SeriouslySearching
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The Sheriff there seemed to have a lot of confidence in their dogs and handlers so I would give him the benefit of the doubt. He is familiar with their track records.Every person sheds skin cells...every second of the day. So, yes, there was scent..but you have to understand that dogs are trained in different functions and the skin cells deteriorate like any other biological matter.
Think of the skin cells coming off as tiny bubbles (like you blow). If the wind is very calm they settle at your feet, if there is wind, they may drift off a long ways and get scattered. Now let's say your bubbles are pink. Now family members that share the same DNA have different shades of pink as their bubbles. Thousands of bubbles blowing around.
Other people come walking around, many more thousands of blue, green, purple, etc bubbles get added into the mix. So yes, there was scent, but they conditions were probably not optimal for a K9 to find the few pink bubbles among the thousands of other colored bubbles.
The search dogs are only as good as the people handling them. There is lots of room for error here.
Yes, I get the "bubbles" analogy. However, there were few people in the area where he went missing. Dogs are trained differently and one set depends on the skin cells and oils left on the ground while the other set tracks the airborne scent left wafting off a person. There shouldn't be much confusion of "bubbles" on a relatively fresh scent for either set of dogs.
Every person, even in the same family, has a unique scent. DeOrr's blanket would have provided more than enough of his scent for a qualified search dog to follow, imo.