Dog sniffs out Asian longhorned beetle

from Nursery Management

Thunder is part of the National Detector Dog Training Center

Staff August 25, 2011

Not too many months ago, Thunder was a homeless beagle at the Houston Beagle Rescue in Houston, Texas. Someone from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s National Detector Dog Training Center (NDDTC) in Newnan, Ga., adopted Thunder.

 

Thunder trained hard for four months and learned how to prevent pests and diseases from coming in on smuggled agricultural products. He learned the scent of agricultural contraband and how to find it in bags, boxes and parcels. Beagles and beagle mixes are really good at sniffing out food and agricultural items in luggage and on passengers. Labs and lab mixes trained hard to patrol international borders, cargo warehouses and postal facilities for smuggled contraband.  And Jack Russell terriers learned to detect invasive brown tree snakes in Guam.

 

 

To see Thunder and his classmates at work, check out this video.