The U.S. has talked about a detection dog shortage for decades. Most of the dogs the federal government buys were born in Europe, for reasons that are mostly economic and cultural.
Is there a detection dog shortage? The federal government has faced one for more than 30 years, according to a Naval Postgraduate School study, and Rep. Filemon Vela told the House in 2018 that rising demand "has led to a shortage, presenting challenges for the U.S. Government in the procurement of suitable canines." The shortage is of domestically bred dogs. Most of the dogs federal agencies buy were born in Europe.
The programs are large. GAO counted 5,159 federal working dogs across 40 programs in 2022, and the Department of War has roughly 2,000. The TSA deployed 1,076 canine teams in 2025, and Customs and Border Protection calls its program "the largest law enforcement canine force in the United States."
The government's own numbers line up. The Air Force buys dogs for the military and the TSA, and GAO reported that "roughly 85 percent of the dogs procured by the Air Force are from breeders located in either Germany or the Netherlands." Air Force data for 2019 showed that 407 of the 427 dogs it bought were born overseas. Back in 2008, the head of CBP's training center put the share at 90 percent for that agency.
The Naval Postgraduate School study went further. Citing a federal category-management brief, it put the share of working dogs across all U.S. government agencies imported from European markets at about 93 percent. The "80 to 90 percent" figure in news stories traces to American Kennel Club testimony to Congress in 2017, which credited sources inside and outside government. The government's own data lands in the same range.
Europe has a far larger and older working-dog culture. Dutch police-dog trials date to the early 1900s, and Germany has its own long-running working-dog sport, Schutzhund, now called IGP. The vendors and breeders interviewed for the Naval Postgraduate School study broadly agreed that culture is the biggest difference: "a prevalent culture of dog clubs, high-level working dog competitions, and constant socialization and training of working dogs in diverse environments."
Sport titles also give buyers a record of how a dog's parents and grandparents performed. Cynthia Otto, who founded the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, has been quoted describing European working lines as having "a proven history of pedigrees from dogs selected for working traits."
That culture lowers the cost of producing a candidate. A young dog raised around clubs and trials arrives already socialized and partly trained. The study found that an importer can present candidates for government selection within about 30 days, while a domestic breeder needs an average of about 18 months to raise a dog that's ready for selection.
The economics run the wrong way. U.S. labor, facilities and veterinary care cost more, and a breeder carries every puppy for more than a year before learning which ones will pass. Several vendors told the researchers they import rather than breed for that reason. "It's strategically a numbers game," one said. Another said his company would never breed dogs to sell, because raising enough puppies to maturity would cost an "astronomical" amount.
The government also isn't the most attractive customer. Breeders can sell to sport, show and service-dog buyers with fewer hurdles, and police departments pay $12,000 to $15,000 for a dog trained in patrol, detection and tracking, according to the study. Its interview notes describe the squeeze: a breeder can get about $5,000 for a puppy at 10 weeks, or about $6,000 for the same dog at 10 months. The expensive months in between barely pay.
Selling to the Pentagon adds friction. Vendors generally bring dogs to a single location for selection and may have to absorb part of the transport cost, and some described the selection as subjective. The Air Force's own buying trips bring back around 100 dogs at a time at prices the study says domestic vendors can't match, and an appendix to the study listed discontinuing those trips as a possible action.
Not everyone agrees there's a shortage at all. Some vendors told the researchers that qualified dogs exist and the government simply isn't buying them. Read that way, the problem is a market that doesn't clear more than a country that can't breed dogs.
None of these has changed where most federal dogs come from.
There's no official 2026 declaration of a military dog shortage, and this year's Inspector General findings were about kennels and caretakers, not dog counts. The people who buy the dogs do describe competition. "It is difficult to find dogs of the quality and quantity we need to fulfill our critical mission to the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security," the 341st Training Squadron's commander said in 2021. Two years earlier, an Air Force contracting official said: "We're not just competing against other government agencies, we're competing against other country governments." Otto told the Senate in 2016 that demand had grown "to the point that the quality of dogs has suffered and the price has increased dramatically." A U.S. dealer quoted in the Naval Postgraduate School study said China, Russia and Saudi Arabia buy from the same European kennels.
One county sheriff's K-9 unit we talked with this year described the same squeeze from the local side. Its handlers said they used to choose from about 20 dogs on a selection visit and now see three. They said the dogs arrive younger, around nine months old, and that a green dog now costs them about $16,000. That's one unit's experience, and it matches what federal buyers say.
Imports also carry more paperwork. Since August 2024, the CDC has required every imported dog to be at least six months old, microchipped and registered through an online form, and the rule applies to military and government dogs too. Adult working dogs meet it easily.
Scott Thomas, a former manager of the TSA's breeding center, told a reporter in 2018: "The irony is that, as a nation, we do not typically outsource the production of resources needed for national security." The Naval Postgraduate School study noted that canines still aren't treated as a formal weapon system or as part of the defense industrial base.
Replacement never stops. By our arithmetic from a 2025 study of discharges, about 310 operational military dogs a year left service between fiscal 2019 and 2021, close to the number the training squadron graduates annually.
A bigger supply also fixes only part of the problem. Many candidates that do arrive still wash out, mostly for behavioral reasons.
General Sense works on the other side of the supply problem. More domestic breeding would help, but every dog it produces still has to clear the same selection and training. We're building a way to read a dog's olfactory signal directly, so dogs don't need to clear a particular behavioral hurdle in order to do their job. This means less training per dog and, over time, more dogs would be eligible to work.
Why are police dogs imported from Europe? European breeders, sport clubs and brokers produce socialized, tested young dogs at lower cost than U.S. breeders can, and their pedigrees carry records of working performance.
Is there a shortage of detection dogs in the U.S.? Federal agencies and members of Congress have described a shortage of domestically bred dogs for decades. There's no official 2026 shortage declaration for military dogs, but buyers describe tight supply and rising prices.
Where does the TSA get its dogs? Through the Air Force's buying program at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, which purchases mostly from European vendors. The TSA's own breeding program closed in 2013.
How much does an imported working dog cost? The Air Force paid $5,500 to $6,500 per untrained dog, shipping included, in 2019. Dogs from U.S. vendors averaged about $3,500 more.
Are there U.S. breeding programs for detection dogs? Yes. They include the Department of War's program at Lackland, Penn Vet's Working Dog Center, Auburn's Canine Performance Sciences, the AKC's Patriotic Puppy Program and a DHS-sponsored consortium.
