What a Campus Sweep Covers
The handler and dog work the areas you put in scope, on lead, in the order agreed at the walkthrough. On a campus four kinds of space behave differently enough to be worth separating.
Locker banks are worked as a run. The dog reads the seams, hinges, and vent slots where air leaves a locker and signals at the one it is coming from. Nothing is opened, and no combination or master key is needed from you.
Common areas — hallways, stairwells, gyms, locker rooms, cafeterias, auditoriums — are worked as open ground. They carry the most air movement and the most foot traffic inside the building, which is why they are screened while they are empty rather than between classes.
Parking is two jobs, not one. The lot itself — ground, dumpster line, fence line, bike racks — is open ground. A vehicle is property with an owner, and its exterior is all a detection dog ever works; we do not open a door, a trunk, or a glovebox. Whether a student-owned or staff-owned vehicle is in scope at all turns on your handbook, your posted parking terms, and any agreement in force. That is a question for your counsel, not for us, and we screen exactly the list you hand us.
The boundary is worth stating in the same breath as the capability. We screen property, never a person, and nobody has to be moved: a class carries on behind a closed door while the hallway outside it is worked. Anywhere you place off limits stays off limits — a health office that holds prescription medication by design, a special-education space, a room where a particular student should not be near a dog. Say so at the walkthrough and it is designed out of the route rather than dodged on the day.
A dog detects odor, not objects. Odor stays in a steel locker after whatever produced it has gone, so a signal establishes that something was there — not always that it is still there. We will put that in the written record and say it out loud, rather than let an alert carry more weight than it can hold.
Ask about a campus visit
What a Campus Visit Includes
- One cross-trained team, every odor group — illicit substances, explosives, incendiaries, gunpowder and black powder
- Locker banks worked as a run, nothing opened
- Hallways, gyms, locker rooms, cafeterias, auditoriums
- Lots, grounds, and vehicle exteriors
- Property only — no student or staff member is searched
Scheduling a Campus Visit
A school day is a fixed grid. The sweep fits inside it, not the other way round, so we work from your bell schedule, your testing calendar, and your athletics and transport times, and we plan backwards from the window you name.
A campus has more usable windows than a single school day suggests: before the first bell, while classes are in session and the halls are clear, at lunch, after dismissal but before activities let out, during an away game, over a break, or overnight with the building empty. We are available 24 hours a day, by appointment, which is what makes the pre-dawn and overnight windows real rather than theoretical.
Two things are worth naming to us before anything else is agreed: state and district testing windows, and any date your building is in use by someone other than your school. Both are hard constraints, and both are far easier to design around a month out than a day out.
Lead time is under six hours, depending on distance, so a window that opens without notice — a canceled assembly, a day that empties a building — is still bookable. Away from our home region, work is booked as a two-day minimum engagement, which for a multi-campus district is worth planning as several campuses in one trip rather than one campus in several.
How a sweep runs, step by stepWhat We Need From You
- Your bell schedule and your testing calendar
- A walked route or a floor plan, and the names your campus uses for each area
- One named contact with the authority to decide on the day
- Any area, room, or student the dog should stay clear of
- Whether staff, students, or neither are told in advance
Announced, Unannounced, or Both
Deterrence and detection are different jobs, and the choice between them is not binary. Four positions, and what each one actually buys.
Published and Dated
Your community knows canine screening happens on this campus, and the visit itself is on the calendar. Deterrence is the entire return. A visit announced this far ahead is unlikely to find anything, and that is not the visit failing.
Staff Told, Students Not
Administrators, and the people who have to unlock a door or hold a class, know. Nobody else does. This is the position that keeps the day running normally without giving up surprise.
One Office Only
Only the superintendent, the principal, or whoever you designate knows before we arrive. Detection is the return. It also means nobody on site can smooth our path, so the walkthrough and the route have to be settled well in advance and then sat on.
Published Policy, Unannounced Dates
The policy states that screening happens periodically. No date is ever published. Deterrence does not depend on a find — it depends on an unannounced visit being a genuine possibility — and this is the arrangement that keeps that true all year.
Inside Your Board Policy
If your district has a board policy covering property searches and canine screening, we work inside it. We do not interpret it for you, and we do not interpret the state law behind it. Those policies, and that law, are not written the same way in every state, and reading them for you is your counsel’s job rather than a vendor’s. Hand us the version your district and your counsel approve, and that is the version we follow.
What we will do is answer questions about the operation itself, in writing, at whatever level of detail your counsel wants: what the dog is trained on, what a passive alert is and is not, what we touch, what we never touch, and exactly what happens in the minutes after a signal.
A college campus works the same way with a different vocabulary. The policy body has another name and the calendar is not a bell schedule, and the answer is unchanged: we follow the version your counsel approves.
