HRD Dogs - Coroner Talk™ | Death Investigation Training | Police and Law Enforcement




Coroner Talk™ | Death Investigation Training | Police and Law Enforcement  show

Summary: <a href="https://coronertalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Cadaver-1-s_2.jpg"></a>Cadaver dogs. Also known as human remains detection dogs,  have been trained to smell death. Specifically, the dogs are trained to smell decomposition, which means they can locate body parts, tissue, blood, and bone<br> <br> A trained human cadaver dog will not signal a living person or an animal (except pigs), but it will signal a recently deceased, putrefying or skeletonized human corpse. That suggests that the “bouquet of death” is discernible, but attempts to identify it has 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.<br> <br> A human cadaver dog’s detection skills depend greatly on its training, and the problem is that human remains are hard to come by. Trainers often use a combination of available “pseudoscents”, and pigs. The problem with pseudoscents, says Mick Swindells, a retired police handler who works as a freelance trainer and handler,  is that they represent a “snapshot” of death. As decomposition proceeds, the chemistry of the corpse evolves, causing its odor to change. “I’m trying to train a dog to find the whole video, not just a snapshot,” he says. Pigs decompose in similarly to humans, and when buried they disturb the ground in a similar way.<br> <br> <br> A well-trained cadaver dog almost never gets it wrong, according to experts.<br> If the dog has the proper training in picking up the full range of scents of human decomposition, his accuracy rate is about 95 percent, said Sharon Ward, a cadaver dog trainer in Portland, Ore.<br> “So if a dog says it’s there, there’s a darn good chance it is,” she said.  “They’re pretty darn accurate.”<br> <br> Types of search methods<br> Air-scent dogs, work with their nose in the air. They pick up human scent anywhere in the vicinity — they don’t need a “last seen” starting point, an article to work from or a scent trail, and time is not an issue. Whereas tracking dogs follow a particular scent trail, air-scent dogs pick up a scent carried in air currents and seek out its origin — the point of greatest concentration.<br> Air-scent dogs might be called in to find a missing hiker located “somewhere in a national park,” an avalanche victim beneath 15 feet of snow or people buried under a collapsed building. Air-scenters might specialize in a particular type of search, such as:<br> <br> <br> * Cadaver – Dogs specifically search for the scent of human remains, detecting the smell of human decomposition gasses in addition to skin rafts. Cadaver dogs can find something as small as a human tooth or a single drop of blood.<br> * Water – Dogs search for drowning victims by boat. When a body is underwater, skin particles and gases rise to the surface, so dogs can smell a body even when it’s completely immersed. Due to the movement of water currents, dogs can seldom pinpoint the exact location of the body. Typically, more than one SAR team searches the area of interest, and divers use each dog’s alert point, along with water-current analysis, to estimate the most likely location of the body. <a href="https://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/sar-dog2.htm"> https://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/sar-dog2.htm</a><br> <br> <a href="https://coronertalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Blank-white-space.png"></a><br> <br> <br> <a href="https://coronertalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/barbara_weakley_jones.jpg"></a>Episode Guest<br> Barbara Weakley-Jones MD is a licensed physician in Kentucky and Indiana with board certification in Anatomic and Forensic Pathology. Dr.