Do Festival Sniffer Dogs Actually Work?

There’s something uniquely ridiculous about festivals and the rumours they generate. It’ll start with someone’s weird mate-of-a-mate saying they saw “Frank Ocean in the guest area” or “Lorde’s tour bus pull up by main stage” and, from there, evolve until it becomes “the bloke from Alt-J is doing a secret deep house set in the slam tent”.

And no more so is the festival bullshit petri dish in action than with rumours around sniffer dogs at the security gates. Do they actually work? Do they only smell big quantities of drugs? And what if you wrap ket in clingfilm, put it in a bag inside a Pringles tube and wrap your sleeping bag around it? VICE spoke to experts to finally debunk the hearsay.

Firstly, it’s worth noting that not all dogs at the festival will be drug detection dogs. “You have the bite-y ones and then you have the sniffy ones,'' says Michael Nunn, the Head of Dog Section at City of London Police. “The bite-y ones can be various breeds, but you mainly find that German shepherds meet the criteria because they’re very disciplined and very controlled. 

“On the sniffer dog side, you can have various breeds, but spaniels and Labradors would be the main ones. German shepherds won’t be used as sniffer dogs – they’re mainly used for public order.” Either way, they’re defo not for petting, babe.

There’s a reason why dogs have historically been trained to sniff out contraband, Nunn says: “A dog has got something like 250 million nose receptors and we’ve got like two million. They can detect the scent of a drop of blood in a swimming pool and we can’t.” 

What about the myth that they can only track one type of drug at a time? Roger Flett, a former army dog trainer currently working at the National Association of Specialist Dog Users, says: “You can train several target scents. A dog will quite happily handle six or seven different scents, but they will also then find derivatives of those scents.” Essentially, a sniffer dog could easily be trained to target coke and MDMA, but then they’d also be able to pick up on crack and ecstasy pills, too.

It’s also been said that the dogs get it wrong most of the time, with experts increasingly questioning the use of drug sniffer dogs in policing and new research finding that they can be influenced by their handler’s racial biases. In a 2008 operation at the UK's Latitude Festival, just 12 percent of searches resulted in a find, and 2016-17 figures from South Australia Police showed a success rate of less than 15 percent. 

Nunn is nonetheless still convinced of their effectiveness. “It’s pretty rare but they can get it wrong – they are still animals,” he says. “If a dog is searching a car and someone’s got a McDonald’s bag under their seat, it’s still going to be motivated by that – it’s just a dog – but it’s rare. They are really focused.”

Flett adds that there are several factors that could stop a dog from picking up on a scent. “Tiredness can play a factor, particularly at festivals,” he says. “Some promoters are trying to work the dogs teams too long and don’t rotate them enough. It’s quite a boring job for the dog – very repetitive – and the dogs get tired.

“It also depends on the age of the dogs, temperature of the day, the amount of people coming in, the amount of rest breaks... There’s a general rule that dogs should do 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off, but what you tend to find at festivals is that they work a lot more at peak times and less at quieter times.”

It could also come down to how much drugs are on someone if they enter the venue at the same time as a lot of people, or later on in the day. “The dogs will, quite a lot of the time, ignore the smaller scents and go for the bigger scents,” Flett explains. “It’s like us – when we’re bored and tired and something interesting comes along, we’re alert again.”

Nunn adds: “There is a limit on how much they can actually search. Probably like an hour is the absolute most you’d do, and then they would have to have a decent rest.” Basically, if you see the same dog knocking about at the gates all day, chances are they’ve probably mentally checked out for the day.

Another hiccup in the world of sniffer dogs, is that they can sometimes also work too well. “A person might have no drugs on them but may have recently smoked a joint, or that person hasn’t got drugs on them or smoked anything but sat next to someone on the train who is a heavy cannabis user or had cannabis in their pocket,” Nunn says. “The dog’s nose is so sensitive that they will pick up on it.” 

Finally, and on a serious note, always remember your rights. Security guards cannot legally detain you unless they suspect you for an indictable offence, but they can eject you from the premises or stop you from coming in. If you agree to a search with security, they can only check your bags, pockets and outer layers of clothing and only on entrance to the premises. They also have the power to confiscate anything illegal that they find if you agreed to the search.

A police officer, however, can search you at any time, but they must first tell you their name and station, what they intend to find, the reason they want to search you (AKA a dog has indicated you are holding drugs), why they are legally allowed to search you and how you can get a copy of the search recording. 

So there you go – no more myths about sniffer dogs, but I’m afraid you’ll have to debunk the other festival rumours by yourself.

@rossy