Emma Ems
Former Member
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2013
- Messages
- 543
- Reaction score
- 0
Maybe some of the remains aren't quite under the reservoir, but under the land around the lake as well. The dogs hit on the shore, the land, on both the south and mid-east sides of the lake. On the mid-east side, the hits were 12 feet from the water.
How would a body in the water account for those land hits? This is one of the things that keeps me unsure that the cause of the hits is a body in the water - the land hits in two separate and distant areas.
I thought maybe dragging a body on land to the water and then disposing in the water, but I can't think of why someone would drag a body on the south end of the lake, and then pick up and carry or drive the body to the mid-east section of the lake, drag it some more, and then dispose of it in the water. Why would someone risk being seen that way?
And are these the only two land hits? There have been 16 searches by LE, and now this extensive search by Elaine's Illinois dog team and Vreeland/Cayenne. And where did Wendy's dogs hit? Land or water? One of the areas or different?
Not asking these questions of anyone. Just thinking out loud, voicing my questions. I really hope LE puts out a press release soon, or does a media interview, and explains their assessment of the situation. I'm not expecting it real soon though, because I think this is going to take some time to assess what they have, and come up with a plan to deal with it.
As far as dogs scenting on ancient bones, a while back I posted a link to K-9 Forensics Facebook where one of Wendy's dogs found a 1200 or 1300 year old bone. IIRC she had her dogs there to find old remains. IIRC she'd been asked to bring her dogs out to find multiple old human remains because they were excavating there. I'll see if I can find the link again.
ETA Here's one of the posts about it. 1300 years old
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...409404.-2207520000.1366992960.&type=3&theater
Interesting, isn't that specifically ONE of the dogs that was brought out to the lake?
In the other link I provided a few posts up the handler doesn't say specifically that her dogs are trained specially for HHRD. Plus in a link that Bayou posted earlier that said some dogs can be trained to hit ONLY on fresh remains but that dogs that work with LE should be trained on BOTH older and fresh remains(I take that as meaning skeleton remains.) Another issue I noted is that for some reason SOME handlers refer to their dogs as HRD dogs, like it's a blanket term, when really it should NOT be a blanket term. The link Redhead provided is a good example: Cadaver Dog, Decomposition Dog, Water Search Dog, HRD, and then HHRD. The definition of an HRD dog is one that has not been trained to look for a live human where a cadaver dog says it's been crossed trained to look for a dead human(it doesn't state cross trained with what though, and an HHRD dog is trained exclusively with bones and teeth Then you have various articles that state that dogs trained with pigs will also hit on pigs, and that dogs trained on pseudoscents which are cadervine and putrecine which MANY other dead things contain, so basically they will hit on anything that produces those two compounds.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...uth-behind-the-crimescene-canines-835047.htmlA trained human cadaver dog will not signal a living person or an animal (except pigs), but it will signal a recently deceased, putrefying or skeletonised human corpse. That suggests that the "bouquet of death" is discernible, but attempts to identify it have so far failed. Two of the by-products of decomposition, putrescine and cadaverine, have been bottled and are commercially available as dog training aids. But they are also present in all decaying organic material, and in human saliva.
So basically my conclusion is this, it all comes down to the trainers and the dogs. Without knowing specifically what the trainers of the dogs are using to train their dogs with(pigs, pseudoscents, or actual remains, and again remains could be blood, tissue, and bones) we really can't say what the dogs in the area may or may not be alerting to. However, if Wendy's dogs are trained on bone remains, and Saber is indeed one of the dogs that alerted, then according to Wendy Saber does alert on old remains. Various trainers think various methods are more appropriate than others(like the link Bayou posted, they think dogs working for LE should be trained on not only fresh scents but older scents as well.)
Like all search dogs, cadaver dogs go through extensive training before they can become certified and operational. Cadaver dogs are first trained to recognize a wide spectrum of odors associated with human remains, depending on their specific use. Cadaver dogs for use in a disaster situation focus on more recent decomposition odors, while cadaver dogs that work with law enforcement are also trained to recognize older decomposition odors and smaller odor sources. Only actual human remains are used to train the dogs, no pseudo scent is used in the training process. All K-9s are first taught to give a trained final response or indication upon detection of the odor. They are taught to only give this response when they locate the strongest source of the odor. A large amount of time is spent on making sure that the indication is solid before the K-9 is ever taught to actually search for the odor in a scenario-based problem. Cadaver dogs that are trained in water recovery are taught to give this final indication while working from a boat on a body of water.
http://www.illinoissearchdogs.org/ca...ver_dogs.shtml