You are mistaken DCI. There were dogs deployed within hours of Madeleines disappearance.
Armando Augusto Morais
Occupation: GNR Officer
He has been a GNR officer since 1982. He currently works in the Portimao Territorial Group, working within the forensics service.
On 4th May he was called at about 01.15, he arrived at the OC at about 1.55, accompanied by the officer Laçao.
They presented themselves to Sergeant Duarte from the GNR Lagos post and were informed by him of the disappearance of a small girl from the resort. There were other GNR officers present at the scene, but he does not remember their names. There were also PJ officers present.
After having established exactly where the girl had disappeared from, he was given a piece of her clothing by one of his colleagues, whose name he does not remember.
From the door of the apartment, accompanied by his dog, he walked around the entire perimeter of the resort and revised the interior of several of the apartments.
As he did not obtain any results in the area close to the resort, he extended the perimeter of the search to a distance of 1 km.
www.mccannfiles.com/id258.html#gnr9
If you re read Sadie's post, you will see what I replied to, Angelo!
4 Days later.
On 8th May during the morning four teams returned to search all the areas around Vila, following some indications from local people who had frequently gone to the GNR Command post saying they had seen something suspicious related to the disappearance but no sign of her presence was ever found.
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/GNR_SNIFFER.htmAlso, I didn't say the dogs weren't deployed, but, they weren't deployed from the apartment for more than 24 hours, later.
3517 to 3524 Report of Technical/Scientific Search and Rescue Group
Operation Commander
Major Sequeira
During the afternoon of 4th May, more searches were carried out around Vila da Luz and were extended to a radius of approximately 600 metres, including the surroundings of the EN125 in the stretch closed to P da L.
At about 23.00 the extra teams that had been requested for reinforcement arrived (Officer Rosa with Oscar and Officer Martins with Fusco, both from the search and rescue unit and Officer Fernandes with Rex and Zarus from the tracking team).After the officers had been updated about facts relating to the disappearance, they tried to reconstruct the route the girl might have taken with the two tracker dogs. For this purpose the dogs were given a blanket to sniff, provided by the parents, which had been used by Madeleine.
Beginning to follow the track using Rex, from the door of apartment 5 A (the place where the girl had been sleeping) he would always head in the direction of Block 4, leaving block 5 the dog would turn to the left, pass by a metal access door to a path existing between the apartments blocks to the leisure area (restaurant, pool and playground). Immediately another attempt at reconstruction was made using the dog Zarus, who, in general terms, ended up following the same route as Rex and having the same behaviour.
It is important to state that this tracking work was carried out in an urban area and more than 24 hours after the girl's disappearance and numerous persons had passed along the path the dogs were tracking. It should also be stated that the path the dogs followed within the resort was practically totally surrounded by walls and the concentration of odours was stronger as they were protected from the wind. The searches finished at about 01.30Subject: Report of Searches Related to the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/GNR_SNIFFER.htm