GIVE THE DOGS A BREAK!

Jul 07, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

How can you blame the sniffer dogs at the airport for not detecting cocaine? How can you expect them to detect anything given the torturous nature of their job and the peculiarities of local travel?
These dogs are not trained to deal with the average Guyanese traveler. The average overseas traveler usually only has a few pieces of clothing and footwear in his or her luggage. The average Guyanese walks with a whole supermarket inside his or her suitcases.
The unlimited pungent fragrances emanating from the average Guyanese suitcase is enough to drive any dog mad and dull its sense of smell. The Guyanese traveler packs fish – salted, dried, fresh and cooked. They pack a great variety of these fish including gilbacker, snapper, trout and banga mary. They pack shrimp – dried, cooked and fresh. Then there is pepper, bajee, ochro, carila, squash, pumpkin and even a few eddoes. They pack wild meat, guava, sapodillas, cane and mangoes. Not to forget lavish quantities of high-smelling achar and even pickles.
Now imagine a dog having to smell all of those in a suitcase. Imagine day after day having to endure all these scents from thousands of suitcases. What is going to happen to the dog? This is sheer torture to have to smell all those mouth-watering foods and not be able to get any to eat. That will drive the dog crazy.
Then imagine all those high-smelling things that are placed in suitcase such as fish, shrimp, pepper and pickles. This is enough to destroy the chemicals that are responsible for the sense of smell in the sniffer dogs. No wonder the dogs could not detect the cocaine when it was put in front of them!
So let us have some sympathy for the sniffer dogs at the airport. After a few shipments of cocaine passed undetected at the airport, a trial test was carried out on the dogs.
On top of this, they were not even invited to a meeting which was held to revamp strategies for improving drug-interdiction at the airport. But the most cruel cut of all is that the dogs may now be subject to polygraph testing. The dogs are reportedly barking their heads off in protest at this possibility. They are asking for those who will administer the test to take it first. They say they quit. They are not working anymore since no one appreciates the dangers of their occupation.
When asked how their occupation is dangerous, the dogs provided the following story:
A man had just settled into his seat next to the window on the plane when another man sits down in the aisle seat and puts his dog in the middle seat next to the man.
The first man is puzzled at the presence of the dog and why the dog is allowed on the plane. The second man explains, I’m a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer and the dog is a sniffer dog. His name is Rover he’s the best there is. I’ll show you once we get airborne, when I put him to work.”
The plane takes off, and the agent says, “Watch this.” He tells Rover “Search”.
The dog jumps down, walks along the aisle, and finally sits very purposefully next to a woman for several seconds. The dog then returns to his seat and puts one paw on the agent’s arm.
The agent says, “Good boy”, and he turns to the man and says, “That woman is in possession of marijuana, so I’m making a note of her seat number and the authorities will apprehend her when we land.”
“Say, that’s pretty neat,” replies the first man.
Once again, the agent sends Rover to search the aisles. The dog sniffs about, sits down beside a man for a few seconds, returns to his seat and this time, he places two paws on the agent’s arm. The agent says, “That man is carrying cocaine, so again, I’m making note of his seat number.”
“I like it!” says his seat mate.
The agent then tells Rover to ‘search’ again. Rover walks up and down the aisles for a little while, sits down for a moment and then comes racing back to the agent, jumps into the middle seat and proceeds to defecate all over the place.
The first man is really amazed now by this behaviour and can’t figure out how or why a well-trained dog would behave like this, so he asks the agent, “What’s going on?”
The agent nervously replies, “He just found a bomb!”

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