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Bomb dogs and Ammo cans.


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I manage a multi-purpose building on the base here where I live. One of the many things it's used for is K-9 training in the winter months. Today (yes it's still too cold and snow to be spring here) the NCOIC of the K-9 unit informed me that their dogs hit on an ammo can I had stored some nuts and bolts in a my mechanical room. He said they always seem to hit on the ammo cans no matter how old they are. Now I just need to get my hands on one of the dogs and turn it into a cache detector.

 

****Note this is not intended to be for or against ammo cans. I just thought that was interesting. ****

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I'm a K-9 officer that handles a narcotics/patrol dog. Once a dog is imprinted on a smell, it's for life. Since an ammo can is waterproof, it's pretty much air tight. That gunpowder smell is going to be there for a long, long time unless it's thourouly cleaned. You or I may not smell it, but a dog can. Plus, a dog can distinquish many different smells at once. Their sense of smell is keener than our eyesight. We get narcotics or explosives sniffing dogs to alert by making something fun happen for the dog when he does his job right. We use toys that are permeated with the smell of the dope or explosive compound that we want the dog to detect. So, in essence, the dog doesn't know that he's searching for anything but his favorite toy. When he alerts, in a training environment, he gets his toy and a lot of praise. manville p h, I suspect that your dog, mini-wieney, loves what he does as a gun dog. He knows the smell of gunpowder and gets to do something fun for him, like retrieve a duck or something, when he smells it. Thus, he associates that smell with what is fun for him. There's no mystery there, why he would alert on an ammo can that smells like gunpowder.

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I have been training my German Shepherd Dog to find various cache containers and he seems to be doing well with it.

 

StaticTank

 

Seems like that would take all the fun/challenge out of caching.

 

Not really, any cache my dog could find would be low to the ground and probably pretty easy. Most of the harder ones like blinkies and clever caches, up trees, mountains, or underwater he can't help me with. I just did it for fun. I don't use him as a serious tool. He is just my companion.

 

StaticTank

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My K-9 ( mini-wieney) can sniff out ammo cans and "marks" them when we find one.

 

Do the rest of us a favor, if your dog likes to "mark" the cache, keep him/her away from it. :blink:

 

Only one cache I've found that my dog was going to mark, and no way would I let him. (I think it had been marked by the last dog) By the time the next cacher found the cache the mark would most likely be dry, but who wants to handle that anyway. :blink:

 

I realize any cache we find put out in the wilderness, will not be the cleanest thing you can find, but we should do what we can to avoid adding our mess to it.

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Come down to Maxwell, its warm. Glad Im not at Minot anymore. :blink:

No joke! :blink: I put 26 years in the Army and everywhere I went it was HOT AS HECK. Except Alaska. Spent 3 of the best years of my career there. Then 3 more after I got out and the wife went there.

 

It's colder here than there. :P

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My K-9 ( mini-wieney) can sniff out ammo cans and "marks" them when we find one.

 

Do the rest of us a favor, if your dog likes to "mark" the cache, keep him/her away from it. :blink:

 

Only one cache I've found that my dog was going to mark, and no way would I let him. (I think it had been marked by the last dog) By the time the next cacher found the cache the mark would most likely be dry, but who wants to handle that anyway. :blink:

 

I realize any cache we find put out in the wilderness, will not be the cleanest thing you can find, but we should do what we can to avoid adding our mess to it.

I just wonder if you pick up after your dog when he/she poop's in the park, that is not pleasent or clean but I do it. Do you do what you can to keep our parks clean? I keep a pair of gloves and some C.I.T.O. bags with my SWAG just in case.

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just wonder if you pick up after your dog when he/she poop's in the park,

 

Yes I do pick up after my two dogs. I have a container with plastic bags in my cache bag at all time.

 

If we are walking on a remote FSR, and they go into the bushes, I wouldn't worry about it. However, even on remote trails, I will pick up if they go in a place there is any chance of someone happening on it.

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Dogs do have an amazing sense of smell. In addition to trained bomb-sniffing dogs, dogs might be able to pick up the trail of the last person to have visited a cache. Dogs aren't the only critters that have such good senses of smells, this is also why containers that ever held food, no matter how good you wash them, run the risk of attracting wildlife who will proceed to tear them apart.

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