Onebest, hoping you'll clarify which dogs search for human scent in general and which ones search for a specific human scent and some of the difficulties each might have encountered while searching for DeOrr? Thanks so much.
Not sure if your question has been answered yet...have been off the computer today but here is my late night attempt. I was not there so my comments are pure speculation and opinion.
For live find dogs looking for live people, if you are asking about what we consider "scent specific" dogs VS "non scent specific dogs" then the difference is that a scent specific dog will be scented on an item that is as uncontaminated a scent sample as possible, from the person they are asked to look for. That dog will go search specifically for that source of scent. These dogs might be Air Scent dogs, sniffing the air for that scent or Trailing dogs, trying to find a trail on the ground from the last known point the person was seen.
A non scent specific AIR scent dog will go out into the search area and find ANY human being alive it runs into. This is fine if the search area is well managed and not flooded with other people searching.
I have posted many times that in my opinion, one of the problems in attempting to find a baby and scenting a dog on an item from them, is that there is no item that you can use from a baby that hasn't been touched by another human. If I was in this situation I would attempt to find something that was as saturated with the baby's scent as possible and see if it would be possible to locate off that. Items perhaps like a car seat, bed, blanket, etc... It HAS been done but contamination can be a challenge.
You want to get the live find dogs in their as soon as possible so there is the least amount of scent contamination from other searchers.
Cadaver dogs are deployed when LE has a concern that a death has occurred. This might be at anytime during the initial search or years and years after that. Some of the difficulties include weather, terrain, and animal contamination. They will run the wind (Air Scent) or detail search rocks, debris, rubble, etc. In general, they will find anything in their trained scent library which usually includes bones, blood, tissue, teeth, body fluids including those from decomposition, adipocere, and of course cremains.
Hope this helps. There are a lot of posts in the archives from folks who have a lot more experience then I do. This is just from the best of my knowledge and of course, my own personal opinion.
