What TSA Airport Dogs Go Through In Explosives Training | Boot Camp

this is bach an explosives detection k-9 for the transportation security administration or tsa ready personally i feel if my dog screened that person that i would put myself my family or my mom on that plane my dog is that good that nothing has come past him every day bach and his handler gary will screen between 3 and thousand passengers for explosives at philadelphia international airport but before bach and gary started working together as an explosives detection team very good feather feather nice they spent 16 weeks training here at the tsa canine training center at lackland air force base in san antonio texas the tsa national explosives detection k9 program graduates more than 300 dogs and more than 150 handlers every year they train in mock airplanes and airport terminals where they learn crucial techniques they'll have to master before graduating there is nothing more effective out there in all of tsa's arsenal a well-trained dog team is truly a force multiplier that really combats terrorism there are more than one thousand tsa k9 teams deployed nationwide the starting pay for a handler is about forty three thousand dollars a year so the first thing where we start is teaching the dog the basic fundamentals of how to use their nose to find something and luckily for us dogs already naturally do that so we just manipulate the environment so we can tap into their natural abilities one of those environments is a mock wide-body aircraft similar to one that they might encounter in the real world uzi a two-year-old belgian malinois was around 20 days into training the dogs are first taught to search for their favorite toy and are rewarded once they find it oh you got it good man you got it puppy you got it again we buy these dogs for drive that dog is going to want that toy oh good man good man it's good man so as you can see we're just kind of using the reward to shape the behavior getting him used to going in searching the roads about 160 dogs are in training at any given time and they come in all shapes and sizes through years of trials and tribulations we have honed in on essentially seven different breeds so you have your belgian malinois your german shepherds we also have the labrador retrievers the german shorthair pointers the vislas those type of dogs and we found that they have the innate ability both cognitively and with their old factory that we have a lot of positive results with those specific breeds pepsi as the dogs progress trainers introduce training aids filled with explosive materials and reward the dogs for finding them this dog poopy a two-year-old german short-haired pointer was 70 days into training through repeated exercises the dogs learned that detecting the odor earns them their toy and begins searching for the odor itself we condition them that this piece that you're looking for means a whole lot and we use the toy to do that so as the dog is going through and they're searching and sniffing when they catch that odor that scent their body reacts as if we just gave them a toy so we teach our dogs what's called a passive final response so once they have worked and located something we teach them to either go into a sit or a down good the roots of the program date back to march 7th 1972 when a bomb threat was called in on a twa flight right after it took off from jfk international airport forcing the plane to turn around and land a team through the new york police department trained to detect explosives happened to be at jfk at the same time this canine named brandy went on to the aircraft conducted a search and alert it to what looked to be a pilot's briefcase adjacent to the cockpit explosive ordnance disposal came in grabbed the briefcase and disarmed it 12 minutes before it exploded that same day president nixon ordered the creation of the faa explosives detection canine team which was transferred to the tsa following its creation and response to the terrorist attacks on september 11 2001. and through the years we have continued to grow as a program today the tsa trains its dogs to be able to detect dozens of different scents based on recent intelligence unfortunately we're unable to specifically speak to the quantities of explosives that these dogs are trained to find but we want them to be super good at specific explosives based on the threat good puppy good puppy i like it puppy after six to eight weeks of working with the trainers the dogs are introduced to their future handlers whom they'll finish the program with handlers in training come from across the country and must meet certain criteria in order to be accepted into the program i'll tell you it's very competitive to get into canaan because there's a lot of responsibility seeing our dogs at our airport what they were capable of doing and i was in awe and so i started researching upon them and found out that's definitely what i wanted to partake as my next step in my career handlers get paired with a dog three to four weeks into their training we try to get to know our students in and out and we also know our dogs and what their abilities are they have to be able to rely on each other if you don't have a good pairing between the dog and the handler it's just not going to work this is ubel he is a two-year-old german shepherd he's a rambunctious man but he's a cool partner to work with jessica and ubel are part of the tsa's 16-week passenger screening course which is five weeks longer than the traditional explosives detection course remember the feather walk straight don't let him walk you at an angle walk straight hold your ground hold your ground walk straight very good working in a simulated airport terminal complete with actors posing as bystanders k9 teams practice screening passengers for explosive odors that have been placed on certain role players basically we have the personnel come through the line we call it cutting wakes so the dog will cut past the person left and right and hopefully pick up whatever odor that they're trained on all right about to bring your odor in once they encounter the odor to train them the handler will turn around and follow the dog and reward the dog for good behavior let it feather another feather feather speed up fred rock cheer them up praise them up doing well in the training i look for two things i look for the drive of the dog is the dog able to commit to follow the person that has whatever it is trying to detect then i watch the handler's hands is the handler holding the dog back or is the handler releasing the leash to allow the dog to proceed you control this if he's standing out here and you're not ready hold my line please flip him back around get him how you want him release line and then do your thing the most common mistake is the leash control you're walking your household dog on a leash you let the dog be a dog do whatever you want but when you're doing this type of training with the dog on leash it's a balance of when to have control and when not to have control nice nice work nice work good hit they did outstanding again this is on day 13. they've gone these two dogs for 13 days and to be able to allow the dog to read that behavior is very good handlers and their dogs graduate and are deployed as a team so their ability to work together is crucial it's definitely a lot of fun seeing it click for the dog and watch them learn along with you or with me so it's been a really cool experience the dogs receive 24 to 32 weeks of training and roughly 90 of all canine teams graduate from the course once they do they'll be deployed to one of the many mass transit sites across the united states right go work like gary sterly and bach the team graduated from the tsa canine training center in 2016 and have been working at the philadelphia international airport ever since bach is a nine-year-old flat-coated retriever shepard mix he's a goofball he's a character he definitely has a lot to say to everybody he loves people he loves the job he wakes up every morning ready to go he has found ammunition he has found he has found a few things that's really as far as i can ready good when we're working together i'm focusing on making sure he is productively sniffing the wake of passengers so as they're going by the odor coming off the passenger to the odor plume is coming behind and dropping down to the ground so i'm just watching him watching his nose and his head looking for subtle changes that might indicate that he's picking up on something the team also performs daily training exercises go boy go find it where is it huh where is it so today we had a decoy so we put a training aid on the decoy sent the decoy in with passengers dog pinpointed good boy box changer behavior can range depending on the day but when he starts spinning around in a circle when we're working he's on to something he wants to go find it to the dog it's all the same it's a giant game to the dog as long as they think they're going to get the reward they'll go anywhere you tell them to go box part of my family comes home he's with me 24 hours a day even when we go on vacation and he's in the kennel i'm calling the cattle to make sure he's okay stay up ah yes good boy box toy is squeaky tennis ball he will go nuts for it he probably heard me squeak it from all the way up here

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 882,968

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, TSA, Bomb Dog, Dog, Bomb Squad, Airport, Explosives, Training

Id: tSXAJXcVL9Q

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022