Cadaver Dogs

[Wyofirediver]

Spent the last 2 days assisting with the training of some new cadaver dogs. The job was to plant the scent sources for the dogs to indicate on and retrieve them afterward. The first day the dogs were taken directly over the scent source until they indicated, and we also ran a few drills with them using a series of floats of which one would have a scent source attached at the bottom in about 20 ft. Today the second day was to be a blind search where the handlers were not told where the scource would be, nothing was visible from the surface, and the boat drivers also did not know. The only pereson on each boat who knew the location was an observer. The driver was only told which cove of the reservoir to head for. One of the dogs hit within 60' of the source straight downwind, and the second dog which is brought in for confirmation actually hit on the exact GPS cordinates that I had recorded for the location of the source to .004 seconds (less than 1 foot using the same GPS unit). In this case the source was placed at a depth of 14 feet. While I have dove on the points indicated by the dog teams several times in the past, this was my first time to be able to see the dogs actually work from the boat. After watching just how the conditions of the water and wind were influencing what the dogs could detect we will be able to better plan our search dives in the future.

 

[Gary D.]

They are a great tool. We had one hit on a body we think is around 100 years old and at 350 feet. She hit over and over again every time the boat got on the target. Totally amazing on what they can smell.

Gary D.

 

[Wyofirediver]

When we had the guy drown a couple weeks ago, the same dog that hit right on top of the source yesterday, he gave a hit about 50' from the guy. The othere dogs were all hitting about 400' away. It turns out all of the strikes were in a straight line directly down current. The water surface temp was about 60 that day, and there was a thermocline at about 4 feet at which point it droped to 42. The water conditions had limited decomp extensively, and were holding the scent down to the bottom until it hit the side of the trees at shich point the scent would ride the trees up.