Eddie being described as a cadaver dog is a red top fantasy? LOL, I love how you make things up, I suggest you read this by Mark Harrison, national search advisor, Brit police
Victim recovery dogs (VRDs) are also known as body or cadaver dogs. They are used in many countries to assist the police in locating concealed human remains. In the UK, police dogs are used that are trained and licensed to a national standard.
Pig carcasses are used to train the dogs in the UK as it is not legal to use human cadavers. This is an established training method and enables the dogs to successfully detect human remains in operational case work.
Enhanced training to produce a EVRD.
The training of a VRD provides an alert response using Ivan Pavlov's theory of producing a conditioned reflex, in this case barking, to the presence of detected decomposing human/pig flesh, bone, body fluid and blood. The dog will bark, whether or not it is able to get to the source of the scent. The benefit of this reflex is that the dog will respond whenever the target scent is present.
This enables the dog to be used in an investigative role, assisting experts in other fields, such as, geophysics.
An EVRD dog received additional training on human cadavers which were buried on land and submerged underwater. This took place in America and facilitated by the FBI at the University of Tennessee.
The scent detection threshold of the dog is greatly enhanced. In operational deployment and in training, the dog is successful in detecting human remains, body fluids and blood, to cellular levels that can be recovered by low copy
analysis at forensic laboratories.
The proven capability of the EVRD is to :
Search to locate very small samples of human remains, body fluids and blood in any environment or terrain.
Identify sub-surface depositions to a depth of approximately one metre below the surface of the ground, depending on the scent permeability of the ground.
This depth is increased substantially when the ground is 'vented' prior to deployment.
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Locate and give an alert to cross contamination by a cadaver. This is particularly valuable when the dog is used to assist in searches where the discovery of a body has prompted the investigation. The dog may locate secondary deposition sites and any areas of contamination, e.g., items of vehicles used to transport the body.
The generation, storage and migration of natural gases and body scent.
Gases from decomposing human remains may be dissolved in groundwater depending on the pressure, temperature or concentration of other gases or minerals in water. Dissolved gases may be advected by groundwater, and only when the pressure is reduced and the solubility limit of the gas in groundwater exceeded, do they come out of solution and form a separate gaseous phase.
'Scent', (cocktail mixtures of gases), from organic decaying remains can move through bedrock by diffusion, which is relatively slow, but if the bedrock is fractured, (eg, by bedding planes, joints and faults), the diffusion rate is increased. Gas and scent from organic decaying remains also migrate through rocks via intergranular permeability or, more particularly, along discontinuities. The hydrostatic head imposed by groundwater flows may also influence gas/organic scent emissions.
Determination of the migration pathway of gas/body scent depends on the geological, geomorphological and hydrogeological conditions and an understanding of the victim deposition site. Factors such as the surface and
groundwater flow paths, drainage, topography, runoff, precipitation rates, permeability of the soil and bedrock and hydrogeological domains, location of seeps and springs need to be determined if gases/human remains migration
pathways are to be determined.
The age of the source does not affect the process of scent movement but it will effect the concentration, as will the rate of decomposition. Body scent may be transported by 'leachate plumes' to emerge at the ground surface.
