Movie hounds trained to sniff out pirated movies and music

The four-year-old dogs can’t tell the difference between a legal disk or a pirated one, but they do have a knack for ferreting out disks packed in cases labelled “Alaskan King Crab” or “Automobile Spare Parts,” or hidden behind a thick wall in a warehouse.

The canines’ noses have netted international customs officials millions of bogus discs and allowed them to arrest dozens of suspected smugglers of counterfeit goods.

“They are so good at their jobs than a Malaysian pirate syndicate put a bounty on the dogs heads,” said Michael Buchan, who liaises between the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and agents with the US Customs and Border Protection service.

The syndicate was willing to pay 100,000 Malaysian Ringgit (approximately US$30,000) to see the dogs dead, Buchan said.

Neil Powell, a trainer from Northern Ireland that specializes in teaching canines to sniff out bombs or drugs, taught Lucky and Flo how to sniff out polycarbonate. The dogs first tested their unusual sniffer skills at London Stansted Airport in 2005.

The British customs officers “were skeptical and thought ‘another crazy American idea,’ but they changed their tune when the dogs were able to detect small boxes containing pirate DVDs that were hidden in the middle of huge containers,” said Phil Ray, who along with Buchan, is introducing the dogs to officials around the world.

Lucky and Flo and their human escorts have visited places like the Czech Republic, Dubai, Germany, Mexico and Spain.

They scored their greatest success in Malaysia and the Philippines, where they took part in 35 raids that led to more than two dozen arrests and unearthed two million disks valued at US$3.5 million.

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