Blood and the EVR dog - Part 6

01. Introduction

If we were to try to convince the reader that planes and trains are basically the same thing, the reader would laugh at such a preposterous suggestion.

However, the reader would rightfully laugh because the reader knows that they are completely different and no one in their right minds would confuse one for the other.

But what if the reader didn’t know anything about either? Would the reader then laugh? Maybe not.

What if it were that the reader didn’t know the difference between them and we said that they are basically the same as both are means of transportation of passengers, both are made of metal, both are long in shape, both have windows on the sides, both have small and cramped toilets, both have a “driver” in the front and both have the passengers seated behind him in rows with a corridor in the middle, would we be lying?

Is anything that is said above false? No, they are the similarities between the 2 and we simply forgot to list the differences between them. We’ve used the truth to fool.

And after having said what we said above, again exploring knowing that the reader was ignorant of the difference between a plane and a train, we were to say that to travel from London to Lisbon the reader could opt to travel either by train or by plane because they are easily confused, would the reader not buy it? The reader would.

The reader only doesn’t buy it because the reader knows fully well that a plane is not a train and vice-versa.

Likewise, and again after “establishing” that planes and trains were basically the same, if we said we were flying from London to Reading, the reader would not suspect we were lying.

We didn’t lie, we simply cherry-picked the truth and after having done that we simply led the ignorant up the garden path.

This, as we have said, is absolutely unfeasible because everyone is fully aware of the differences between the 2. But what if that was not the case?

Because it isn’t the case when it comes to the dogs in the Maddie case. As those wanting to misinform are fully aware of the ignorance on the subject readers have, they have tried to sell the idea that when it comes to scents, trains are indeed planes.

And they try to do that by saying that Eddie, the cadaver dog could also have alerted to blood. Basically, they have attempted to say that cadaver odour and blood odour are the same just like as trains and planes are for the ignorant.

Trains and planes are both means of transportation but each have a different purpose and are not to be confused. A train station is not an airport, and one is always in constant contact with the ground.

And this also happens with scents. The scent of blood is one thing, that of cadaver another. Both are scents but both are very different.

It’s not what they have in common that matters but what tells them apart. Because it’s those differences that will enable us to understand what in reality the dogs are looking for and that one understands the subtleties of their training and deployment.

We will now repeat here an opinion statement we made in Part 1 of these “Blood and the EVR dog” posts, as some readers may be new to the blog and it’s been some time since it was published:

“As a disclaimer, we unlike some – NotTextusa, Mr Thompson and Sade Anslow, hoping to have respected the gang’s hierarchy – who claim to have unquestioned and above all unquestionable expertise on all of Martin Grime’s areas of expertise, are only providing personal opinions on the subject, based simply on logic and general culture and will evidently be corrected if shown we are wrong by those who sincerely want to help.

One does not have to possess a degree in science or have no more than the basics of physics to know the seriousness of a man standing in front of train to stop it, will end up with the train winning with terrible personal disastrous consequences for the man.

As we believe that Martin Grime is indeed an expert, we have only made an effort to make logical sense of what he said. No twisting, tweaking or adapting.”


02. Density of a scent
 
The first concept to understand is that of density.

The best way to understand scents is to visualise scent molecules as light unbreakable soap bubbles.

Density is the number of molecules per volume. The more molecules or “bubbles” it has per cubic inch/cm the denser it is.

This is important to understand that only after a certain density will it trigger the nerve-endings of a nose in communicating with the brain and make it undergo all the processes of scent recognition.

Note, we are not talking about a dog’s brain but any binomial nose/brain.

The air is filled with scents very much like it’s filled with music in the form of electric frequencies. All those frequencies are flying around but only the right equipment tuned to the right frequency will reproduce a particular music so that we can hear it while it’s being broadcast.

When it is said that the dogs can pick-up a scent with 10,000 times less intensity than a human is able to, that simply means that a scent can have 10,000 times less density than that required to trigger a human nose to trigger a dog’s nose. A simple question of density, which is the number of airborne molecules floating inside a determined volume.