Where the Authority Sits
A campus visit can be authorized in more than one place depending on how your district is organized — a board action, a superintendent’s decision under an existing policy, a site administrator working inside a district agreement. You do not need to have settled that before you call, and it is not ours to tell you which it should be.
What we can do is make sure the same information reaches whoever it has to reach. If the item is going to the board, ask for it in writing early enough to attach to the packet. If it stops at the superintendent’s desk, it stops there. Either way we would rather answer counsel’s questions before an agreement is signed than after a visit.
Who Is Notified, and When
The list of people who know is written by you, before the visit, and it is not added to afterward.
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01
Before the Visit
At the walkthrough we agree exactly who inside your organization knows, and how far ahead. We notify nobody ourselves — not staff, not parents, not law enforcement — and we will not confirm to a caller that a visit is happening.
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02
On Arrival
The handler signs in at the front office on whatever visitor process you run, then meets the one contact you named. If you would rather the team were not seen arriving, say so and we arrive before the building opens.
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03
During the Sweep
Your contact walks with us or stays reachable — your call. Anything the dog signals on is shown to them there and then, at the locker or at the vehicle, before we move on to the next area.
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At a Signal
We do not open it, move it, or take custody of it, and we do not contact law enforcement on your behalf unless you have asked us to in writing. If your school resource officer is part of your plan, that is your arrangement and it runs on your policy, not on our judgment. The handler stays available while you decide.
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Afterward
The written record goes to the contact you designated and to nobody else, unless you ask us to send it elsewhere or the law requires it of us.
What the District Receives
After every visit a written record goes to the contact you named. It states which areas were covered — using the names your campus uses for them, so it can be matched against your own locker and room lists — when the visit took place, who was present from your side, and what the dog signaled on, including when it signaled on nothing.
That last part is why the record is worth filing. A visit that turns up nothing is evidence the campus was screened on that date, and it is only evidence if somebody wrote it down at the time.
For Your Purchasing Office
Four documents, on request, and they can come back attached to the scope and the rate rather than after you have chosen a vendor:
- A certificate of insurance
- Licensing documentation
- A W-9
- Your own vendor packet, completed and returned
The Facts a Board Item Needs
| Coverage | Based in California’s Central Valley, working across the entire United States |
|---|---|
| Availability | Scheduled 24 hours a day, by appointment |
| Lead time | A team can be on site in under six hours, depending on distance |
| Out-of-area work | Booked as a two-day minimum engagement |
| Odor groups | Illicit substances, explosives, incendiaries, gunpowder and black powder — one cross-trained team, one visit |
| What is screened | Property only. No student or staff member is searched, and nothing is opened, moved, or taken into custody |
| Paperwork | Certificate of insurance, licensing documentation, a W-9, and completed vendor packets |
Questions Worth Settling First
Are students searched?
No. We screen property — lockers, common areas, vehicles, grounds. No student or staff member is searched, touched, or questioned by the handler, and the dog is not trained for apprehension, patrol, or bite work. It locates an odor and sits.
Does the school day have to stop?
No. One handler and one dog work on lead, quietly, and a class carries on behind a closed door while the hallway outside it is screened. Nobody is moved and nothing is announced over the intercom. If you would rather the building were empty, that window exists too — we are available 24 hours a day, by appointment.
What happens if the dog signals on a student locker?
We show it to your designated contact at the locker, and stop. We do not open it, and we do not contact law enforcement on your behalf unless you have asked us to in writing. What happens next is your district’s decision under your own policy. One thing to weigh while deciding: a dog detects odor rather than objects, so a signal establishes that something was there — not always that it is still there.
Can you screen cars in the student lot?
The exterior of a vehicle, yes — the exterior is all a detection dog ever works, and we do not open a door, a trunk, or a glovebox. Whether a student-owned or staff-owned vehicle is in scope at all turns on your handbook, your posted parking terms, and any agreement in force, so that question belongs with your counsel rather than with us. We screen exactly the list you hand us.
Do we have to tell students in advance?
That is your decision, and either answer is a legitimate program: an announced visit deters, an unannounced one detects, and a published policy with unannounced dates does both. We follow whichever you set, and we notify nobody ourselves — not staff, not parents, not law enforcement. We will not confirm to a caller that a visit is happening.
Can one visit cover more than one campus?
Yes. The same team is cross-trained on every odor group, so a visit is never split by discipline, and several campuses can sit inside one trip. That matters most away from our home region, where work is booked as a two-day minimum engagement — a district that fills those days with three campuses rather than one is getting more out of the same trip.
Tell Us About the Campus
Describe the site, the constraint you are working around, and who has to approve it. We will tell you what a visit would look like, or whether a detection dog is the right tool at all. If it is quicker to talk it through, call (559) 507-2076.