Puppies Train for Landmine Clearance

By VOA Khmer, Washington
Video Editor: Manilene Ek
03 March 2009

A new litter of puppies, born in Cambodia, are being used as the first mine-clearing dogs in Southeast Asia. Cute as they are, these puppies are being prepared for a deadly serious purpose. They are being trained to sniff out the explosive commonly known as TNT (trinitrotoluene). Cambodia is littered with tons of unexploded munitions left over from decades of war. The Landmine Monitor report 2007 says that in Cambodia between 2006-2006 there were 61 fatalities, of which 12 were children, and further 389 casualties, of which 128 were children.

The puppies were bred from a pair of Belgian Shepherd dogs imported from Bosnia. They were chosen for breeding because of their eager-to-please temperaments and their good genetic history.

Uk Rotha: "The parents of these puppies are experienced mine-clearing dogs. Cambodian dogs are not looked after as well as foreign dogs- they normally run wild, so they are not good for breeding."

Traditionally landmines have been cleared here using metal detectors, but this method is slow. Heang Sambo, who has been clearing mines with dogs in Cambodia for ten years, says that dogs are more effective.

Heang Sambo: "The difference between a metal detector and a dog is that the dog only smells TNT, while the metal detector picks up the sound of anything metal, including rubbish. That's why a dog is a lot faster than a metal detector."

And according to Sambo, it's important that handlers and thier dogs maintain a good relationship.

Heang Sambo: "Good landmine-clearing dogs must listen closely to their handler. They must have a good relationship with their handler, because if they love him, they will do what they asked to do. Plus, they need a sensitive nose which comes from good breeding."

Ngoun Thy, the senior dog instructor at the CMAC says that its costly to import dogs into the country and encouraged local breeding programs.

Ngoun Thy: "Importing trained landmine-clearing dogs is very expensive. One dog costs over thirty thousand dollars, which is too expensive for a country like Cambodia. And because we have very experienced dog trainers, here it makes more sense to orgainise our own breeding programme."

Worldwide, land mine casualties have fallen in the past decade from about 26,000 a year to between 15,000 and 20,000, according to the United Nations in 2007. In 2005, more than 285 square miles were de-mined, the largest area cleared since modern de-mining began in the late 1980s, according to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia and Yemen accounted for nearly half the area, while nearly 54 square miles were cleared in Afghanistan, the campaign reported. Guatemala and Suriname have reported clearing all their known anti-personnel mines. After overtaking Cambodia in 2005, Colombia leads the world in victims of land mines and buried explosives, with 1,109 killed or mutilated in 2006, government figures show.

Cambodia signed the International Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997, ratified the treaty on 28 July 1999 and the treaty entered into force on 1 January 2000.

Information for this report was provided by APTN.

Smart-Nosed Canines Sniff Out ‘Killers’

Landmine-sniffing dogs at work
Landmine-sniffing puppies

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
21 November 2008

Maja, Mandy and Lyongambol at a dog kennel in Kampong Cham province. They are bomb-sniffing dogs for the CambodianMineActionCenter, able to find landmines and unexploded ordnance.

While the typical picture of a deminer is one of a human, crouched low, quietly prodding in search of mines, dogs like these are in fact responsible for the clearance of 30 percent of the some 1 million mines and ordnances found by CMAC.

CMAC Director Khim Sophoan says these dogs work just as much as the 2,000 other deminers on staff, their colleagues.

“These dogs are even more effective in locating landmines than mine detectors because they sniff for TNT only,” he says.

TNT is a substance used in landmines and other explosives, a deadly remnant of Cambodia’s civil wars, killing hundreds of people each year. CMAC estimates these “hidden killers” have killed or injured more than 60,000 Cambodians since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.

An estimated 4 million to 6 million mines and explosives are still scattered across the country.

These bomb-sniffing dogs, mostly German Shepherds brought in from Germany, Swedenand Bosnia, are helping reduce the numbers.

Each dog takes eight to 10 months to train. Handler Heang Sombo, who has worked with such dogs for more than a decade, says this is not easy.

“It is like we are training our kids to say ‘mom’ or ‘dad,’” he says. “We train them to sit, to listen, and to obey us. Then we train them to smell TNT.”

Making the task harder is the dogs’ language: they don’t speak Khmer.

“When we tell them to sniff, we say in Swedish, ‘lear ta,’” he says. “In Bosnian, we say ‘search,’ the same as in English.”

A dog’s sense of smell is about 40 times better than a human. When these dogs smell TNT, they sit down, two meters away from the source.

An untrained bomb-sniffing dog can cost $4,000, and costs can reach $30,000 for a fully trained canine. Cambodiaspends about $1 million a year on the care and training of its 84 dogs.

So far, 10 dogs have aged beyond usefulness in the mine fields.

Sao Chandara, another dog trainer, says when these dogs get old, their ability to sniff mines is reduced.

“So they have to be retired, like humans,” he says. Some will be euthanized.

“We don’t allow these dogs to be taken outside, because before they retire they work like us,” he says. “So we would rather put them to sleep.”

In March, Cambodia bred 10 puppies to replace their parents, Bosnian German Shepherds. However, seven of them died of disease.