A complete sensory overload

Having worked and trained operational police dogs for 34-years, I often get asked about the sensory capabilities of my canine companions, and the science and statistics are quite fascinating.

Dogs, like humans, have five senses. Their taste is not as refined as a human, but their other four senses more than makeup, especially their smell, sight and hearing.

The scent receptors determine smell in the nose. The average human will have approximately 5,000,000 scent receptors. By contrast, the average German Shepherd has over 225,000,000 scent receptors. If you laid out the human scent receptors, they would cover the area of a postage stamp. If you did the same with the German Shepherd, their scent receptors would cover the area an A4-piece of paper.

Our canine friends beat us with hearing, too, listening to a much more extensive range of frequencies. This ability allows them to detect noises that a human couldn't. Our dogs hearing outperforms our hearing by a factor of 10. In a practical sense, our security dogs will hear someone at 200-yards, whereas their handler would only hear them at 20-yards.

The positioning of a dog's eye also offers a huge advantage in comparison to a human. A dog's peripheral vision spans 250-degrees in contrast to our 190-degree field of view. At the same time, the construction of the dog's eye is also far superior to humans - allowing them to detect movement and be 5-times more receptive in dim or low lit conditions.

With all of these quite compelling statistics in mind, there is absolutely no room for doubt Code 9 Security's dog section can add real value to your security endeavours.

If you would like to utilise the enhanced capabilities of our dog section, call us on 03332 420 620.