While detection canines have the potential to provide unmatched capability in terms of speed, mobility, selectivity, and sensitivity, common training pitfalls and missteps can have long-lasting detrimental effects on their realized abilities. Geared towards explosives detection, but helpful to all disciplines, this classroom instruction aims to share longstanding and novel best practices to use to achieve a relevant, robust detection capability. One area of emphasis will be the need to pursue realism and diversity in our training. In this context, much of the focus is on the concentration of odor that is anticipated to result from authentic hides/devices. Scenario and training aid parameters that can be manipulated for our benefit are discussed. Analytical results from smokeless powder configurations are provided. Other topics to be covered include the not-so-obvious benefits of the use of non-targets in detection exercises and problematic “cheats” that canines use to their advantage in training and testing.
