Cadaver Dogs - Page 1

I've been following the story in Florida on the missing little girl who's wacked out mother never reported her "missing" for a month and today the officer with the cadaver dog spoke at the bond hearing discussing that the dog "hit" on the trunk of the mother's car that also had dirt inside.  Another officer testified that the reason he called the dog was because when they located the abandoned car in a parking lot it had a very strong distinctive odor of decomposition.

The grandmother who also seems like a real crack pot insists that the dog was wrong, "confussed" that the odor was not decomposition but in fact an old pizza that was left inside the car in 95 degree weather for several weeks.

Now as ridiculous as that sounds to me I'm just curious if it's at all possible a cadaver dog can be "confussed" or wrong when searching for human remains?  How accurate are they?  Are they more precise than an officer following up on leads?

I'd be very interested in learning how to train a dog for this type of work.  What type of dog is suitable to be trained for this, how old do they start them at and does anyone have any experience in this type of training?

naw......i'd believe the dog.  i'm going to venture a bet that they will collect dna from the trunk of the car belonging to the missing girl.  i'm also betting there's drugs involved and possibly other criminal charges.  poor kid!  that is just horrible.

pjp

Here is a good link!!

http://www.cadaverdog.com/

If the Media can be believed in this situation, hair, believed to be that of the missing girl was found in the truck. The dog most likely would not have hit on the hair strands, so there would need to be additional "dna".

I'd trust the dog.

Dogs can and do make mistakes and false alerts - a point of training and training records is to demonstrate an acceptale level of reliability.

Most expectations are the dog will appropriately alert at least 90% of the time when working an area with cadaver scent and alert inappropriately no more than 5% of the time. 

That is at least what SWGDOG proposes in their Draft Cadaver Standard [actually the say 85% in the draft standard for the alert rate but the NAPWDA test requires 92%]

If they used the dog to gain access to the trunk to collect evidence then a defense attorney will be trying to discredit the work of the dog and handler.  Agree on the hair - the fact that it was found in the trunk - the dog probably hit on fluids that had soaked into the carpeting in the trunk.

To train a dog for this:

It is like training most any other detector dog - you really need a very high drive dog because you do a lot of "negative" searching where the dog may work for hours without a *find*. 

***You need to spend a lot of time learning about search strategy and the law

***You want to avoid situations where you are used to establish "probable cause" - [obviously in a case like a vehcile, you would be used this way] and ensure law enforcment has access to the area they are asking you to search.

***You need to obtain and maintain national certifications because there is a real good chance you will wind up in court.

***You need to be real good at recordkeeping because training records are used by attornerys.

***Figure on spending a minimum of 4 hours a week after the dog is certified and deemed operational.

***You should probably either be affiliated with a team or be a reserve officer with LE. Most teams carry liability insurance on the k9s.

I have certified one dog in this [NAPWDA] and he is operational and has been on a number of searches [and I went on a number of cadaver searches without him before he was operational] but there is still so much to learn.

Nancy-  What is the ideal age to start a dog for this type of work?  Is it best to start a pup or one that is a little more mature?

 That was my question too?? When can we start training the dog..Is there things we should do before beginning of training? When the dog is still young..

18 mos to 2 is fine. If you have a puppy you can start even when they are very young but I have not trained a puppy for cadaver so I have no experience there.

I started my current dog at 2 [when I got him] because my dog before him [now a pet] wound up developing HD.  She was doing trailing though, not cadaver. Most police departments start with a young green dog known to have no health issues and good x-rays hips, elbows, back]  and I understand why.  I will probably go that way from here on out . Grim is my third dog and the first one to certify. Toby washed out due to weak nerves and Cyra due to her hips. I did not want to risk having another dog 'wash out' third time around.

Figure 1-2 years of training - then a lifetime of it. You really need someone to help if you have not done detection work. Someone who has worked a passive alert dog.  I have been repeatedly told it is more like working a bomb dog than a narc dog due to prolonged periods of searching and because most searching does not result in a find. [So you need to know you dog wil work for several hours].  If you don't have a team nearby and LE is willing to work with you, then a combination of training with a detection dog handler and going to cadaver semiars should help.

If I had a puppy I would start with them - you need to get with someone who has hands-on experience in regards to the how to.  The cadaver dog handbook is good but I know some of the methods of early trainig have evolved since then away from starting with the blocks, and going to more active approaches [e.g., throwing materials in PVC tubes, tennis balls]. I have no experience starting a young puppy.

It is a real worthwhile investment of time to make sure your dog is confident under all kinds of circumstances and can climb on anything, crawl through anything, etc.  Don't overlook the social graces with people and other dogs, you can work a dog aggressive dog that is under control but it is a LOT easier to work with a dog who is aloof but has no issues around other dogs. Make sure the dog is fine around livestock and fowl and game (ignores them), is comfortable  in the woods and in buidlings, etc. - nothing should spook them.  You don't need strict formal obedience but the dog has to be under your control with a good recall. Make sure the dog is comfortable loading into strange vehiclles with strangers and strange dogs.  Basically you want a dog where when work starts, the concerns of the world disappear.  Do drive building [but the way I understand - drive is genetic, you can bring it out but you can't put it in].  Get some peices of PVC pipe - 1.5 inch is fine, get your dog ok with retrieving that.

Need to be honest with yourself about drives.  Some people can and have trained dogs who are food motivated but it is 50 times easier to train a ball motivated dog because the dog needs to be rewarded at source and it is pretty easy to throw a ball there.  If you have a food dog and go to seminars, your dog will always work last because people don't want food contaminating their problems. 

When we got my current dog, one of the many selection tests the officer who helped me evaluate him did was to throw a metal pipe for the dog to retrieve. He wanted to see the dogs desire to chase and retrieve the object was higher than the dog's natural distaste for metal.  You also need to consider that the dog will be working in some pretty nasty places  - since we started doing this I have been in some real rough neighborhoods [always with the police, but it sure makes me respect what they have to go through on a daily basis]

Need to work with folks who have legal access to training materials.  You really can't do this well with things like hair and pseudoscent. That can be a real challenge.  We face a continual challenge of being able to access larg

it cut off

We have a problem being able to access large scent sources because when a body is found the first thing that happens [understandably] is the area is secured until the forensics team is done and the body is removed.  And there are threshold issues to overcome with a dog trained only on small scent sources.

Nancy

I train for SAR,  This is just a question, Can a Certified SAR dog be retrained to work as a Cadaver Dog?