a Customs Service spokesman in Washington.
Under the new antiterrorism law, customs inspectors can arrest
travelers who do not disclose if they are carrying more than $10,000
in currency out of the country. Previously, customs officials seized
the money but let the travelers go.

Mr. Boyd declined to say whether the dogs had turned up any terrorist
money. "There have been several seizures," he said. "We are looking
back at the people and their associations."

Mr. Newcombe, the canine program director, said most of the dogs
arrived at the center as puppies carefully selected from pounds. "We
look at the personality of the dogs, real high retrieval drive, a lot
of self-confidence, a real hyper dog, not one that lays around." Any
dog that passes muster can be taught to detect any scent and retrained
to detect new scents.

The schools use either of two incentives to hone their dogs'
detection: food or toys. German shepherds prefer a snack as a reward.
Retrievers respond well to toys, like the rolled towels used here.
"That's their paycheck," Mr. Newcombe said.

As detection dogs, they learn not to pounce on their
quarry.

"Dogs want to chew, to tear things up," said Mr. Daft, Angus's
handler. "You could train them to drag the stuff out." But the stuff
might be a bomb that could kill the dog and the handler, or a fat
wallet in an innocent passenger's pants. That, he said, is why they
are taught to sit.