Dogs trained to find COVID-19

Kathrine Alderman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the country with fear of the unknown, it's hard to remain calm sometimes. Many people, when they leave their house, wonder if today they will interact with someone who has contracted the virus, if they will go somewhere that the virus is, if they will somehow be exposed. Then there is the fear that things will never open back up. Lots of airports are still shut down and international flights are even harder to imagine resuming. But what if it was possible to tell if someone has COVID-19, even if they are asymptomatic? What if we could tell if an airport had been exposed to the virus? Well, Jeff Minder at Top Tier K-9 rose to the occasion, producing the first dog that can sniff out COVID-19.

Top Tier K-9, located at 2409 SW CR 360 in Madison Fla., trains both dogs and people. It trains dogs in basic pet training and advanced pet training, as well as training working dogs and service dogs. They train pets, service dogs, protection dogs and Police K9s. They teach people how to train their dogs and even start their own business, and their programs are designed for people who desire to train dogs but don't want to quit their jobs or move away to a dog training school.

But how do they train a dog to sniff out COVID-19? It may sound like a hoax or a pipe dream, but Jeff Minder, the owner of Top Tier K9, knew he could do it. Top Tier K9 has a specific trademark for a type of dog called Foundation Dogs™. They came up with the idea of training dogs by the time they are a year old in all the basics. They are trained in 50 elements that roll up into four specific functions: tracking, scent detection, protection and advanced obedience. “It's like if I call a car dealership and ask the dealer for a van that can accommodate someone with disabilities,” Jeff Minder said. “They don't just go out on the lot and have exactly the car you want, but they have the base van that they then add onto to fit your needs. That base van is essentially what the Foundation Dogs™ are.”

When they want to train the Foundation Dog™ in something new, they simply add it into what the dog is already doing and trained in. In the case of COVID-19, they added it to their odor game. The dogs, when trained in scent detection, use a game to find a scent and indicate it to the trainer. Because these Foundation Dogs™ already know how to find general scents, they can easily be trained to find something new when it is added to their game. Uzi, the first dog trained in COVID-19 detection, was able to find and indicate the scent on command in only a few weeks.

Jeff Minder got the idea to train them in virus detection when one of his trainers trained a dog to find cancer cells in its owner. This event gave Minder the motivation he needed to use the Foundation Dogs™ to detect COVID-19. “The hardest part was getting the virus,” Minder explained. “Once we had that, we had our dog finding the virus by April 6.” The dogs are able to have new scents added to their portfolio at later dates as well, meaning COVID-19 isn't the only thing they would be able to detect and indicate.
Top Tier K9 was the first to train dogs to find COVID-19, but now other countries, such as Dubai, England and France, are training dogs to try and find COVID-19. “It would have taken us years without the base of a Foundation Dog™,” Minder says. “We're really just scratching the surface of what these dogs will be able to achieve.”

Soon, Top Tier K9 will be featured in the show “Unleashed,” a TV series on training and trained dogs. Top tier K9 has been in the business of dog training for seven years, and, along with their headquarters in Madison, they also have offices in Tallahassee, at 1355 E. Lafayette St., and Valdosta Ga., at 99 Hamm St. To learn more about Top Tier K9 you can visit their website at www.TopTierK9.com, or call (850) 321-3253.