After watching some of the border control programmes on TV, Blackburn Rovers have decided to employ their own Dope Sniffer Dogs.
There are rumours of more stringent tests to detect performance enhancing drugs being brought in by the FA. Football seems to have a good reputation regarding drug use at the moment. There haven’t been stories like those which have blighted cycling and swimming. But this may be because football drug abusers have rarely been caught.
A dog’s sense of smell is reputedly ten thousand times more powerful than that of a human being. Specially trained dogs may even have been used to sniff out early stages of cancer. But it is mainly pursuing escaped criminals from prison and detection of illegal drugs being smuggled through customs which comes to mind when we think of sniffer dogs. Detection dogs are able to recognize and discern a scent, even when it has been masked by another odour. This is because dogs smell in layers, allowing them to detect individual ingredients.
Security forces have been using dogs to find bombs, drugs and other substances for decades. Perhaps this is why most stories of dogs smelling steroids come from them. In 2008 a sniffer dog detected steroids in a car stopped for checking at the Mexican border in El Paso. Steroids were hidden inside the car’s dashboard. This dog’s steroids find led to the arrest of a man trying to smuggle 150 vials of anabolic steroids into the USA.
With glamour and vast rewards offered by football, there could be some impressionable individuals who are tempted to use performance enhancing drugs and steroids to give themselves an unfair advantage over their peers. Sadly for many footballers, their playing career is often very short and most players will never hit the big time. Some may see using drugs as enhancing their one shot at success and all the trappings which follow.
Trappings of a different kind are what the FA are interested in and it is their intention to keep football clean – certainly as far as the playing side is concerned. Blackburn Rovers intend to play their part in this fight against drugs. Not only will playing staff be under scrutiny, but so will fans. Anyone trying to enter Ewood Park under the influence of cocaine, ecstasy, hashish etc., can be expected to run a gauntlet of Fido at the turnstiles.
Fido is hoping his new job at Ewood Park is less stressful than his last one at a well-known airport. He detected LSD which made him high and barbiturates which knocked him out cold. Then he found something which made him relieve himself all over the place.
When airport staff asked his handler what had made him do this, his handler replied: “He’s just found a bomb.”
After this shock to his system, a less explosive atmosphere was required for our doggy detective. Hopefully he’ll never suffer the collie-wobbles again. Let’s hope things will work out much better for Fido at Ewood Park and it won’t be a dog’s life in his new job.