My husband just realized that Travis was laying dead for five days while other people where going in and out of the home. He's stunned and looked at me with disbelief. We discussed the fact that Napoleon lived in the house too and neither of us can understand why the dog would not have acted strangely and alerted people there was a problem upstairs and down the hall. Travis was Napoleon's master. Napoleon would have smelled a problem long before humans would.
Aside from the fact that dogs are only really good at alerting when blond kids fall down into a well, give the poor dog some slack.
Travis Alexander traveled frequently, if he was used to anything it was the sporadic absence of Alexander. The room was closed off and probably there was a lot of A/C on. An evaporative swamp cooler (far more cost effective than running an A/C in AZ) would have vented straight out the top of the house. We discussed this a long time ago, but the pervasive smell of decomposition may not have been noticeable to a human until after the room was opened and air circulated. If the smell of decomposition was perceptible to a dog, what is it in that particular dog's experience that it could identify the smell of Travis Alexander decomposing?
What's more, what's a dog to do? For all we know in the hours after the murder the dog might have reacted, but even that reaction to stimuli will become extinguished over time. Continually alerting would be the dog equivalent of banging its head against the wall.
Also, there's something about the psychology of domesticated dogs. They've done test with dogs and wolves put in a position of attempting to get meat out of a cage. A wolf will work the problem until it became extremely frustrated. A dog typically tried to get the meat, but once it began failing it would
look to the human to solve the problem for them. In the symbiotic relationship with dogs, we get their loyalty, protection, access to their acute senses, etc. What dogs get is access to our foresight, planning and problem solving.
After a point, Napoleon probably figured someone would do something about it, or just lost the plot or couldn't smell through the sealed room and air conditioning or didn't associated the smell of decomposition with his owner or just gave up. Also, if the dog didn't have access to food and water, it would have been focused on its immediate needs, as would we.
