Dixie the DVD Dog helps trading standards officers sniff out fakes
Published on:
16
June 2010
Trading standards have a new weapon against conmen selling fake DVDs in the form of a sniffer dogtrained to find hidden stock.
One-year-old Dixie is introduced to the wider trading standards community today at the Trading Standards Institute annual Conference with a demonstration of her skills; she can detect even a small fragment of the plastics used in DVDs hidden out of sight.
Dogs like Dixie could have a huge impact on trading standards' ability to crack down on sales ofbootleg DVDs; her skills enable large areas to be scanned within minutes rather than hours or days.
Dixie's owner said he can't wait to get his newly trained pet on big jobs. He said: "Dixie passed her assessment in May so we are now licensed to carry out work at car boot sales and the like. We have already been on a few jobs, but I expect there will be many more now that she has been officially 'unveiled'!
"Dixie will find discs in any location and in any number. She will even find fragments of a broken up disc hidden for example inside a vehicle. Once the discs have been found it's up to the owner of them
to explain why they have them if they turn out to be fake.
"This is a really important area of work - many people don't realise that the vast majority of the trade in illegally copied DVDs has links to organised crime, affecting the safety and well-being of
consumers and businesses on a wide scale."
The project started when Stirling Council and Clackmannanshire Council joint trading standards service started looking into the idea of a DVD sniffer dog, inspired an article in the press about two dogs used by the Federation Against Copyright Theft.
Dixies owner said: "I was thinking at that time about getting another dog for myself - I have always trained my dogs to have a job, my other dog is a retired search and rescue dog.
"The project interested me so I started to look around for a suitable pup. I found Dixie as a 10 day old pup a few weeks later and we set about training the dog for her new career.
"The dog has been trained in the normal way for detection work using a tennis ball as a reward and having lots of fun. I have at all stages of her training tried to create difficult real scenario based searches, she has searched houses , vehicles , trailers as well as outside locations - all of which she has handled very well, I'm really pleased with her."
