Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) dog handler Todd Fulton and his dog Shakira demonstrate a search for contraband at Ottawa International Airport on March 26.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
If you ever see a small black and white dog playing fetch near the luggage carousels at Ottawa airport, chances are she has just detected a drug shipment, or a cache of illegal guns.
For Shakira, a two-and-a-half-year-old Springer spaniel, the reward for using her sensitive nose to sniff out smuggled contraband is a mouldy-looking orange tennis ball.
“Good girl!” her handler, Todd Fulton, an officer with the Canada Border Services Agency, tells her. “Good work” he says, giving her a pat and tossing her the coveted ball. He carries two of them with him at all times. And also a gun.
As part of a demonstration exercise at the airport, Shakira has just detected a bag of marijuana. “We play fetch. That’s her million dollars,” Mr. Fulton says. “This dirty tennis ball is all she wants.” Avoiding luggage carts, she sprints across the concourse in pursuit, her tail wagging like a windshield wiper.
Shakira is one of 79 detector dogs located at various ports of entry across Canada, where they support the CBSA’s fight against trade in illegal drugs. While dogs have been used by security agents for decades to sniff out substances such as opium and cocaine, they are now being trained to detect a host of synthetic narcotics, such as the opioid fentanyl. The CBSA said in a statement that it is constantly working on introducing its dogs to new odours “as new risks emerge.”
Fulton and Shakira demonstrate a search for contraband at Ottawa International Airport on March 26. Shakira is a two-and-a-half-year-old Springer spaniel.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
Dan Anson, director general of intelligence and investigations at the CBSA, said the agency is not only on the hunt for narcotics being smuggled in and out of the country, but also the precursor chemicals used to make street drugs, such as MDMA and methamphetamine. Some of these drugs are not only consumed in Canada, but illegally exported from labs here.
The work can be hazardous, and the CBSA says the dogs’ safety is paramount. Handlers carry naloxone – medication that can reverse an opioid overdose – in case a dog needs reviving.
For suspected smugglers, the start of an investigation by Shakira and her handler is seemingly innocuous. Detector dogs are trained to sit quietly next to people, packages or vehicles that don’t smell right. That’s the cue for a handler to summon the rest of the border services team, lurking nearby.
At Ottawa airport, suspects identified by Shakira are escorted to a warren of rooms on the first floor for further inspections, scanning and questioning, while the canine detection officer gets her reward.
Last week, Mr. Fulton received an urgent call to head to the U.S. border, where a truck travelling north had drawn the suspicion of border agents. He hopped in the back of the suspect truck with the dog, and a few minutes later Shakira gave the all-clear.
Things aren’t always as simple as that. Mr. Fulton and Shakira are frequently summoned to airport arrivals and border posts to check cargo – both incoming and outgoing – sometimes with surprising results.
Shakira and her predecessor Peanut, the sniffer dog Mr. Fulton worked with when he started as a CBSA handler more than a decade ago, have detected a cornucopia of contraband.
Border services agents have found drugs hidden in wooden pallets, in machinery, in boxes of baking soda and papier mâché, and soaked into clothes and carpets and dried. Agents in Ottawa once found liquid cocaine concealed in a bottle of rum. Dogs have even detected packages of drugs ingested by people hoping to evade security checks.
Mr. Anson said Canada often shares information on smuggling trends with its partners in the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance that also includes Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States. The countries also exchange tips on routes and ruses used by smugglers worldwide.
But while millions of dollars in technology – including scanners, trace samplers, cameras and infrared scopes – are all part of the law enforcement arsenal, dogs remain a mainstay of the border agency’s detection apparatus.
“Why do we always come back to dogs? The nose and the brain we can’t recreate,” Mr. Fulton said.
Handler Todd Fulton rewards his dog Shakira after she found contraband during demonstration searches at Ottawa International Airport on March 26.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
The dogs’ skills are refreshed and honed regularly. It takes only hours to add a new smell to their repertoire of illicit odours.
Shakira can discriminate between the smell of burnt marijuana lingering on someone’s clothing – not a concern for border agents – and the raw product, which is illegal to export. She has also been trained to tell the difference between a border agent carrying a gun and a civilian doing so.
The most intense part of her training was acclimating her to the noisy environments where she works, Mr. Fulton said. She is often on runways sniffing cargo, running along carousels to sniff packages or at ports sniffing suspicious cargo in shipping containers.
“If you see paw prints on your Amazon package, it’s from a dog that has been running along a carousel,” Mr. Anson said.
Shakira plays with an orange tennis ball, her reward for discovering contraband during a demonstration, at Ottawa International Airport on March 26.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
One of the greatest challenges Mr. Fulton faces at the airport, he said, is not identifying drug smugglers, but rather stopping passengers from petting Shakira. She wears a bib that says “do not pet.”
To ensure that the boundaries between working dog and pet are not blurred, Shakira lives in a heated kennel in Mr. Fulton’s yard and does not interact with his family or Peanut, her CBSA predecessor, who now luxuriates on Mr. Fulton’s sofa, retired after 10 years in the field.
Peanut often stares longingly out a window in the morning as the pair leave for work. At 10-and-a-half, she has lost none of her skills or desire for the chase, but her cataracts convinced Mr. Fulton it was time for her to retire her nose from active duty.
These days, she only goes for walks. But taking a drug sniffer dog – even a retired one – for a stroll can prove hazardous.
Not only are they are prone to ferreting out roaches and drug paraphernalia at parks, they sometimes sit down by people – the regimented “passive response” – when not on duty. Shakira occasionally sniffs the pockets of passersby, perhaps expecting a team of agents to swoop in, and to be offered her prize – the scruffy tennis ball.