DFW AIRPORT -- Dozens of first responders from across the country and their four-legged partners are training at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport this week.
K9s from 13 airports as far as Nova Scotia, Canada and Washington are sniffing out explosives with skilled dogs from Texas, Denver, Ohio and other locations.
Many of them can't board planes to practice finding bombs, so they travel to North Texas' busiest airport to do so.
"Essentially it's a game of hide and seek," explained Sgt. Corey Buer with DFW's Department of Public Safety K9 Unit and Bomb Squad.
They're playing a game now that could end up saving your life later.
"The threats are coming here so we need to have our K9 teams prepared for that," he said.
The K9s and their partners are spending five days testing their bomb-sniffing skills.
"We're running the dogs through training scenarios involving large amounts of explosives," said Buer.
In some cases, a thousand pounds or more.
"The dogs are just not used to finding this large amount," he added.
Sgt. Robert Paris and his team drove five hours from the San Antonio International Airport to train.
"This training is working out very good for us," he said.
Good because he can see the dogs in action outside of their comfort zone.
"Sometimes we're called for venues outside our airport, such as football fields or convention centers, so this helps the dogs acclimate to places they're not used to," said Paris.
What makes these dogs so valuable is their sense of smell that crushes that of humans. It's about 1,000 times stronger than ours, thanks to as many as 300 million scent glands in their noses. Humans have only five million.
Canines' superior sense of smell helped one dog quickly locate C-4. The military explosive was tucked inside an out-of-service American Airlines jet.
Other dogs successfully detected it in luggage.
What's a dog to do if a bomb already blows? Stop a second blast from happening.
"We need to train the dogs to work through the odors associated with the detonation in order to find any other explosives that might be present," said Buer from the airport's bomb squad practice site.
It's crucial training in the post-9/11 era.
"The terrorists' use of explosives has really increased worldwide, and it's just going to get worse," he said.
Airports pack a lot of precious cargo. Consider DFW Alone. It's the fourth busiest airport in the world. A record 63 million travelers made their way through there last year. The airport covers 17,000 acres, which is about the size of Manhattan.
"Just this past January, we had a flight diverted here. It was in route to Orlando," recalled Buer. "A threat popped up on Twitter and so the plane had to make an emergency landing here."
K9s pawed their way through and luckily found nothing, but as the saying goes: "Better to be safe than sorry."
DFW DPS is looking for more officers to join the ranks. Visit this website for more information.
