Putting working dog research into practice: development of science-based guidance notes – Presented by V. Ratcliffe, PhD

It is important to ensure that the latest scientific findings from working dog research are made widely available to working dog practitioners in an appropriate format. It is equally important to gather feedback from working dog practitioners to ensure that scientific research is relevant to current operational issues and scientific recommendations are useful and applicable in real-world scenarios. To try to achieve this, we have been working in partnership with the UK Home Office, CPNI and Department for Transport, to develop a suite of freely-available evidence-based guidance notes. These detail good practices underpinning delivery of effective detection dog capability and have been developed based on the outputs of research trials conducted with a range of UK detection dog users. Current topics cover areas such as standardised odour detection tests, the importance of effective double-blind training, advice on selection of training odours, and methods to improve odour generalisation. Wherever possible, the notes have been written so as to be applicable across any detection dog discipline and application and feedback on the content has been obtained from working dog practitioners.