The Dog That Passed TATP Last Week and Missed It Today

TATP is a peroxide-based improvised explosive that volatilizes rapidly in warm conditions. The vapor cone disperses differently at 28°C than at 18°C. Yesterday's hide was at chest height in a vehicle interior; today's is at ground level outside, in a crosswind. The dog that alert-sat on a 4-gram sample inside the vehicle missed the 4-gram sample outside because nobody documented that this specific dog has a consistently high FR rate on TATP in outdoor environments with wind across the odor.

The training log is the data that surfaces that pattern before it's a missed real-world event.

The FIND Scale: Four Outcomes That Tell Different Stories

FIND is scored 0 through 4: 0 = Miss or Blank (no response to an odor-present hide, or unnecessary response to a blank), 1 = FR (False Response — the dog indicates an area with no hide or indicates a non-odor distractor), 2 = HR (Head Response — the dog shows interest and heads toward the odor source but doesn't commit to a trained final response), 3 = Assist (the handler provided guidance that led to the find; the dog was working the odor but required handler intervention), 4 = Find (independent trained final response on the odor source without handler cues).

A dog logging consistent Score 3 Assists is not performing at working standard — it's performing at handler-assisted standard, which may mask a dog that isn't reliably independent on that odor. A dog logging Score 2 HRs is showing odor detection but not the final trained alert behavior, which points to reward timing or reinforcement issues in the training progression rather than failure to detect. The distinction between these outcomes is invisible if the record just says "pass" or "fail."

Blank hides — ODOR = Blank, FIND = 0 — test for false positives. A dog that alerts on a blank is producing a FR on the scoring scale. Too many FR entries in a training log for a specific dog indicates a dog that's over-generalizing the alert behavior, possibly from handler cuing or environmental distractors. That pattern needs to be corrected in training before deployment.

Odor Taxonomy: Thirty-Six Explosives and Precursors

The ODOR field covers thirty-six entries: standard military explosives (C4, C4U, TNT, RDX, HMX, PETN, A5/Composition A), peroxide-based improvised (TATP, HMTD, HTP), nitrogen-based improvised (ANFO, UREA, AN), commercial and industrial (DYN/dynamite, DC/detonating cord, TF/time fuse, WG/water gel, SX/Semtex), pyrotechnics (Pyro, FW/fireworks), and a Blank option for false-positive testing.

The separation between TF (time fuse) and DC (detonating cord) explains the WEIGHT2 field: linear explosives like detonating cord and time fuse aren't measured by weight but by length in feet. A 6-foot hide of DC is recorded as "6FT" in WEIGHT2 while WEIGHT captures mass for solid and poured aids. Both fields serve the same purpose — quantifying the aid size — but the unit differs by explosive type.

HT (height in feet and decimal fractions) and DP (depth) define the hide geometry. A 2-gram RDX sample at 0.5 feet height in an outdoor open area presents a very different olfactory challenge than the same sample at 3 feet inside a vehicle wheel well. Documenting hide geometry alongside find outcome allows the training director to identify whether a dog's failures correlate with specific height or depth parameters — critical for designing training progressions that build from accessible geometry toward operationally realistic concealment.

Environment as a Detection Variable

Sixteen environment options — inside and outside variants of aircraft, warehouse, building, vehicle, open area, train, luggage, garage — capture the operational context that most affects odor dispersal. Inside aircraft is the tightest, most recirculated air environment; outside open area in crosswind is the highest dispersal scenario. A dog certified on inside-vehicle hides that has never worked outside-aircraft or outside-open-area environments has detection gaps that won't appear in its training record until this ENV field shows what environments it has and hasn't been trained in.

PLANTER records who planted the hide — because handler/planter familiarity is a known contamination variable. When the handler has seen the planter work often enough to develop unconscious cuing behavior, training finds stop reflecting the dog's detection and start reflecting the handler's body language. Rotating planters and filtering training records by planter reveals whether specific handler-planter combinations produce anomalously high find rates.

ST records session time in decimal hours. Training duration affects performance — a dog working at the end of a two-hour session in summer heat is not producing the same olfactory output as the same dog at the start of a 45-minute session in mild conditions. When a pattern of FIND = 0 correlates with ST > 1.5, the session length is the variable to control, not the odor choice.