MADISON, Florida — When Jeff Minder founded Top Tier K9 in March 2014, he wanted to figure out if dogs think and act like humans do.
This “experiment” (as Minder phrased it) has become a successful venture, but Minder did not imagine that his business, a mere six years later, would be training dogs to sniff out a pandemic virus.
Minder, who graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1982, served in the U.S. Air Force for 11 years. After the service, Minder developed and sold a software company. He then began traveling the world to learn the most effective ways to train dogs. Eventually, he land in Florida to offer his training services to pet owners, fellow dog trainers, and universities alike.
Minder’s federally trademarked process, Foundation Dogs, has been successful in creating a replicable training program where dogs are trained to detect cancer cells, narcotics, bombs, other explosive devices, and even high and low blood sugar for diabetic alert detection.
Dogs’ impressive sense of smell comes from their 300 million scent receptors (compared to 5-6 million for human beings).
Before adapting the Foundation Dogs process to identify COVID-19, Minder spoke to members of Operation Warp Speed about the possibility and ramifications of doing so. After confirming that the variant of COVID-19 that affects humans was not zoonotic (meaning that it could not be transferred from humans to animals and vice versa), Minder exposed himself to COVID-19 in order to train the first dog in complete isolation.
When infected with COVID-19 the body releases a volatile organic compound, which is produced in response to contracting the infection and creating antibodies. This compound is what dogs are being trained to identify.
Thus far, Minder has trained over 20 dogs to identify COVID-19. The dogs can be effectively trained in as little as two weeks. For the training and COVID-19 sniffing ability, dogs are sold for $95,000 each.
Recently, Minder has been contacted by Florida high schools so that proms can be safely held. He has also been employed for the upcoming South Beach Wine and Food Festival. Top Tier K9 has even fielded global requests from countries like Argentina, Rome, Israel, Malaysia, and Bolivia.
As for the effectiveness of these COVID-19 sniffing dogs, a recent study with a small sample size found dogs trained to identify COVID-19 correctly identified 83% of positive cases and 96% of negative ones.
Research to confirm these results is still ongoing and most recently the TSA, under the direction of Florida Senator Rick Scott, is conducting a review on the viability of COVID-19 dogs to detect the virus in Florida airports.
Minder hopes that his dogs will help bring back a level of normalcy. And when asked about his concern with his exposure to the virus, Minder said that as a member of the military it is his job “to save folks, to help in that instant.”
“Who wouldn’t risk (their life), for this outcome?”
And to think, as Minder put it, “all of this started from some young punk Mount Vernon student.”
