I attended the Luz June 2014 dig of the mound by OG. I would estimate it to be under a 10 minute walk from here. So I did it 3 or 4 times.
So I have seen Tito and Muzzy in active service.
When the handlers wanted the dogs to investigate an area of land, the dogs did not act like laser-guided missiles. They did things like running outside the area the handler wanted searched. They covered the same area not just once, but multiple times. The handlers used calls and hand actions to direct and re-direct the dogs.
If anyone requests a cite that I was there, or that this was the behaviour I observed, I am going to ROFL.
Equally, if anyone is pedantic enough to point out this was not a house search or a cars-in-garage search, I am going to ROFL.
It is my understanding that when Sergey Murat was made an arguido, his mother's car was searched by the dogs. His own car from 2007 had been torched long before 2014. There is no point in me asking how that search was conducted, because I very much doubt that Sergey or his mother would have been permitted to attend.
I cannot even get confirmation that the car was indeed searched, as the family refuse to discuss the case.
A question has been raised as to whether the OG effort was 2 dogs, or 4 dogs as apparently was quoted in the media. Here is my take on this point.
Sorry, I cannot give the forum a definitive answer one way or the other.
Prior to the digs, I had little interest in the case, although I had read both Kate's book and Gonçalo's book.
It was my disbelief and anger that SY were digging up central Luz that got me started. So at the time, I would rate my expertise on the case, on a scale of 0-10, as perhaps a 1.
I never thought to take pictures or video, which I definitely would now.
So I mainly wondered in amazement at the circus display. We had GNR, PJ and SY. We had dogs and horses. We had guns. We had helicopters, aeroplanes and at least one drone. We had media video and photography. Teams from the UK and teams from Lisbon. OG turned up with brand new shovels and pickaxes and learned these are useless for digging in the Algarve. There was ground-penetrating radar and the ubiquitous two-stroke strimmer for clearing vegetation prior to fingertip searches. There was a large combined control centre on the top of the mound. There was another GNR control centre on 25 April street.
We lived for about 8 months on the urbanisation one can see beside the mound, the Paraíso (same name as the restaurant on the beach). So I am familiar with the locale, and had walked across it many times. At the time of the dig I knew enough of the area to walk around the entire perimeter.
On 25 April Street was an Italian restaurant that my family and I have eaten in, called Amici (friends). At one of these meals we were told a story which would become relevant in the dig. I was having white fish in lemon sauce. As the water served it, he said my potatoes were grown on an allotment on the land around mound. Amici had agreed to exchange water required to grow the vegetables in exchange for a portion of the produce.
This suggests that one or more of Andy Redwood's 'anomalies' was simply due to a vegetable patch.
Since I was simply treating the dig as an amusement, as a circus, I didn't take detailed notes on anything.
I cannot remember seeing more than two dogs at any one time. Of course, that does not preclude more than two being deployed simultaneously. Nor does it preclude the dogs being deployed in shifts, to give them time off.
