Did you know that it’s been proven that dogs can learn, remember and indicate at least 40 unique scents with amazing accuracy. Following a trial by Applied Animal Behavior Science, it was reported that once the initial scent is taught by reinforcing it 19 times average, the second odor was learned in an average of 13 repetitions, and the 3rd in an average of 5 repetitions to average of 1 for the last.

This was conducted over 12 months, adding 10 odors every 3 months. Distractor odors were included in the study to ensure only the target odors were being found.

The results indicate that the limits of odor identification recall capabilities of dogs were not challenged by having learned up to a total of 40 odors or by up to a 12-month gap in experience with those odors, demonstrating the robust capabilities of dogs for learning and remembering many odor identifications. Combined with the limited examination of operational search performance in this study, it appears that detection dogs have a significant capacity for detecting many different target odors and remembering those odors over several months without explicit training on those odors.

We train our dogs on a variety of drug and contraband odors that are of interest in a school and workplace environment. In addition, the individual substance odors are reinforced daily to ensure the highest level of accuracy and consistency in performance.

To read the study:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159122000260