Taking that 10,000 number as absolute, that means that if a scent has 10,001 times less density than the required to trigger a human nose, dogs, like humans won’t pick up that scent. It’s there but neither dog nor human is able to pick it up. As neither noses will react to it, both will give a false negative to a scent that is there.

This is simply physical and has to do with the number of olfactory receptors (OR) genes that the living creature in question has in its nose, or whatever organ fulfils the olfactory function.

The top 13 best-sniffers in the world according to according to lead author Yoshihito Niimura of the University of Tokyo's Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, and colleagues Atsushi Matsui and Kazushige Touhara of the “study, published in the journal Genome Research, highlights how an animal's genetic makeup can underlie its ability to distinguish different odors”:

https://www.seeker.com/10-best-sniffers-in-the-animal-kingdom-1768828254.html

13. Humans – 396 OR genes;

12. Tree shrews – 563 OR genes;

11. Rabbits – 768 OR genes;

10. Guinea pigs – 796 OR genes;

09. Dogs – 811 OR genes;

08. Western clawed frog – 824 OR genes;

07. Horses – 1,066 OR genes;

06. Mice – 1,130 OR genes;

05. Chinese softshell turtle – 1,137 OR genes;

04. Cows – 1,186 OR genes;

03. Opossums – 1,188 OR genes;

02. Rats – 1,207 OR genes;

01. African elephant – 1,948 OR genes.

According to this study, if dogs can pick up smells 10,000 times better than humans, then horses can 16,000 times better, cows 19,000 times, rats 19,500 times and African elephants 37,400 times.

This shows that there are scents in the air that are not intense enough for dogs to pick up but are for other animals. Like dogs can smell what humans can’t, dogs are unable to smell what other animals can. Dogs give false negatives to scents that other animals don’t. And we are certain that there are scents that African elephants don’t pick up that are literally right under their trunks.

This is to take out the drama out of the idea that dogs pick up all scents however minimal, which they don’t, as well as remove all importance of false negatives, as they happen constantly.

The fact that a dog cannot pick up a scent doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The scent is there but it hasn’t enough density, or intensity to make the dog’s nose react that’s all there is to it.

This in no way related to the reliability of a dog’s alerts when it does alert to a scent. If it alerts, the scent is there, if it doesn’t it may just mean that there was not enough density of it floating around for the dog to alert.


03. Distance alert-source (DAS)

The next concept to understand is the DAS, the distance alert-source. And we alert readers that this is a very important concept as we hope to show.

Scents are made up of airborne molecules but these have to have an emitting source, from which Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are released into the air. We want to keep things simple, so we’ll call these VOCs as airborne molecules or simply molecules.

Even a lingering scent has to originate from a source. We will deal with lingering scents later.

We will start by looking at a source releasing airborne molecules into the air. If there’s no airflow influencing their motion, its released airborne molecules will spread evenly in a radial manner, as per above.

It is easy to understand that nearer one is to the source the greater is the density of molecules and that this density will decrease as the molecules disperse into the air in the directions away from the source.

The Distance Alert-Source (DAS) is the distance from the source where the scent has the minimum density to trigger the dog’s nose.

This creates a volume, within which the dog alerts. We remind readers that alerting is not a voluntary action by the dog to please the handler. The dog has been conditioned by training, so this means that it’s literally a binary reaction: the moment the target scent triggers its nose, the dog’s brain reacts and he alerts.

The strength of the scent has to do with how volatile the source of the scent is. The number of molecules released determines the density. The more volatile a substance is, the greater the density is, the stronger the scent is.

That means that the stronger the scent the longer is its DAS. Weak scents have a short or very short DAS.

A strong scent will have its DAS at a significant distance from the source, while with a weaker scent, the DAS will be near the source.

That is very relevant, as we will see.

The dog does not recognise variances in densities, for him, once the threshold needed is reached, all have the same density: the one required to trigger him to alert. As already explained, the alert is a conditioned reaction and that reaction is triggered at the moment there’s a minimum density of the target scent to activate the dog’s nose.

Inside that volume for the dog the scent is EVERYWHERE and has the density required to trigger its nose. Inside the volume, he alerts, outside it he doesn’t. Where the source is inside that volume, the dog cannot determine. Under conditions that would not affect this volume, the source would be in the middle of it but as we will see, there are many factors conditioning the shape of this volume.

