There are a lot of different compounds. But the dogs are TRAINED using cadaverine and putrescine, which is only available to certain trainers, under specific conditions. You can't just walk in a store and buy it. (In fact, it is so hard to get that only elite trainers can get it - everyone else has to use synthetic or PIG scent. Seriously. And those dogs are going to have many more false hits.)
So this scent is what the dogs learn on. They obviously can't smell a real cadaver - so they use these substances, because they are present in EVERY cadaver. But the same stuff is also in other body fluids. And that's the problem here.
As I said - normally a dog is running around, looking for a body. If it smells urine, the handler sees that there is no body there, and they move along. It's not even really considered a "hit" usually (so that the hit/miss ratio stays high). They don't really care about the smell - they are looking for the body.
In THIS case, LE wanted that hit. They either wanted it as a clue (something to say woah - there COULD have been a body here) or they wanted it to get probable cause to get the search warrant. But I m pretty sure that very few LE really think that a dead body was laid down in that spot. If they had thought that, they would have ripped up the carpet and the floor, and probably half the wall too - and taken it as evidence.
Anyway, if we are going to discuss the dogs anymore we should probably move to the Cadaver thread![]()
BBM:
Please do move to the HRD dog thread.
I have a big issue with this information being disseminated as such, as I feel it to be very inaccurate.