When the owner of K9 Solution Center started his drug sweep business, it was primarily to serve businesses and schools.
But now, Jeff Turner is getting a whole different type of clientele: parents asking him to search their homes.
“Parents will contact us and say ‘I believe my kid has a drug problem. I believe there’s drugs in my home. I’m not sure, I would like to confirm it,’ ” he said.
Turner said private home sweeps account for about 20 percent of his business right now, and it’s poised to become an even larger portion of his business.
“It’s risen drastically, recently — I would say in the past 18 months — and a lot of it goes back to the epidemic with heroin and synthetics,” he said.
Heroin is an illegal and highly addictive opioid drug synthesized from morphine that usually appears as a white or brown powder, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
At Turner’s K9 center, Belgian Malinois, a medium-sized shepherd imported from Europe, are specially trained for months to detect any odor of narcotics. When they train the dogs at the New Carlisle center, they do not use real drugs. Instead, they use a chemical compound that simulates the smell of narcotics.
And, trainers make finding the drugs into a game for the dogs.
“We pair the odor of narcotics with the toy, so he’s not actually looking for drugs, he’s looking for his toy,” Turner said, “so that the odor equals response equals reward.”
When Turner and his dogs search a property, they don’t remove any drugs a dog may notice.
“All we’re telling the client is that the odor of narcotics is present. We don’t get involved in searching the property. We don’t get involved in any type of investigation, anything like that,” he said.