This has nothing to do with the dog’s will but only with what its training has conditioned the dog to react to, all very, very binary.

So, the longer the DAS is (the stronger the scent), the greater the Volume of Alert (VoA) and so also greater the uncertainty of  where the source may be inside it, as it can be on any surface covered by that same volume.

On the other hand, with less volatile or weaker scents, as the DAS is very short, the location of the source can be determined with precision.

With weak scents, where the dog alerts is where the source is.

And immediately the reader can see the importance of the DAS: the determination of the location of the source.

With strong scents, because they have a big DAS, other factors play a role in determining the location of the source and in many cases it may not be determined. With weak scents, as the DAS is short, the location of the source is precise.

But, and this is what is really important to retain, if there are factors that make a strong scent have a short DAS, then the location of the source is also precise.

It’s not the strength of the scent but of the length of the DAS that determines the precision to locate a source. With weak scents, as their DAS is always short, that problem is solved right off the bat. 


04. Strong v weak scents

We hope to have shown how dog alerts depend a scent’s DAS (stronger, longer DAS; weaker, shorter DAS). Within the DAS, there’s an alert, outside it there’s not.

With dogs trained to alert to a strong scent, the dog literally hits a cloud of scent in the air, meaning that unless there are other factors affecting the density of molecules in the air, its nose will be at considerable distance from the emitting source when he alerts to the scent.

As an example, if one has had the mishap of letting a piece of meat rot in the fridge, its highly pungent stench will reach our noses at a considerable distance from where it’s rotting. No need to get any closer to understand fully that in the fridge there is rotting meat.

On the other hand, a dog trained to weaker scents, it will only give an alert when its nose is very close to the source, or to be clear, when its nose is close to the spot on the surface where the source is.

And this is the first clash with reality that those who advocate that Eddie is both a cadaver and a blood dog face: different reactions to different scents.

This is easy to understand just by watching YouTube videos of reactions that babies have when tasting different types of food:

Does one really need captions to understand that the baby on the left tasted something sour and that the baby on the right tasted something sweet? No, their reactions tell us all we need to know.

The same animal, in this case a human being, reacts differently to different tastes. The sensory function is the same, taste. The reactions are completely different according to what is being tasted.

Only an idiot would try to attempt to get away with convincing anyone that the baby on the left had tasted something sweet and/or that the baby on the right was reacting to something sour. Planes are not trains and that is the plain truth.

The difference of scents between blood and human decomposition differ to the nose as much as sweet and sour do to taste buds. One, the cadaver scent, is a very strong scent (pungent, repulsive) and the other, the blood, is a weak one (just “kind of metallic”):

https://www.quora.com/What-does-decomposing-blood-look-like-outside-of-the-body

“What does decomposing blood look like outside of the body?

The plasma, or the liquid portion, unless in a vial with some type of anticoagulant, will evaporate leaving a film of proteins, which will degrade out of the body. The blood cells will die rather rapidly outside the body as well. So essentially, decomposing blood will smell kind of metallic due to its trace minerals such as iron and copper. It will then appear as a dark reddish stain that has dried up.

Janet Caruana, former Laboratory Technologist at Winthrop University Hospital (1999-2009)
Answered Dec 30 2017 · Author has 2.2k answers and 2.1m answer views”

Without any factors influencing the emission of the scents, it is then easy to understand that a cadaver dog will alert to its target scent differently from a dog trained to alert to blood.

The conditioning methodology of training is exactly the same but as the DAS varies according to the strength, or volatility of scents, so will differ the reactions to different strengths of scents.

A strong scent “comes” to the dog while with a weak scent the dog must “go” to it.


05. The dog alert to a strong scent

As we have seen, the differences in strength or intensity between scents play a relevant part in the way a dog alerts to its target scent. Very much like a baby grimacing when tasting sour and smiling when given something sweet, different reactions on tasting.

Dogs don’t grimace or smile to their target scent but they do have a common reaction irrelevant of scent: pleasure.

