Marcie Davis
Assistance Dog Expert
Award-winning Writer
Bomb Sniffing Dogs .............
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Zane Roberts ........................ ...
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Zane Roberts, lead trainer for MSA Security talks with Marcie and Whistle about how he trains dogs to become explosive detection experts. Zane shares insights into the fascinating post 9/11 world where bomb-sniffing dogs are now working to detect well-hidden explosives in financial institutions, sporting events, airports, federal buildings and a host of other public venues. Listen in as Zane talks about how he builds these dogs' vocabulary of suspicious smells. Bomb dogs may be the best-kept secret against terrorism!
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In the shrouded world of bomb dog education, MSA is one of the elite academies. It currently fields 160 teams working mostly in New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago and Dallas—the dogs always work in tandem with the same handler, usually for eight or nine years. MSA also furnishes dogs for what it will only describe as “a government agency referred to by three initials for use in Middle East conflict zones.”
Merry and Zane Roberts, MSA’s lead canine trainer, work their way along the line of luggage pieces, checking for the chemical vapors—or “volatiles”—that come off their undersides and metal frames. Strictly speaking, the dog doesn’t smell the bomb. It deconstructs an odor into its components, picking out just the culprit chemicals it has been trained to detect. Roberts likes to use the spaghetti sauce analogy. “When you walk into a kitchen where someone is cooking spaghetti sauce, your nose says aha, spaghetti sauce. A dog’s nose doesn’t say that. Instinctively, it says tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, onion, oregano.” It’s the handler who says tomato sauce, or, as it happens, bomb
Meet the Staten Island Ferry's canine secret weapon
