Survey of Contamination and Degradation in the Lifetime of a Canine Training Aids
Katherine Castro, Lauryn E. DeGreeff PhD.

A canine’s nose is a great method for field detection of various substances. Dogs can be
trained to find target odorants in part per billion or trillion levels. To reach this capacity of
sensitivity the training aids used need to be kept in pristine condition. However, this is not
always the case and contamination may occur through regular exposure to the environment or during storage with other training aids. This work aims to investigate the degree of contamination of training aids in three parts. The first part is testing contamination in a laboratory setting; exposing training aid mimics to a contaminant and determining the time it takes to absorb to its maximum concentration as well as the length of time necessary to desorb the contaminant from the training aid until it is undetectable by the instrument. The second part of this study involves training aid mimics to be handled by dog trainers as if they were real and exposing them to an environment similar to where they train their dogs for the same amount of time. This allows us to determine what common contaminants will potentially modify the scent profile of the training aid used as well as the changes in the vapor profile over several months. The samples of the first two parts are analyzed through the use of HS-SPME-GC-MS. Lastly, samples from training aids currently in use are to be tested to see what changes are found in the vapor profile of the training aids when used as normal. These are sampled over several months to see the changes in the headspace of the training aid as well as the impact on training aid choice has on these changes. Analysis of this is conducted by a GC-MS equipped with a thermal desorption unit. With this we will compare the user of a TADD, Training Aid Delivery Device, to a non-TADD user to further understand the contaminants of the training aid as well as