That is caused by their training. They get rewarded and rewards are pleasure. It’s called positive reinforcement. And that happens with both weak and strong scents.

But the fact that a strong scent is much more volatile than a weak one, establishes a difference between them that, as we hope to show is very relevant.

Repeating ourselves, the greater the volatility, the greater is the density of airborne molecules away from where the source is and that means that the dog trained for stronger scents literally walks into a cloud of its target scent, while a dog trained for a weaker scent has to be directed because of its very short DAS, meaning that if not directed, the dog can miss the scent entirely.

The picture above attempts to show how a dog trained to a strong scent alerts to it.

The dog needs no major directing, as the scent will “come” to him, or to be precise, if it’s there the dog will walk into it.

He will start to give indications to the trainer, such as showing excitement.

The cloud of the scent is diffuse, it doesn’t have defined borders as it doesn’t come with a “molecule density counter” attached to it, so there will be a stage whereby the dog starts to react but doesn’t alert as he still needs to get that whiff of scent that will trigger his brain to alert. When he does find it, he will alert enthusiastically because to his brain that literally represents a pleasure.

With a dog trained for a weak scent the deployment is completely different:

As said, because the DAS is very short, a dog trained in a weak scent needs directing to find it. Unlike with the dog trained to strong scents, there’s no pre-alert excitement. The scent needs to be found, the dog needs to “go” to it. For that, it’s up to the trainer to indicate and make sure that no nook and crevice is missed. What the dog does is to confirm if at the spot indicated at the moment by the trainer, there is a source of the target scent or deny that there is one.

Please do not confuse indicating with cueing. The scent is weak, the dog’s nose needs to be directed to go literally inside the short DAS.

It’s up to the trainer to look at the scene and calculate the probabilities for locations of sources of a weak scent. He then starts to “ask” the dog if there’s a scent where he’s indicating and then registers the dog’s response.

The differences in terms of deployment between a dog that has been trained for strong scents and one for weak scents can be seen by watching Eddie and Keela in action in the Maddie case.

This is Eddie by deployed in 5A:

As can be seen, Martin Grime lets Eddie search for himself. Watching the video Grime does point out areas of interest to Eddie but this is done in order to for areas to be checked, not spots:

It can be clearly seen that the dog is not being directed to spots but areas. In fact, when both alerts happened the apartment, Grime is at a considerable distance from Eddie.

But with a dog trained with blood, the deployment is completely different. This is Keela in 5A:

With Keela he points to spots and not areas, he makes sure that those spots checked by the dog. He does allow Keela to also search on her own in order to allow her to find the scent where it did not occur to him.

Eddie and Keela are deployed in different ways in terms of “freedom of action”. And when it comes to being directed, areas are pointed out to Eddie, while Keela is directed to spots.

We would even say that their deployment actions are opposite to each other: with Eddie the priority is to let him search freely and then has areas pointed out to check, while with Keela the priority is to point her to spots over being allowed to search freely.

Just by this difference between the deployment for weak v string scents, one can see how ridiculous are those who have tried to defend the idea that because Eddie was, according to them, trained to alert to both cadaver and blood - which he was not - his alerts could have been to blood.

In fact, by the way Eddie and Keela are seen deployed, proves without any doubt that Eddie was not trained to alert to the scent of blood. Even if he had been trained to blood, which he wasn't, as shown, his reaction would be different to cadaver than it would be to blood.

A cadaver scent dog would alert to his target scent much further away from the source than one trained for blood.

From this, it can also be seen that unless there are present factors that may reduce the cadaver dog’s DAS, a cadaver dog alerts to his target scent to areas while blood dog, with or without those factors, only alerts to spots.

These factors, which we will see, may reduce the cadaver scent’s DAS to being so near the source, that the dog under those specific circumstances may indeed alert to the specific spot where the source is.  This is however, exceptional, being the general rule that he alerts to areas.

On the other hand, the blood dog always alerts to spots. The circumstances that shorten significantly the DAS of a strong scent,  don’t affect significantly the DAS for a weak scent because shortening what is already short doesn’t alter what is essential: a blood dog will always alert to specific spots and spots only.

