I am not being arrogant, just quoting what other experts have said about cadaver dogs whilst studying them. Of course Eddie wouldn't come into this category would he, he being a very special cadaver dog.
I don't call the alerts bollocks, I just give the evidence that these very experienced people have found about cadaver dogs. I would say dismissing these people and what they have written is arrogance.
Grime did train Eddie, he may well test his dogs regularly, but Eddie was trained to find blood, he was trained on pig carcasses. Grime wouldn't be able to say that Eddie did NOT alert to blood that had been on an article and taken away because he wouldn't know what Eddie was alerting to. He covered everything when he said without a body the alerts more or less mean nothing.
You have read about other dogs and other experts, but two dogs and one expert were involved in this case.The handler had trained and used Eddie for years, so in my opinion he is the only expert who can comment on the dog's capabilities. Eddie alerted in two ways. When he barked with his head in the air he was alerting to a scent he had been trained to find, but the source of the scent wasn't there. This is what he did in the bedroom. When he barked at a certain spot, the source of the scent was still there. That's what he did behind the sofa, as Keela confirmed.
Grimes opinion was that Eddie alerted to cadaver scent contamination in the bedroom. Not blood, toenails, dead pigs or fertilizer, he alerted to the smell of a dead human being. I will take the word of the man who had the dog since he was a puppy, who trained him and used him for eight years over any other opinions relating to other dogs and other circumstances.
The dogs don't 'think' by the way, their response is a Pavlovian response, a simple cause and effect operation. They smell something, they alert. After eight years of deployment Eddie wouldn't have been used if he was unreliable. He wouldn't have still been working if he alerted to all sorts of random substances.
