A joint research project was undertaken by the Australian Customs Service (Customs),Royal Guide Dogs Associations of Australia (RGDAA) and The University of Melbourne. The aims were to establish a breeding program for Drug Detector Dogs(Detector Dogs) and to further improve the RGDAA breeding program. Behavioural studies were conducted on the RGDAA breeding population of Labradors(Guide Dog population) and a ‘trial’ breeding population was established by Customs during the research (Detector Dog population). We defined traits important for success as a Detector Dog and designed an aptitude test (CRR test) to measure the traits. We found some sex differences for individual traits within the combined Guide Dog and Detector Dog populations. However, no sex difference was observed in terms of overall performance. Within the Detector Dog population, dogs selected to start a Detector Dog training course performed significantly better on the CRR test than dogs not selected to start a course. (For complete abstract open document)

This thesis studies the performance of search dogs trained to locate the live scent (live only dogs) and compares their performance to that of search dogs trained to locate either live or cadaver scent depending on the verbal cue given by the handler (cross-trained dogs).