That means that even if a dog was trained for both cadaver and blood scents, then whenever he alerted to an area and not a spot, that would mean with absolute certainty that it was alerting to cadaver and NOT to blood. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.

If on the other hand, a cadaver dog alerts to a spot instead of an area, then it's up to the trainer to understand and explain the reasons as to why this is so.


06. Factors affecting DAS: Dog

There are various factors that may alter a DAS of a scent.We’ll start with the most obvious one: the dog.

A dog is a unique being and each dog has its own olfactory sensitivity.

The less sensitive a dog’s nose is in comparison with another, the greater the density of molecules that it’s required to trigger that dog’s nose, and so the nearer he has to be to the source. In the image above, dog A is less sensitive than dog B, so for that same scent the DAS for dog A is shorter than that of dog B.

The less the sensitive a dog is, the greater is the likelihood for there to be false negatives. This fact in no way alters the reliability of the dog’s alerts when he does alerts. The alert depends on the dog’s conditioning by training and not on his sensitivity. When he alerts to a scent it’s because the scent is there.

In fact, the dog being less sensitive than another would only make that dog’s alerts even more reliable as he would need the presence of a greater density of molecules of the scent to alert and that would make it more certain that the scent is there when he does alert. We say “would only make” that dog’s alerts even more reliable only because all dog alerts are 100% reliable and nothing can better that. But it does make the argument of denigrating a dog’s reliability on the grounds of being less sensitive to be significantly more ridiculous.

We have dealt with the dogs being 100% reliable in our post “Blood and the EVR dog - Part 5”. In that post we have explained that a dog can only be employed if he has a 100% record in not having given false positives.

In tests, some dogs are more accurate than others in detecting scents, not in mistaking scents. This is about their sensitivity and not about their reliability.

We should clarify what is exactly we mean when we use the terms accuracy and reliability. Accuracy is the dog’s capacity in detecting a scent or false or true negatives and reliability the dog’s capacity to alert to the right scent, or true or false positives.

As we said in that post, false negatives - which have no effect in a dog’s reliability of alerting to the correct scent - go into the dog’s record, affecting negatively the dog’s accuracy record.

But to know that it’s a false negative, the handler must know where and when the dog missed alerting to a sample of the correct scent. Only dogs which are totally reliable are used in the field. Dogs that have given false negatives - unreliable dogs that have alerted to wrong scents - cannot be used.

The handler must be able to rely on the reliability of the alert. If handler says the dog is only correct in, 85%, 90% or 95% of cases, any alert could be attributed to the chance the dog was wrong and any defence lawyer will use that fact, and shred the prosecution's case to shreds.

Another important thing about this factor is that it shows the non-importance that false negatives have.

They happen, and the fact that because a dog does not alert, it doesn’t mean that the scent isn’t there. It just means that there’s the possibility of it being there without the density required for the dog to alert.


07. Factors affecting DAS: Temperature

As we have said, volatility represents the number of airborne molecules that a substance releases into the air.

The amount of substance present obviously affects the number of molecules being released, so a difference in the amount of a substance will affect the length of the DAS. But quantity is not a factor affecting the DAS because it is a constant.

This is easy to understand, as 1 kg of a substance under the exact same conditions as 0.5 Kg of the exact same substance will always emit more airborne molecules, making the difference of their DASs a constant.

But under different conditions, this difference can be altered and even inversed. Note, it matters not what number of molecules is released but at what distance from the source is the level of density required to trigger the dog’s nose.

If a source emits furiously but due to circumstances, the molecules are quickly dispersed, then the DAS will be short, while another source may be emitting weakly but because the circumstances keep the molecules together, then the DAS may be extended further than usual.

Also, the same quantity of the same substance may have its strength of emission altered due to one simple factor: temperature.

The variation of the volatility of a substance alters its DAS. The volatility is the rhythm with which the substance releases its airborne molecules into the air.

The temperature of where the source is affects this rhythm. The same source in the same location will present different DASs according to the time of year. The hotter is the environment, the greater is the volatility, the longer is the DAS.

The same substance, the same dog, different DASs depending on the temperature.


08. Factors affecting DAS: Ventilation

The biggest factor that affects a DAS is without question ventilation.

