Dogs' New Trick: Finding Cellphones

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Cellphone Search Dogs at Work

Maryland has some of the country's first trained search dogs -- not for people or drugs, but for cellphones. Dogs like Tazz and Alba could help solve a nationwide problem of smuggled cellphones in prisons.

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The dogs were asked to find phones more than a half-dozen times and failed only once to find their target in 30 seconds. At one point, Alba, a Belgian malinois, passed small TVs and a VCR before stopping at a TV that had a cellphone inside.

In the past year, the Virginia prison system has had six dogs trained to detect cellphones. "It seems to work very well for us so far," said Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Virginia hired a California dog-training company, All States K-9 Detection. The owner, Harlen "Lamb" Lambert, said "everybody wants to know" how to train the dogs. It's a secret he's not about to give away, he said.

Lambert said inmates have been known to conceal phones in jars of peanut butter and wrap them in waterproof plastic and submerge them in toilets, two tricks he said do not fool dogs he has trained. Lambert said he has trained 11 dogs, including Virginia's, and is training 13 others.

This month, the D.C. Department of Corrections plans to have Maryland officials train its drug-finding dogs to sniff out cellphones. "No matter how long it takes, we're going to get proficiency on this," said Devon Brown, director of the department.

Anderson, the Maryland prison official, said he had heard about cellphone-sniffing dogs in Great Britain and figured he could train dogs himself. He started in April.

Tazz, a male springer spaniel, was trained first, because of his history of skilled drug work. He was trained with a variety of phones. After two weeks, Anderson said he thought to himself, "This is doable."

Anderson predicted that the use of such dogs will become more popular.

"I think every state will be doing this in a short time," he said.