# Pseudoscent



## julie allen (Dec 24, 2010)

I can see how pseudoscent of somethings, maybe like meth, could be recreated effectively. Yet on others, like cadaver, or marijuana,natural substances, how effective are they?

I have seen a couple dogs only trained with pseudo and they sucked, though it could have been poor training. I have never used it.


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## Craig Snyder (May 7, 2012)

I can't say I have any experience with it. Our cadaver people never used it but we never had a lack of training material either.

I'd be interested in hearing from folks who have used it too. I can see where it might be attractive for this training on their own or with limited access to material.

I guess the question is can it hurt a dog's training even if it doesn't necessarily help a lot?

Craig


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## Brett Bowen (May 2, 2011)

Craig Snyder said:


> I can't say I have any experience with it. Our cadaver people never used it but we never had a lack of training material either.
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing from folks who have used it too. I can see where it might be attractive for this training on their own or with limited access to material.
> 
> ...


I'm curious to hear peoples experiences as well. 

I think the one thing that hurts is for the dope guys when the defense attorney's ask, "Does your dog indicate on any other substances than drugs?" the answer is yes because they will indicate on the training scents. It can be explained (if the officer knows his stuff), but it opens up that whole avenue for the defense attorney.


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## Matthew Grubb (Nov 16, 2007)

I have never used pseudo and never will. Simple answer.... its not real drugs. A few years ago I went to a lecture presented by one of the SWGDOG gurus from Florida. I apologise for not remembering the good doctors name. He was a chemist and he went into great detail explaining that the only drug so far where they have been able to identify the compound that the dog is actually alerting on is cocaine. 

So... out of the 4 "big drugs", expert scientists can only identify the "active ingredient " in one of them that the k9 is actually recognising as the drug itself. They are still working on the other three and last I was told are very close with marijuana. 

So as a defense attorney my question would be... if scientists can't identify the "active ingredient" in 3/4 of the "big drugs" what exactly are we teaching the dogs to alert on with pseudo?


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

Matthew Grubb said:


> I have never used pseudo and never will. Simple answer.... its not real drugs. A few years ago I went to a lecture presented by one of the SWGDOG gurus from Florida.


Kenneth Furton?


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## Matthew Grubb (Nov 16, 2007)

Connie Sutherland said:


> Kenneth Furton?


Yes! That's the guy! He was a great presenter. His talk was not limited to drugs either. He spent a lot of time talking about the science of scent with cadaver as well. He was one of the most knowledgeable people I have had the pleasure of meeting in a long time.


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## Terrasita Cuffie (Jun 8, 2008)

Interesting, I was at a nose work seminar [Ron G?] last year and he said that there is a compound present in all varieties of marijuana and psuedo has isolated it. A couple of weeks ago was discussing this with some people and they had just worked dogs. Dogs trained on real didn't indicate on psuedo. This has been debated here before--psuedo vs. real. 

T


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2008)

there are different scientists with different studies, there are different type psuedos with a whole lot different compounds

there are many training methods 

everyone who has some experience on it has an opinion, this varies quite a bit in discussion


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## julie allen (Dec 24, 2010)

Jody have you used it, and your opinion?


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## julie allen (Dec 24, 2010)

Terrasita Cuffie said:


> Interesting, I was at a nose work seminar [Ron G?] last year and he said that there is a compound present in all varieties of marijuana and psuedo has isolated it. A couple of weeks ago was discussing this with some people and they had just worked dogs. Dogs trained on real didn't indicate on psuedo. This has been debated here before--psuedo vs. real.
> 
> T


Is that compound exactly what the dogs are processing and alerting on?


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## Terrasita Cuffie (Jun 8, 2008)

julie allen said:


> Is that compound exactly what the dogs are processing and alerting on?


 
My understanding from Ron that since it was there in all varieties, the dog couldn't miss it. If the dog had been trained on one variety, he may not alert on others because they all aren't the same scent--wise. Whereas with the psuedo compound, it was in all varieties and taught to alert on the pseudo compound and they wouldn't miss any variety regardless of other scents involved. Hope I'm doing this justice. I was interested and questioned him about this at length because it hadn't quite been explained that way here.

T


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Since there is a great deal of controversy about it why bother?! If your LEO then you can access the real thing. 
Are there any court cases, good or bad, involving any pseudoscent? 

The SAR team I was on tried Cadaver pseudo. The training at the top sucked so I can't say the failure was due to the pseudo or the training but, again,why bother. We had access to the real thing.


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## Gerald Dunn (Sep 24, 2011)

In Japan they can only use Cadaver pseudo, that's the law.


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## David Frost (Mar 29, 2006)

Bob Scott said:


> Are there any court cases, good or bad, involving any pseudoscent?



To my knowledge, there is no adverse ruling, against the use of pseudo in drug dog training. I've neither read or heard of any ruling against the use of pseudo on Fleck or any other legal website. I have always opposed it, but for reasons stated by Matt, it isn't real or it wouldn't be called pseudo. 


DFrost


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## Kim Cardinal (Oct 28, 2011)

Our group has just gotten ahold of "stress" psuedo, to train live dogs in disaster work (hider puts the psuedo stress scent on to emulate real life scenario). We are all somewhat skeptical, because honestly...the dogs are trained to locate human scent. So, it's always interesting to me, is the dog indicating on the human scent (since they've been imprinted on that far more, than they've been exposed to the psuedo), or are they getting a hint of "stress" scent, and indicating on it. Personally, it's a waste of (good) money, to use psuedo. We don't use it on the cadaver dogs, since we have good real scent sources for that as well. And pig should not ever be used. Why use a knock-off, when you've got the real thing? 

Can't speak to the narcotics use, but I would venture to guess law enforcement are never short of real scent sources for training purposes.


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## julie allen (Dec 24, 2010)

I have a great resource for sources as well, so I don't need it. Just curious about others experience with it.


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## Nancy Jocoy (Apr 19, 2006)

My experience is that experienced cadaver dogs who have been trained on a broad spectrum of sources seem to ignore the pseudo or sniff it out of interest while dogs trained on it indicate on it. I have not used any for years so I can't say if dogs trained with it indicate on other decomp or not. 

But it says enough to me that if the experienced dog will still indicate on a new and unusual HR source because they recognize it as human, but not on pseudo that I don't want to bother with it.


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