Two sources, same substance and quantity, at the same temperature conditions may present completely different DASs for the same dog. All depends on where they are located and how ventilated is their particular locations.

The more ventilation there is, the more the molecules disperse, meaning that the density required to trigger a dog's nose, will be closer to the source. A very simple concept to understand.

This is very useful as we have seen, the shorter the DAS, the more precise is the indication of the location of the source.

As it happens, in the 3 alerts at the apartment 5A (bedroom, living-room and backyard) we had 3 different levels of ventilation, which give us different levels of precision in terms of where the respective physical source  was located for each one of them:

In the backyard, because it is a very well ventilated location it’s very clear where the source was located. The EVR dog in this case, alerted to a spot, not an area.

In the living-room, a well ventilated location, the EVR dog no longer signals a spot but a well defined area, the one behind the couch.

Only in the bedroom is there doubt where the source may have been. We will analyse the alert in the bedroom in the following subheading.


09. Factors affecting DAS: No ventilation

As we saw, ventilation affects the DAS of a scent by shortening it significantly. However, there’s another kind of ventilation that may lengthen the DAS and it is summed up by one word: concentration.

And to be precise, we’re speaking of the concentration of the airborne molecules away from the source. This happens due the movement of air, thus ventilation, in unventilated locations.

Up to now and with the exception of where we dealt with the ventilation factor we have spoken about the propagation of a scent evenly to all directions. The further away from the source the lesser the density of the molecules, in all directions.

Even when we introduced the ventilation, we maintained this principle. The further away from the source, in the direction the wind blows, the less density there is. Ventilation only makes the density of scent required to be closer to the source.

It does not alter the principle that the density decreases with distance as can be seen above.

In locations that are not ventilated, this principle may cease to happen because of a cumulative effect caused by small air currents, small movements of air.


This phenomenon is very familiar to people who have dogs or cats in their house.

The hair of their fur accumulates in areas that were not where it fell off the pet. The small drafts in a house, the movement of people inside it, push their fur towards less unventilated areas of the rooms, such as the corners of a room.

In the same way, in an unventilated area, the scent molecules may be pushed by small drafts of air, not enough to dissipate them like in ventilated areas but simply to push them along towards areas that are even less ventilated.

This will cause a cumulative effect which will invalidate that there is always a constant decrease in density of a scent with distance as in this situation there is an area with less density of scent molecules between the source and the area where the concentration happens due to the cumulative effect.

This cumulative effect obviously changes the shape of the Volume of Alert (VoA), significantly.

This will mean that in an unventilated location, it’s possible that where the dog alert may not be the location of the source.

Note, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It just means it may be but also that it may not.

Logic dictates that the source is nearby. The reason is simple to understand: any ventilation will dissipate this concentration, so once there’s significant ventilation, for example doors being opened during the search, this will disperse such concentrations.

Only where there are unventilated corners of unventilated rooms does this phenomenon happen, meaning that even with the movement of the air caused by humans and by the dog itself, the concentration persists, meaning that the source has to be nearby.

Hopefully, readers will now be able to understand what Martin Grime means exactly when he said this, on this video as of 22:20:

“[Standing in the corridor near the front door of apartment 5A] Ok, what was done was we, we deployed the enhanced victim recovery dog into the apartment and by experience and the training of the dog, what I first noticed is that as soon as I came in that the dog is very excited and as a handler I can pick up his body language etc and it would appear to me that as soon as he has come in the house he's picked up a scent that he recognises and he has then gone through the apartment trying to source where the source, that scent source is coming from and as he has worked through the house the only two places where he picks up enough scent to give me the bark alert are in this bedroom… [walks to the parents’ bedroom] …in this corner where he was barking.

What we have to be able to understand in a situation like this is that in a hot climate with the apartment being closed down, the scent will build up in a particular area. If there isn't a scent source in here, i.e. a physical article where the scent is emitting from, any scent residue will collect in a particular place due to the air movement of the flat, the apartment and what I would say in this case is that there is enough scent in that area there for him to give me a bark indication… but the source may not be in that cupboard, the source may well be in this room somewhere else but the air is actually pushing into that corner. But is strong indication and I would say it’s positive for the things that he is trained to find, which will be part of a separate debrief.”

