Meet the police dogs sniffing out COVID-19 at Massachusetts schools
CBSN
When Huntah and Duke aren't busy playing catch, the two dogs are usually detecting the presence of COVID-19 in their community. In the past year, the 14-month-old Labrador retrievers have worked at 15 different schools in Massachusetts.
"They love to work," Jonathan Darling, Bristol County Sheriff's public information officer, told CBS News Wednesday. "And then when they're not working, they just want to give you kisses and we love it. They're so cute."
Darling said the police department reached out to the Forensic Center at Florida International University last year regarding an emerging study on dogs that can detect COVID-19 odors. Pulling from research dating back to 1993, researchers at the school trained dogs to identify different odor characteristics of things like fungi and viruses.