Below is a link to information about the wonderful TSA working dogs with a linked free downloadable pdf 2024 calendar featuring 12 of them. These amazing animals help all of us stay safe as we travel. So far, no technology has been able to compete with their noses.
Full disclosure: San Antonio native and certifiable dog nut.
Awwww, that's awesome. But no beagle! I always look forward to seeing the little beagle at ATL.
From a Snoopy Fan
I feel your pain. I've owned 3 beagles in my life. Maybe they're mostly for other types of scents, perhaps for CBP (Customs & Border Patrol) rather than TSA.
The dogs featured in the article and on the calendar specialize in explosives.
The beagles are food sniffers. I love seeing them at ohare. It’s so hard to ignore them and let them work.
Here’s a cute article on bettie the beagle:
Great post! Thanks.
I didn’t realize there was such a division of labor, and skills among dogs. It’s fascinating knowing that the beagles are the food detectives and a wide variety of breeds are trained for explosive detection. Duc-DeLuc gets my biased vote as I have a granddog who looks just like him and reading about his name choice was so poignant. Thanks for both articles!
The TSA dogs and their special emphasis was new to me. I'll have to look at my print out to decide on a favorite month. That's going to be my major 2024 calendar.
I loved the O'Hare beagles story and am not surprised that their specialty is food. I was amazed at the thousands of foods from foreign countries that are found by the USDA Beagle Brigade each year, with O'Hare having the most.
Back in June I posted about the National Geographic program, To Catch a Smuggler. It covers smuggling worldwide, by land, air and sea. It started in 2012, stopped and started again in 2020 and is still being filmed in 2023. We watch it on TV, but it can also be streamed. Here's a link to one of the options for that: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/to-catch-a-smuggler
It is a documentary/reality show and as such there will be editing to make it more interesting, but the agents and dogs are real and are doing their jobs when being filmed. Dogs and their handlers play a big part in finding drugs and cash as well as illegal foods and agricultural products all over the world. It's interesting to see how that works in other countries as well as our own and to see how travelers are chosen for scrutiny.
Lo, thanks for your interesting post. I think that I’ll take a look at one of those episodes of that streaming show. It fascinates me how highly trained these dogs must be.
Oh gosh, what fun! The calendar is awesome and the dogs are working hard. I didn't know they had different specialties. I've seen a beagle at SEA before in the baggage claim area before immigration but not since they opened the new area.
Has anyone else read the Alexander McCall Smith series called Corduroy Mansions? It features a retired Heathrow sniffer dog, Freddie de la Haye who was pushed out of his job in an affirmative action move to hire more female sniffer dogs, hahaha!
I once got nailed by a currency dog.
Yup they have dogs that can sniff out large sums of cash.
I had a few hundred thousand in relatively small bills in my carryon and the dog nailed me in the breezeway to the plane door. Fortunately a few hundred thousand in Hungarian forints is legal.
The agent asked what I had, I told him, he laughed and told me to get on the plane.
@Mr E - I'm curious to know if you got nailed at your US airport home or in Budapest?
IAH boarding a Turkish Air Flight. When the fo started pawing my personal item I must have looked shocked. The agent said for me to relax, it was a currency dog and asked how much cash I had. I told him and he passed me on without checking further.
Thank you for the additional information. Now I really wonder how they sniff out currency....off to run down that rabbit hole, lol!!
If I had heard the story, i would not have believed it possible.
