Dogs For Hire To Sniff Out Teens' Drugs: Colorado Business Offers Parents Drug K-9 Rentals
![K-9 Unit Storm](https://d.medicaldaily.com/en/full/227143/k-9-unit-storm.jpg?w=279&f=71cd5bbd325f4fd819cf67a6883715c6)
Man's best friend is about to become teenage stoner's worst enemy.
K-9 Force Security, a new business in Ft. Collins, Colorado, allows parents to hire a narcotic-sniffing K-9 unit to investigate their kids' bedrooms in the hopes of turning up a hidden stash.
Storm, the two-year-old German Shepherd, is trained to signal in the presence of marijuana, cocaine, meth, ecstacy, heroin, mushrooms, OxyContin, and drug paraphernalia.
"It's just a tool that parents can use to x-ray into their kid's room and see what's going on in a non-invasive way," said owner Mark Haines, who has trained over 600 K-9 teams during his 40-year career.
"It's not very often that I get to train a dog as sociable as Storm," Haines said. "He's very direct and very methodical and accurate."
When Haines leads Storm into a room to be searched, he issues the command, "Find the dope." Storm does the rest, and upon finding something looks to Haines for a treat.
Haines is candid on the ethics of hiring Storm to search a teenager's bedroom.
"Given a choice between dealing with the issue head on and honestly with your child, versus waiting two or three years down the road — dealing with addiction, maybe jail time, maybe worse... I'm choosing the drug search every time," Haines said.
"If one of Storm's searches is able to help a parent get their kid off drugs, then that's a good day's work."