There is one thing that people have overlooked when they read Martin Grime’s words above and that is to realise when they were said, and that was right after the actual search. It’s what is called a FIR, or a First Impressions Report. In this instance done verbally and on video.

Martin Grime speaks of a “separate debrief” which he’s to write later and which he does. Do note that on that written “separate debrief” he doesn’t mention this scent built-up or scent collecting in the bedroom. Why? Because after consideration he has deemed that this phenomenon did not happen in the bedroom otherwise he would have had to put it in his report.

The concentration due to unventilation is a phenomenon that does exist but it was not what happened in that bedroom, according, by omission, to Martin Grime’s final report.

We think there’s no doubt that Martin Grime is simply doing his job and covering all possibilities when faced in that scenario.

Our opinion is that finding odd that the dog would alert to cadaver scent inside the cupboard of the parents’ bedroom, knowing that in question was the disappearance of a 4 yr old girl, he sought to find a justification other than the body for the scent to be in that particular location.

He’s just pointing out to the police that upon analysing the location of the alert, an unventilated corner of an unventilated room, that the source of the scent MAY not be in that corner but somewhere else in that room and the alert happened there because it MAY have been pushed there due to the room and corner being unventilated.

This is corroborated by the fact that that he is specific about the alert in the bedroom. He doesn’t refer to this concentration possibility regarding the alerts in the living-room or backyard. There’s something to the alert in the bedroom that doesn’t happen with the other 2 alerts: the bedroom is  unventilated.

Please do note that he does not invalidate that the source may be there in that corner.

But it’s his job to alert the PJ to the fact that without any other intelligence, that there was the possibility that the source would not be in that corner, or to be precise, in that cupboard, has to be considered.

However, it’s unequivocal that he states that the source of scent for that alert, if it’s not in the corner it’s in the bedroom.

By the way, we are of the opinion that the source was in the cupboard. And in a post where we will speak about the use of the dogs together, we hope to show why we have reasons to believe that Grime also had the same conviction we have.


10. Factors affecting DAS: Confinement

We warn readers that this factor is quite relevant in the Maddie case, as we hope to show.

Confinement determines that if the source of a scent is confined to a space that has smaller dimensions than the scent’s DAS, then it’s obvious that the DAS becomes the dimensions of that space.

Imagine reader, that inside a cube there are 3 sources of the same scent inside a cube like in the image above.

Note that we have not mentioned the strength of the scent in question. For now it’s undefined on whether it’s a strong or weak scent.

If a dog is able to alert to the 3 sources that means basically one thing: it’s a dog trained for a weak scent. Not only is its DAS smaller than the dimensions of the cube, as the DAS is smaller than the distance between any 2 sources.

In such an instance, that would mean the scent was not confined to a limited space as its DAS was significantly smaller than the sides of the cube.

But what happens if the DAS of the scent is bigger than the dimensions of the cube? This does:

The 3 sources merge to become only one. For the dog, inside that cube there’s only source of the scent. He’s unable to differentiate the 3, for there’s only one and it’s the entire inside of the cube.

The 3 sources are there, they didn’t go anywhere. When it comes to a strong scent, due to the confinement factor, the dog is unable to point the locations of each of the sources, he can only indicate where the scent comes from, and it’s from inside it. He cannot be more precise than that.

Where did this confinement factor happen in the Maddie case? It happened in the exact same location for both the case of a strong scent (cadaver) as for a weak one (blood) and that “cube” was the Renault Scenic.

In terms of the cadaver scent, which is a strong one, the above happened, or the be precise for Eddie the entire inside of the Scenic was the “source” of the scent, the “entire inside of the cube”:

Those who have suggested that Eddie should have been taken inside the Scenic think they know more than Martin Grime, who being fully aware of how high was the profile of this case, was incompetent to not do that.

Martin Grime did not take Eddie inside the Scenic because he would not provide more information than the alert he gave: there was/were a source or sources of cadaver odour inside that Scenic. And that is all Martin Grime knew that Eddie was able to tell him.

