Parents Are Using Drug-Sniffing Dogs To Search Their Teens' Rooms

There are companies that will search your kid’s room with drug-sniffing dogs

There’s a new craze in the world of snooping on your kids and this one goes far beyond merely peeping on their texts or reading their diary. Suspicious parents now have the option of calling in the dogs — literally. There are companies that will send drug-sniffing dogs on a hunt around your teen’s room. That’s right. For the low, low price of $99, you too can totally break any trust between you and your kid.

Suffice to say, it’s not something every parent should consider.

According to NY Magazine, there are businesses springing up all over the country providing this kind of service. One such business is based in Louisville, Indiana where there’s actually a legitimate need for it. According to The Washington Post, Last Chance K9 service finds drugs in a highly disturbing 9 out of 10 homes it searches. Its owner, Michael Davis, says his dogs have found heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines and barbiturates.

Heroin use is on the upswing in an 8-county area referred to as “Kentuckiana,” encompassing both Kentucky and Indiana. Davis explains that the region’s drug problem has created a high demand for his services with both parents and private businesses hiring him.

That said, this is not a method the average parent should consider to find out whether their teen is on drugs. Davis says, “We had a lot of parents who said, ‘I don’t know what my child is doing, but I remember what I was doing at that age. Would you go through my child’s room just so I could have security? We’ve done a lot of those homes and many came up with drugs and the parents were shocked.”

Whoa. Yes, we do know what we were doing at that age. And some of us probably remember how it felt to have our parents lording over us and watching our every move. Didn’t it make us that much more protective of what was going on in our lives? Didn’t it only serve to make us even more secretive?

For the average parent/teen relationship, this kind of invasion of privacy is rife with issues, namely, the fact that any trust a teen has in their parents will be promptly obliterated after a stunt like this. You think they’re hiding things now? To how much greater lengths will they go to be deceitful once they figure out you’re siccing dogs on them to possibly sniff out drugs in their room?

This kind of service is ideal for parents who think their child is in serious trouble with drugs, that they could possibly die of an overdose or end up in prison. This is not for the parent who thinks their kid might be hiding a little weed to smoke under the bleachers at this Friday’s football game.

Should we be condoning kids and teens using drugs? Of course not. But as far as cultivating a relationship with your child where they trust you and are open with you, this is a pretty swift method to ensure that they’ll never tell you anything ever again. You have dogs sniff their rooms for drugs? They’ll simply find another place to stash them. And then, they might start mulling over ways to hide other aspects of their lives since you’ll have proven you don’t trust them anyway.

No parent wants to contemplate their child using drugs. It’s not an ideal scenario. But if you’re going to parent well, you need to establish an open line of communication with your kid so if drugs are entering their lives, you might have a remote clue based on a change in their behavior or who they hang out with. Then, you can talk to them about it.

In most cases, treating your child like a parolee and raiding their room is not the way to go. Establishing trust is crucial. Making sure they know they can come to you if they’re in trouble will go a much longer way than sending a German Shepard on a sniffing frenzy through their bedroom.