Many past and ongoing studies have been conducted to ascertain various aspects of the skills of working dogs; from those trained to sniff out bed bugs to those trained to sniff out cancers.
The influence of handlers on their dogs is also of interest to scientists.
Although the testing carried out and recorded in the abstract printed below concerns drug and explosive search dogs the same outcomes would be expected of sniffer dogs of all disciplines as the relationship of dog and human is what makes the team work effectively.
I found the test results of interest.
Handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes.Lit L1, Schweitzer JB, Oberbauer AM.
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Abstract
Our aim was to evaluate how human beliefs affect working dog outcomes in an applied environment.
We asked whether beliefs of scent detection dog handlers affect team performance and evaluated relative importance of human versus dog influences on handlers' beliefs.
Eighteen drug and/or explosive detection dog/handler teams each completed two sets of four brief search scenarios (conditions).
Handlers were falsely told that two conditions contained a paper marking scent location (human influence).
Two conditions contained decoy scents (food/toy) to encourage dog interest in a false location (dog influence).
Conditions were (1) control; (2) paper marker; (3) decoy scent; and (4) paper marker at decoy scent.
No conditions contained drug or explosive scent; any alerting response was incorrect. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used with search condition as the independent variable and number of alerts as the dependent variable.
Additional nonparametric tests compared human and dog influence.
There were 225 incorrect responses, with no differences in mean responses across conditions.
Response patterns differed by condition.
There were more correct (no alert responses) searches in conditions without markers.
Within marked conditions, handlers reported that dogs alerted more at marked locations than other locations.
Handlers' beliefs that scent was present potentiated handler identification of detection dog alerts.
Human more than dog influences affected alert locations.
This confirms that handler beliefs affect outcomes of scent detection dog deployments.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21225441