But with blood, a weak scent, Keela was taken inside the Scenic:

Keela is a dog trained for a weak scent, blood. And Grime points spots to her to check inside the Scenic. He knows that a blood dog is not affected by the confinement factor, that factor only affects dogs trained to strong odours.

The confinement factor also causes something that happened in the Maddie case with Eddie.

If one imagines the cube above having a small leak on one of its side. This is what it would mean in reality:

This would make strong-scent dog alert to a spot instead of an area.

Above, due to the confinement factor, alerts are clearly to a spot on the Scenic’s door. The spot from where the cadaver scent from inside the Scenic is leaking out.

A spot that Keela did not alert to. To say that Keela did not alert because what was being alerted to was the key FOB that no longer was there when she searched the car, have to read up as the scent of blood would not have the strength to leak.

If the scent of blood had the strength to leak, making it then a strong scent which it isn’t, then Keela would not have been able to alert to spots inside the Scenic as she did.

Martin Grime doesn’t take Eddie inside because of the confinement factor but does take Keela in (and directs her to spots) because he knows this factor does not affect a weak scent, such as the scent of blood.


11. Probabilities of false alerts, denial of presence

There is one last useful thing that can be taken from understanding the differences between strong and weak scents and the differences between the training and deployment of the dogs trained respectively and that is the difference of probabilities of false negatives between these 2 different kinds of scents.

As we have shown, the factors affecting the DAS basically only affect the DAS of strong scents. Doubling or halving the length of something long makes a difference, while doing the same to something that is very short is to keep it very short, which is what happens with weak scents.

They are affected in the same way as are the DAS for strong scents but in practical terms the way the length of the DAS of  weak scents are affected can be disregarded.

This means that while with strong scents, there is always the possibility of there being false negatives. The location of where the density required to trigger a dog’s nose may be missed by the dog and that means a false negative.

Again we repeat, false negatives alter absolutely nothing about the reliability of the alerts. But there is one subtle and important deduction that has to be made of this: the fact that the dog does not alert does NOT deny the presence of the scent.

The alert confirms it but not alerting does NOT deny.

With weak scents, this is completely different.

The trainer points the spots to where the dog has to stick literally its nose. That means that with weak scents the only possible false negatives are the spots that the trainer overlooks to point out to the dog.

If the trainer points to a spot and the dog does not alert, that means DENIAL of a weak scent.

If a cadaver dog does not alert, that does not mean that the scent is not there but if a blood dog does not alert, then that means there is no source there.


12. Conclusions

Trains are not planes. Weak scents are not strong scents.

Weak scents, like blood are different from strong scents like cadaver and that means that the way detection is done by dogs for each of these scents is different for each of these 2 categories.

A strong-scent dog is expected to find areas, the weak-scent one, spots.

Understanding this is to understand that the dogs are deployed in different ways with different purposes even though both are being asked to sniff out target scents.

These differences make the castle of cards created by misinformers crumble that Keela is brought in to confirm Eddie’s alerts as they act independently.

We will deal with this in details in the next post, where we hope to write about the use of the dogs in tandem, focusing on the Maddie case.

For now, we will just say that to get from Lisbon to Reading, one knows that the best solution is to first take a plane to London and from there a train to Reading. But is that the only option? No, one can go from Lisbon to Reading just by train. It’s way more time consuming, probably much more expensive but possible.

And one can even not use planes or trains to go from Lisbon to Reading, one can simply drive using other alternative means of transportation, the car.

But whatever options there are, none are better, more efficient in terms of time and cost, than using first a plane and then a train. And one thing is certain, one cannot get from Lisbon to Reading with only using planes.

But it never crosses anyone’s mind to confuse trains with planes. And yet, even though silenced as of late, many pretending to fight for the truth really made the effort of convincing the people interested in the Maddie case that trains and planes were the exact same.

And before someone says that no one has stated that blood and cadaver were the same, to state as many have that it is and Eddie may have alerted to blood in the Scenic is to have stated exactly that, or in other words, saying that planes and airplanes are the same when it’s more than obvious they are not.

Only the idiots will be convinced they are and only the intellectually corrupt will try to do that convincing.