You are correct, I was in Baghdad a couple of years ago and heard the story about a dog who had sniffed out a bomb in the tank of a full sewage truck that was used to clean out portable toilets. I would not want to be the guy who had to recover that one.
I was in the Navy in 1973 and was going through customs at the Bangkok airport on my way to Diego Garcia. Me and 3 others had spent some time in Bangkok “having fun” and smoking stuff we shouldn’t have been smoking. When we got to the airport one of the guys said to me “I brought some pot with me”.
I said “Are you nuts? We have to go through customs.”
He said “I’ll go to the bath room and flush it.”
When we were about to get on the plane Air Force police brought a dog in and had us law anything we were carrying on the floor then stand back. I was at the end of the line and the dog tried to “eat” my papers. I thought “Oh, man! The guy didn’t flush it. He planted it on me.” I was arrested and taken into this small office where they went through my papers very thoroughly.
They didn’t find anything so the seargent said “Get that dog back in here.”
The handler brought the dog back in and they couldn’t get him to pay attention at all to the papers. The handler said “Well, he hasn’t had a hit in a while so I guess he wanted some excitement.”
I breathed a deep sigh of relief. They called the tower and stopped the C-130 on the tarmac and I was driven out in a jeep and got on that bird! I was happy to get out of there.