Shortly after 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, a caravan of law enforcement arrived at Howland Middle School and the building was placed in lock down.

"Today we did a lock down drill just in case there's some type of problem in the school or near the school, the teachers are instructed to lock the doors," said Howland police chief Paul Monroe.

With no students allowed in the hallways, the drill also included a locker search with drug detection dogs from the Ohio State Highway Patrol.  "We searched every locker in the school basically through a sniff test," Monroe said.

The dogs are specially trained to detect any suspicious odor with their elevated sense of smell.

"It's narcotic odor, marijuana, meth, heroin, cocaine, crack," said dog handler trooper Erik Golias.

The drill also included a test for the dogs, placing a piece of cloth with a drug odor in a random locker.

"We did put some placebo drugs that give off a scene that the dog will alert to and as you can see the dog did alert to those specific lockers," Chief Monroe said.

The chief says no drugs have ever been found at the middle school and none were detected this time, but more unannounced drills will be conducted in the future.